Previously on ER: Abby, after being shot down by Carter, told him that if he wants a girl with no history he'll need to find a virgin. He said he'd settle for one not hung up on another man. Later, Carter kissed Susan -- twice, actually; she later helped Mark home from the hospital and sat with him to make sure he pulled through the Gamma knife brain surgery. Abby agreed to sleep on Luka's couch until she finds a new apartment.
Morning. Abby "The Big Bangs" Lockhart is asleep on a black leather couch, lying on her back, her arm splayed up across her eyes to block the sunlight. The sound of grinding coffee beans jolts her into consciousness. "Sorry, did I wake you?" Dr. Luka "Skywalker" Kovac calls out, standing behind his kitchen counter. Abby clears her throat and sits up stiffly, seeming a bit disoriented, probably because she spent the whole night suppressing the urge to crawl into Luka's bed and worship him. Hmm, projecting much? Luka smilingly apologizes for not insisting on taking the couch, but Abby swears she slept well on it. "I started some coffee," Luka says, sauntering to the couch and gazing down at her. "Oh, that Turkish mud that you like," she chuckles. "It'll get you going," Luka laughs. "It'll eat a hole in your stomach lining," she cracks. Awkward pause. They're slipping into old jokes and comfortable banter. Abby blinks and asks permission to use the bathroom. Luka nods, and then leans forward, puts his hands on her face, and...examines her eye. Dang. Abby is silent. Luka drops his hands, and they stare at each other for a few beats. That would be my undoing...my undoing of his pants, that is! Yeah!
Dr. John "Whee!" Carter skips down Susan's street, almost tripping over a street-sweeper. I wonder if that was in the script, or if he just bumped into the extra. Either way, Carter flails. But he recovers without spilling his coffee and buzzes up to Susan's apartment. She doesn't answer, so he backs away, looks up quizzically at her window, and calls her. Why do people do that? Like she's going to suddenly get a window vibe and run over to it and let her hair down so he can climb up. No. In the distance, we see Dr. Susan "Home Perm" Lewis hurrying to her front door. "Carter!" she yells. How romantic. Nothing says lovin' like using your boyfriend's last name. As Susan roots around for her keys, Carter pleasantly reminds her of their 7:30 yoga class, then pauses a bit when he realizes she's already dressed. "You're out early," he notes, trying to keep suspicion out of his tone. Susan distractedly tells him she slept at Mark's place. Carter's heart stops. "On the couch," Susan tsks. Fade out on Carter struggling for air.
After the credits, Carter is still harping on Susan's overnight at Mark's apartment. He's wearing dark aviator shades, too, just in case Tommy Lee Jones drops out of Men In Black 2 and they need a fast replacement. Susan swears up and down that Mark is just a friend, whereas Carter lightly points out that he's obviously a good friend, and a lonely friend, and a horny friend, what with Elizabeth "The Tempest" Corday moving out. "Nothing happened," Susan avers, exasperated. Carter wonders aloud whether Susan would've even told Carter about the overnight stay if he hadn't caught her red-handed and red-faced. "This petty, sarcastic side of you is not appealing," Susan sighs. Wow. Taking into account her attitude later in the episode, I could pretty much cook Ramen noodles in Susan while I use Carter to make tea. Carter dares her to admit she'd be cool with him spending the night over at..."Abby's?" she interrupts. Carter bites his lip, surprised. "I was going to say Darla's," he says. There's a bit about Darla from Radiology and her huge fake breasts, but a loud siren bleeps out whatever catty epithet Susan used in place of "breasts." Susan snipes that if Carter spent the night at Abby's, she'd kill him; Carter claims she's promoting a double standard. "No. I'm not attracted to Mark," Susan notes. "You're attracted to Abby." Carter insists that Susan was attracted to Mark. "No, he was attracted to me," Susan half-truths, making a mental note to burn her diary later. "And thanks for not denying you're attracted to Abby." Carter isn't sure how this conversation became about him, and still doesn't actually deny Susan's theory. Susan claims that Mark was always more of an older brother to her. Hello? What's the point of bringing back Sherry Stringfield and reminding us of her thwarted romance with Mark if TPTB are just going to have her deny it ever existed? These people have their heads so far up their asses, they'd need two guides and four search-and-rescue dogs and a miracle to find their way back out. Carter does counter her "I don't want to sleep with [Mark]" by claiming he doesn't want to sleep with Abby. Whatever. Sure he does. At this point I think Carter would settle for sleeping with anything.
