Episode Report Card Couch Baron: A- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT My Heart Won't Go On…
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 04.08.2008
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.The firm is taking on the "Asbury divorce case," and Taylor picks Maggie as her second chair in order to avoid Matt. Matt keeps hitting on Taylor, who tells him that she can't date him with the both of them working for her dad and all. When Matt ends up working with Jordan on some grunt work, and when Matt "hypothetically" asks how Jordan would feel about him pursuing Taylor, Jordan says he would "hypothetically" crush said person, which: hee. Jordan also "hypothetically" tells Eli about Taylor and Matt, and Eli freaks out on Taylor, and there's a whole brouhaha with Eli, Taylor, Matt, and Maggie, and also Maggie's engaged and Taylor and Jordan have words and there's a really, really Smurfy ending to the Asbury case and whatever. Matt, however, totally calls Taylor out on having feelings for him, which, since I love him, is awesome. In more interesting news, Eli wakes up in a stranger's apartment with a strange nurse -- and realizes he's inhabiting his brother's body. The vision is from over ten years ago, but that's not the biggest problem for the Stones, as Nate is getting sued. Turns out he bumped a woman down on the heart transplant list who ended up dying, and her husband is just the teensiest bit miffed about that. Eli's visions of himself as Nate, however, have some big significance -- he gets to see what Nate saw on the day their father died. As it happens, Eli was studying for the bar exam right then, and didn't come home, so he has no idea what happened. Nate gets accused of giving the woman's heart away because she had a drinking problem, and Eli wonders if it might be true, given their dad's addiction. But he learns that his father didn't die from a drunk-driving accident, but in fact had a heart attack, and could have been saved by a heart transplant, which was available -- but Nate passed the heart on to someone else. Nate turned it down because his dad was an alcoholic with a bad liver, and Eli agrees with his reasoning. Nate also, it seems, finally, FINALLY, gets it in his head that Eli's visions are for real -- and also tells Eli that it was the woman herself who decided she didn't want the transplant. The Stones win, of course, and Nate finally, FINALLY, tells Eli that he shouldn't have the operation to remove his aneurysm, because something amazing is happening to him. And speaking of amazing, in the last scene, Eli-as-Nate tells his dad that his family is okay, and his dad in turn tells Eli -- not Nate, but Eli -- that he's sorry. I'll go into a lot more detail in the recap, but for now: SNIFF! Want more? The full recap starts right below!
As "Star People '97" plays in the background, some blonde in her underwear stands by a bed and greets a groggy Eli with a "Morning, sunshine." Eli quickly establishes that he doesn't know who she is and doesn't recognize the place he's in, and jumps to the entirely reasonable conclusion that this is the result of an enormous bender. Entirely reasonable, that is, except for the part where he is not massively hung over, and if he's one of those people who can wake up from Saturday-Night-Live-in-the-seventies levels of partying with no ill effects, remind me never to feel sorry for him again. When Eli expresses surprise at the blonde's assertion that he has rounds, however, she thinks that she, "bad nurse Kerri," is meant to restore Eli the "sexy amnesiac's" memory with a round of role-playing. At least that's what I'm assuming she was going to say before Eli cut her off. She changes gears, however, and heads into the shower, but not before playfully addressing him as "Doctor Stone." When she moves out of frame, Eli can see his reflection in the bathroom mirror -- only it's Nate's, and if that's how his hair looks when he wakes up in the morning, I don't blame him for buying product in bulk.
Eli's in Nate's office, telling him about what he saw. Nate suggests he put a sign up: "Objects in the mirror are handsomer than they appear." Hee. Eli says he was in Nate's old apartment on Divisadero, causing Nate to wax reminiscent about all the "damage" he did in that place. Well, if he was already a doctor at that young an age, that seems like a given. I mean, wasn't Grey's Anatomy sort of founded on that premise? Anyway, Nate thinks Eli's experiencing just another sensory hallucination, and denies having any legal problems when Eli offers that the people in his visions usually do. Nate also mentions that Kerri moved to Seattle, and he hasn't even spoken to her in ten years. "But if you imagine [her] again, tell her to call me. And say nothing to my millionaire girlfriend, who was the source of so much tension between us last episode." I'm filling in a few blanks here.
Eli sets a pretty plant on Patti's desk as a welcome-back present, and Patti responds by dropping the thing on the floor. Sassy! Eli apologizes for screwing up the Silver Terrace thing, but only succeeds in getting her attention when he tells her he's having the aneurysm removed. Patti's worried, but Eli leaves her to chase after Maggie, and I hope she at least waters the poor plant to make up for her earlier rudeness. Eli catches Maggie in the break room, and she's completely Stepfordian toward him until he calls her on that explicitly, so she drops the act, saying things are different. She refuses to tell him just how things are different, though, and without giving it completely away, he's standing about half a foot from you and looking in your eyes, hon. Also, he's a guy, and guys need help with this kind of thing. (Flashback to twelve years ago to my friend Mia asking me after about fifteen minutes of chitchat: "John, are you blind?")