By now, Susan and Carter are in the ambulance bay, where Dr. Kerry "Has Anyone Seen My Storyline?" Weaver waylays them and makes them take an incoming patient with a head injury. "Cruella De Vil had this guy trussed up in some sort of swing suspended to the ceiling," the paramedic says as they unload him. Cruella is a giant of a woman, with slicked-back white-blonde hair and large breasts spilling from her strapless black getup. She's a cross between the real Ms. De Vil and Ursula the Sea Witch from The Little Mermaid. And she's wearing a collar. And she wants to spank you. All of you. "He svore to me he veighed 275 [pounds]," she Germans. "Ze sving is guaranteed up to 350, [and] he pulled ze screws right out ov ze ceiling!" Susan then actually says, no joke, "Just when you think you've seen it all working in the ER...." Oh, no he di-int! John Wells did NOT just make her say that. Did he? He did! He sat there pecking away at his keyboard and wrote that line and cackled and patted himself on the back and called up his dominatrix to celebrate that he finally wrote her into the show. The patient, a forty-year-old man, refuses to take off the black leather mask he's wearing. He also won't give his name, hence the suspicion about who he might be. I thought it was Jerry, but they don't ever clear up who it is. Oh, look at that! I've stopped caring. So I'll call him Kane, after a masked wrestler who never removes his cover in public. Kane is suffering from extreme pelvic pain after his fall to the floor, and can't walk. "Everythink he's vearink is mine," Cruella snaps. "You cut it, you buy it." Abby and Malik are gawking, so Carter invites them inside Trauma Green to help.
The polka of Wacky Sexcapade Tomfoolery plays as they treat Kane. Apparenly there's a tail on his costume. "Pure horsehair," Cruella says proudly. The scene goes on for quite a while, as it's hammered home that (a) Kane doesn't want to remove the mask; (b) Kane is in pain; (c) The dominatrix is German-sounding; and (d) Sex is funny and naughty. Kane screams. "Buck up, vimp," sneers Cruella. Susan assures Kane that he's just suffering from a bruised bum, and prescribes morphine. Luka enters. "Is that a tail?" he asks bemusedly. "Pure horsehair," Abby smirks. Carter notices that Cruella's middle finger is bent back at an unnatural angle and offers to send her off for an x-ray, but she refuses to leave because Kane's decked out in so much expensive sex leather. Carter warns Cruella that it'll hurt a lot if he sets it on the spot, and that she'll need a splint for six weeks. "Can I vear it over my glove?" she twinkles maniacally. Carter reiterates the prospect of pain, and she just stares at him as if to say, "Pain is orgasm." So he shrugs and cracks her finger back into place with a bone-crunching noise while Cruella stares at him in ecstasy. This is probably the best orgasm Carter's ever given a girl. "Ooooh," he shudders with a tinge of awe. Finally, they send Kane to the x-ray room, in case anyone's still paying attention to this part of the scene. I'm not, really.
Luka wonders what the tail was attached to. "Believe me, you don't want to know," sniffs Dr. Michael "Back in the Cast Again" Gallant. Because he is here. Did I forget to mention that? He didn't appear to have his hand in any bodily cavities and he didn't have floppy white cleavage, so he didn't register much in the last scene. Susan stumbles upon a huge black bag sitting on the trauma-room floor, and Carter realizes that Cruella left it there. Abby can't believe Cruella would forget her stuff after going on and on about how expensive it all is. Wow, it's like the writers are trying to save me the trouble of ripping on them. Heh. Losers. "What does she have in this thing?" Susan muses, heaving it up onto a table. Luka smirks that he isn't interested, but Susan and Abby are, and wave off Carter's attempt to grab the bag and return it to Cruella. None of the men is interested, but the girls can't resist taking a peek, so they unzip the thing.
BagCam. Susan and Abby stare into it. "Whoa," Abby says. "Nobody could actually use that, could they?" They point. They giggle. Luka appears for a laugh. Then Snotty Carter scolds them for touching a patient's private property, yet gawks for a bit himself. They stare down the barrel of BagCam and laugh, and laugh, and laugh. I think they're laughing at us. They're looking at us and saying, "We are actually making you watch us stare at you." Abby finally reaches inside the bag and pulls a cord, which rapidly inflates a naughtily clad woman-doll.
This pulls us back out to a normal shot. Susan squeals, because she's never seen a plastic before, or balloons, or fishnet. Abby throws the doll at Gallant while Susan snorts some more. The girls rummage until they find a "big purple thing" with some kind of mystery on-off switch that, when triggered, creates a vibrating noise. Two guesses as to what the object is! Except Abby and Susan act like they've never seen a vibrator before, and grab the giant black-harnessed dildo so they can lob it at Luka and squeal. He catches it with aplomb and studies it, totally amused. "That does not occur in nature," chuckles Abby. Of course it doesn't. Most penises aren't detachable. Susan picks out a black mask and turns to Carter. "Oh, Carter," she says teasingly, chasing after him with the thing. Abby dons a choker, picks up a feathered crop, and says, "Should I quit my day job?" As she whirls around, Weaver rushes in and catches the Ship of Fools steaming along at full tilt. Gallant lets the doll sag to the floor, so that its face is right in his guilty crotch.
Cut to a shot of the deflated doll draped across the bag's gaping mouth. No, I'm not talking about Weaver. She is busy delivering a lecture on financial liability and professionalism, while everyone but Gallant sits in chagrined silence. Gallant waits in Trauma Green, alone. "We were just blowing off steam," Susan tries. No dice. Weaver is disgusted that they sank to such a low in front of a poor, innocent medical student, who's taken anatomy but shouldn't be exposed to something as evil as a quaking purple faux-penis. Weaver demands to know who brought the sex toys to work. "We're aware our behavior was inappropriate," begins Carter in his smoothest voice, but Weaver will have none of his bootylicking. "Who does this belong to?" she yells shrilly. Silence. "A patient," Abby pipes up, embarrassed. Weaver reams Luka, a senior Attending, for not snuffing out the hijinks, and then demands comment from the others. "We're all sorry," Abby offers. "Damn right you're sorry!" Weaver snaps. She will call human resources to find a way to avert a disciplinary hearing, "Which, I might add, this department can ill-afford right now." Oh, ugh, shut UP, the lot of you! Laura Innes looks completely embarrassed by this material and by the sound of her own voice. It's painful to watch. Weaver demands better behavior from everyone, and flounces out of the room to scold Gallant.
"Thanks a lot, girls," Carter brats. "I asked you not to touch that bag." Oh, waaaaah, Johnny. Stop sucking your thumb. Susan points out that the men could've left the room. They watch Mommy Weaver give a verbal spanking to her little boy, then storm away. "I should've told her Gallant wasn't involved," frets Susan. Carter brats that she should've also included Carter and Luka on that list. As they enter Trauma Green, Susan groans, "You were that kid in elementary school who always told, right?" Abby approaches a quietly distraught Gallant, who coolly pretends that he's fine and leaves without looking at her.
At reception, Yosh and Chuny gossip with Dr. Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen about the demise of Mark and Elizabeth's marriage. They pretend to be very sad and surprised, except Yosh, who claims to have known all along that the duo was mismatched. Because he has eyes. "She's too much woman for him," an eavesdropping Malik offers. No kidding. A piece of paper is too much woman for him. Frank boots them all from the front desk because he's really a very busy man and doesn't have time for plot exposition, so Chen and Chuny walk away lamenting the sad turn of events. Again, Yosh disagrees. "I'm stunned it lasted this long," he says. Sing it, Yoshie! You're not as dumb as you look. "Poor Mark," Chuny says, which makes me giggle because she slept with him once and she probably knows he's not good enough to get laid again anytime soon unless the woman's legally bound to do it.
Susan tracks down Weaver and follows her into the lounge, begging for lenience for her co-scampsters and claiming she instigated the entire incident in Trauma Green. "What about Abby?" Weaver demands, throwing open her locker as she faces Susan. LockerCam shows us the faint outline of the famed purple vibrator, pointed straight at Weaver, and we also see Susan's horrified expression. She covers by stammering that the whole thing was her fault, but the fire's gone out of her eyes because she knows everything will go to hell the minute Weaver gets a faceful of rubber dick. Weaver thanks Susan for her honesty, but points out that any of the so-called adults could've left the room. Susan sinks deeper and deeper inside herself, practically turning green because she knows what's about to happen. "Anything else?" Weaver asks. Susan shakes her head, wincing. Weaver whirls, gets a dick in the forehead, and squeals, "Ohh!" She stares down the dildo for a second, then slowly turns around to Susan, who is grimacing. Susan shrugs and shakes her head, speechless.
Abby strolls down what looks like a school hallway and finds her way to the room she needs. Opening the door, she furrows her brow a bit and enters. "I thought I was late," she says. The room is empty, save for Luka reading his paper, and Carter, Gallant, and Susan fiddling with various things that didn't once belong to a dominatrix. "You are late," Carter corrects. The classroom is large, paneled with dark wood, and has several tiers of seating. It's a small-to-moderate size. Susan boredly wonders how long this will last. "All day, I think," Luka offers absently. Abby figures they'll watch videos or some such high-school nonsense. "Role playing and long lectures," guesses Carter. "On acting out, inappropriate behavior...[Susan and Abby] should excel at that." Susan tells him to drop it, but he won't. "At least I'm not the one who put that thing in her locker," Susan says pointedly. "Right," Carter snorts. Abby denies it. Luka waves his finger in a "no, no, no," gesture, which just comes off looking flirty and naughty, that scamp. Rrrowr. Susan abruptly bursts into laughter. "You should've seen her face," she gasps. "God, I wish I had a camera!" Carter bitches that this isn't funny; Susan contends that it is. "No, it's not," he says coldly and firmly. When did Carter become a humorless prig? He is so The Jock right now. He's the guy who finds no humor in the fact that the standard wrestling uniform is basically tights. Susan swivels in her front-row seat and gapes at her crabby quasi-boyfriend. He stares at her. She turns back around and says to Abby, "This is going to be a very long day." We fade out on a long shot of everyone sitting in desks: Carter and Gallant in the back, Luka off to stage left and in the middle, and Abby and Susan front and center.
We fade up on Carter, his head in the air, his fingers tapping boredly on the table. Any second now, he's going to hork aloft a loogie and catch it in his mouth. Abby is standing to the blackboard, gazing up at a partially erased passage scrawled on it in white chalk. Susan squints at it. "I think that's Whitman," she says. Abby's all, "Huh?" because she is too busy wondering how she ended up in a blue shirt, when she was clearly wearing a maroon turtleneck thirty seconds ago. Susan identifies the poem as "I Sing the Body Electric." Abby nods her comprehension. "Oh, yeah, I know that one," she says. "You know Whitman?" gapes Susan. Abby turns and cocks an eyebrow while rummaging through her purse. "Don't sound so surprised," she says dryly. Susan swears she was only surprised because so few people know him. And she is one of them, because she is deep. I feel like any time writers want to give a character rapid profundity, they make them a literature enthusiast so that we can all hang our heads in ignorant shame and envy. Abby admits she loves the movie Fame (shout-out to Paul McCrane), which Susan excitedly claims to have seen thirty times; she announces that she used to wish she was Coco (cutesy shout-out to Erica Gimpel, who played Coco and plays Adele on this show) and starts singing, "I Sing The Body Electric." Carter rolls his eyes and throws his cup across the room while glaring at Susan's back.
Carter then decides to whine a bit more, which really is an awful decision. It's like he's determined to suck. He's bored of waiting for the instructor. "I say we go," he announces. "I say we wait," pipes up Gallant. "We were told to report here at zero-eight-hundred hours, and I'll stay here until someone in charge tells me to do otherwise. I suggest you do the same." Gallant is The Geek. Susan shakes her head and cradles it in her hands, while Abby gargles a sip of coffee. Carter doesn't take kindly to being outclassed, so he snipes, "This ain't the Marines, Gallant. At ease." Gallant corrects that he's in the Army. Luka agrees with Gallant, figuring that if they ditch detention, they'll just get ordered back there Saturday. Carter scowls, and Susan rubs her face. Abby lights up a smoke. "Abby, please, we're in a public building," Gallant frets. "Nobody's here," she counters. "I'm here," he snits. Abby stares wearily at him, then puts it out. I think it's funny that she's smoking in front of Luka, who always seemed vaguely disapproving of her tendency to suck on nicotine. Susan announces that she thinks their punishment is simply staying in the room. "Maybe they're watching us to see how we all respond," she muses out loud. "Watching to see how we react to stress...how alliances grow, how social structures break down under pressure." Luka merrily makes a paper airplane. Abby and Susan extol the virtues of Survivor, because they're jealous that C.S.I. gets a half-decent lead-in show, whereas ER gets no help at all from Just Boot Me -- er, "Shoot Me." Carter snorts louder than a pig in heat. Abby glares at him, and then turns back to Susan, waxing rhapsodic about all the back-biting and lying on Survivor. "It's human nature at its most venal," she adds. Carter, at his most venal, snaps -- just because he can -- that reality television is a sign of the downfall of the universe. Why, hello, Pompous. So nice of you to stop by and shine my shoes. Abby wonders if he's ever watched it, and when he shakes his head, Susan tells him to shut up, with a giant, steaming helping of Shove It Where the Sun Don't Shine sauce.
Abby and Susan start gabbing about Fear Factor, which sends Carter sinking down in his seat, ashamed of himself for lusting after both of them -- and, it should be said, pretty much striking out. Carter unleashes a torrent of hot air that sounds like "Television is a vast wasteland," which actually might be this site's reason for being, but it still sounds annoying coming from someone with no demonstrable alternate hobbies. "Sorry, I meant to watch La Bohème on PBS last night, but I had to go to the symphony," Abby snits in an affected tone that's not far off from Eleanor Carter's Diction of Snobbery. Susan cracks up. Carter hops on his soapbox and lectures that the lines are blurring and we'll end up with televised executions and a Torture Channel , although some might argue that MTV already fills that role. "What is your problem today?" Susan demands testily. "You know what my problem is," retorts Carter icily. Susan's floored that Carter can hold a grudge so long. Abby is dying for details. "You know what, John? Grow up," fumes Susan, crossing her arms and pouting mightily. Abby's about to burst, and Carter looks upset that his dirty laundry's getting dragged around, despite the fact that he handed Susan the basket.
Gritting her teeth, Susan confesses, "I spent the night at Mark's the night before last, and [Carter] won't let it go." She turns to Abby, who is highly intrigued. "I slept on the sofa. He thinks I slept with Mark!" Susan squeals. As a Mark detractor, I enjoy her tone of voice, which is one of "Ew, can you imagine?" But I still think it's poor storytelling, because she once wanted to sleep with Mark and it's revisionist for her to act so disgusted by it all of a sudden, even if she is completely over her crush of old. Carter begs her not to talk about this here, but Susan's on a roll, raging that, years ago, Mark had a crush on her, but now they're friends. Carter hops up and scurries to the front row, sitting to Abby's right so that she's smack in the middle of him and Susan. Do you get it? Carter smarms that it must've just been a harmless night in a recently single man's apartment, a man "who's still desperately in love with you." Abby appraises Carter curiously, cocking her head to check and see how green his eyes have become. Susan swears that Mark isn't in love with her, which is a valid claim considering he's married to someone else. Luka suddenly jerks up his head and asks, "Who's single?" He gets the bullet on Elizabeth and Mark, yet seems remarkably unconcerned except on a superficial level, because he was ignorant of all the drama. "Where was I?" he wonders. Ha ha, wacky scribes!
Susan hisses that she only went to Mark's because it was an emergency, and she wouldn't have bothered had it not been vitally important. "Well, if he really needed you..." Carter bitters. "He's a friend. I helped him out," she snaps. "I'm sure you did," he mutters. Susan refuses to discuss this further. This conversation makes them both so unappealing. What an inspired idea by the writers! Mark's leaving, so we have to dislike someone season, and this is making that choice a lot easier. It's a buffet of bad, boring people. "What kind of emergency?" Carter presses. "None of your damn business!" shouts Susan, assuring him that he'll feel really, really small when he finds out what it was. But she won't tell him. But he'll feel small. Really small. Susan sticks her fingers in her ears and sticks out her tongue. Carter calls her a gaylord stupidbrain, and Susan's all, "Bull hickey!" and kicks sand in his eye, and Carter steals her plastic shovel and pail, and Susan screams for Mommy, and John Wells appears with two glasses of Sunny D to make it all better. Hey, why does Microsoft Word insist on capitalizing "gaylord"? Did Bill Gates put Mitch Gaylord in the dictionary?
Luka decides that this is the time to say something helpful. "Abby's been sleeping on my couch," he offers pointlessly. Abby, shot from the side, is clearly biting the insides of her cheeks as Carter leans around her to glare at Luka. He's pale. He went from two women to zero in less than one second. Susan catches Carter's shock and gives him a knowing scowl. Abby shakes her head, laughing under her breath, and chokes out that she's crashing there until she can find a new apartment. Carter eats his own lip. Susan snipes that Carter's probably more upset about this turn of events than he is about her nightlong Mark marathon. "No, I'm not," he denies lamely. Long shot of them, so that we're reminded that Abby's positioned in between Carter and Susan. In between. Carter and Susan. Are you with me? Are you? Don't make me use that "a" word that people hate so much. That damn vile word. Abby confusedly watches Carter and Susan not make eye contact. "Carter's still stuck on you," Susan snips. This propels Carter straight out of his seat, eager to change the subject, and makes Susan stalk over to the window to stare outside, bummed.
Carter swipes a section of Luka's newspaper and small-talks, "How about them Bears, huh?" Luka blankly blinks and then explains he doesn't watch American football. Carter plops down in a snit and insists that they need to beef up their defense, like, congratulations on knowing some sports words, dear. Luka prefers basketball, and says they can discuss the Bulls. "The Bulls stink," Carter snaps. This from the guy who made fun of Susan for not being a Bulls fan.
Abby clears her throat and turns the attention to Gallant. She draws out that he's in the Army reserve, getting free medical school in exchange for serving periodic time in the armed forces. We knew that; they didn't. "So they can call you up at any time?" Abby asks. "They can, [but] I don't think they will -- not yet," he answers. Susan and Abby combine to query whether he's nervous about the prospect of serving during this time of international unrest. "I wish they'd give me a gun," Gallant says fervently. "Put me someplace where I can use it. I'm ready to go if my country needs me, yes, Ma'am." What a misguided patriot, and a gross oversimplification of what it means to be in the military. Luka briefly looks up from his paper to consider Gallant's naïveté, then returns to his little world. But Abby catches that and volunteers that Luka once served in the military. Gallant, impressed, leans forward excitedly. "All Croatian men are required to serve in the military," Luka explains quietly. Gallant looks as if he feels the United States should handle things the same way. Abby and Gallant trade stories about siblings in the military -- she's got one in the Air Force, and he's got three in various branches, with one fourteen-year-old who's too young to decide. He's got five siblings in all. "Sounds like a family business," Carter snarks, looking none too enchanted by it. Gallant proudly cites his father's twenty-six-year career as a non-commissioned officer. Carter's eager to pick people apart today, so he suspiciously asks what Gallant's fifth sibling does. "My twin sister [is] the black sheep of the family," Gallant smiles. "She teaches Head Start in D.C." Abby jokes about how disgraceful that is. "We try to hide her when company comes around," Gallant fires back with a grin. Carter rudely wonders how she skirted the Gallant family's military service prerequisite. "She has cerebral palsy," Gallant says calmly. Abby smirks at Carter, whose foot is so far into his mouth that his big toe is plugging his sphincter.
This episode is so aimed at trivia buffs. we get a segment about what people's fathers do. Susan acerbically announces that Pa Lewis is "a test pilot for Barcalounger [who] sits on his ass all day in front of the TV trying to get his cholesterol level over 400." Everyone laughs, including Carter, which is a nice change from the lemon-sucking sourpuss he's been so far. Luka's father is a train conductor in Zagreb by day, and an abstract painter at heart. Abby, moved, admits that she didn't know that. Luka shoots her an adorably mischievous look. "You never asked," he grins, folding another airplane with the glee of a six-year-old. Abby nonchalantly says she has no idea what her father is doing, and before Carter can volunteer any information, Susan snarks that John "Stephen Keaton" Carter blows through the family trust fund for a living. Amused in spite of himself, Carter good-naturely corrects that Stephen manages investment funds and sits on some corporate boards. "Carter's loaded," Susan says inelegantly, leafing boredly through magazines with her back to the conversation.
Gallant's intrigued, and kicks off a really annoying debate about how much Carter himself is worth. Carter's visibly ill at ease with this, but tries to be a braver little soldier than any Gallant family patriot. Abby leads the probe, throwing out numbers inappropriately so that Carter can silently confirm he's richer than God. When she hits $500 million, Carter finally reddens and swears that he honestly has no clue. "Oh my God," Abby gapes. "I knew you were rich, [but] I didn't know you were that rich." He shrugs that it belongs to Gamma, not him, and then answers the age question that the world has debated: he is thirty-one. "How'd you manage to last this long without some girl marrying you?" Abby teases. At least, I think she's teasing. It still comes out tinged with insensitivity, sort of like when someone tells you that Diet Coke will rot your teeth and give you cancer while they're watching you chug one, like, piss off, evil pleasure-killing minion of Satan! Carter joylessly laughs that Gamma installed gold-digger alarms in them at birth. "And I didn't set it off?" Susan drawls dryly. "You'd better have that thing checked." It gets a laugh, but it isn't that funny. Carter quietly poor-little-rich-boys that growing up in a mansion doesn't equal a perfect life. "Why? Gamma too cheap to heat the pool?" Susan brats. Oh, shut UP, Tom Petty. It's like every time Susan opens her mouth, something "funny" is supposed to fly out and charm the world. Then we hear from the requisite merry paupers, Susan and Luka, because in this scene, Carter is The Princess whose rich exterior hides a still-rich interior person who's always pigeonholed and ends up making huge mistakes, like wearing knee-high brown leather boots and bringing sushi for lunch. "Seven hundred million," Abby out-of-nowhere lobs at Carter. "I didn't ask to be born into this," he points out, and rightly, but Abby is being irritating and shoots him a "Give me a break" look like he's freaking Nell Carter instead of John.
A woman interrupts the tedium to explain that their instructor, a Dr. Taylor, is on his way after having run into some car trouble. He'll arrive soon. "Great," Carter huffs under his breath. Fade to black on Crabby McBitchpants and his Symphony of Sneer.
We're at the halfway mark now. Because this episode is aimed at fans of The Quadrangle, let's examine the progress: Carter and Susan are having problems, and he might still have feelings for Abby. Other than that? A brief moment of electricity between Abby and Luka that's never been referenced again, and that's about all. So we lose the trite, too-fast, half-assed patient storylines, and get a painfully slow episode instead -- one that's doing very, very little to advance things. Very frustrating.
Carter wanders aimlessly from window to window, until he spies a closed door near the blackboard that piques his curiosity. He can smell a locked door from several feet away. After trying the knob unsuccessfully, Carter rummages in his pockets and whips out a credit card. "What are you doing?" Susan asks a bit sharply. "This worked in college when I locked myself out of my dorm," he answers. Yeah, I bet it did -- to pay a locksmith. Seriously, does that trick still work?
Abby enters with a handful of candy, snacks, and soda, fresh from a vending machine down the hall. She dumps it all on the desk and they root around for stuff that interests them. Susan lays claim to the peanut butter crackers, which shows she's actually rather smart. Luka wants the root beer. Are you writing this down? There's going to be a test later.
Carter is still jimmying the door avidly. It's here that I began to suspect he put the dildo in Weaver's locker, because he's such an adept little wannabe criminal and it's so something the unpopular kid would do to make the in-crowd think he's funny and cool and irreverent. Carter? Is now also The Geek. "What's he doing?" Abby asks. "Breaking and entering," Susan derides with a sigh. She doesn't know why. A glance at the clock shows that Dr. Taylor is now an hour and forty minutes late. "What's that play?" Susan asks. She sketches the plot of Waiting for Godot, and Luka scores by naming the play. Susan claims she didn't get it, which is weird, because that play yells, "Do you get it?" almost as loudly as this show does. "It's about the futility of life and human enterprise," Luka says, because he memorized the CliffsNotes. He goes on that life is an empty, hollow, meaningless drag filled with misery and pointless actions and bad television. What? I'm sure he threw that in there somewhere. Carter laughs bitterly, because Luka got to deliver a monologue that made him sound learned, while Carter's jimmying a door with Gamma's American Express Platinum card. Susan can't believe how depressing that philosophy is. "Aren't you glad you didn't grow up in the Balkans?" Carter booms. What the hell? Does he have to be so hateful? Is he Judd Nelson now? Why does Carter get to be everyone? Luka takes this more politely than he should, blissfully noting that Zagreb and Dubrovnik are lovely places that are well worth a visit. "Kind of a high chance of getting blown up, though," Carter snipes. "Always discourages me from adding a country to my travel itinerary." Luka calmly explains that it's quite safe. "Then why are you here?" Carter asks rudely. Susan and Abby seem a tad nervous at the direction this is headed. Luka bites back whatever bile might have risen and cheerfully says, "Barbecue. You just can't find good ribs in Zagreb." He gets a hundred points for good grace. Carter loses twice as many. I feel sorry for Noah Wyle. The writers are giving Luka all the sympathetic stuff and making Carter look like a whiny rich kid with no sense of self.
So, when do they smoke pot and dance?
Susan changes the subject by slyly asking Luka how he got into Weaver's locker. He starts laughing, swallows a gulp of soda, and chuckles, "It wasn't me." Susan turns to Abby and wiggles an eyebrow. "Nope," Abby replies. "I wish I'd thought of it." She turns expectantly to Gallant, but before he can answer, Carter decides he just hasn't said enough today. "Clever to accuse the rest of us and throw suspicion away from yourself," he clucks. Susan points out that Carter still hasn't said he didn't do it, and Carter silently turns his attention back to the door. The door that will no doubt quicken this episode's downhill slide.
Rapt, Gallant suddenly gets up. "Whitman was writing about slavery," he announces. "He was an abolitionist." Hee. I wrote "abolotionist" by mistake the first two times and it gave me the giggles, imagining an activist who's deeply in favor of dry, flaky skin and unsightly rashes. Carter doesn't seem to care much about Gallant's realization. "I minored in English lit at Howard," Gallant tells the others, who have the manners to act interested. Abby reveals she studied English lit at Penn State. "Really? You went to Penn State?" Susan enthuses. It sounds more as if she has a family tie to the school than that she's shocked Abby went somewhere respectable and still ended up a mere nurse, but naturally, Abby assumes the latter. Susan claims she didn't mean that. "I think you did mean it. You did it before, too, with the poem," Abby says. "It's all right, it's all of you. All doctors. You think you're smarter than nurses because you have an M.D." Luka begs off this conversation and escapes. Smart man. Abby's wave of bitterness surprises Gallant, who denies thinking anything of the sort. "You're still a med student. You'll learn how to become condescending and dismissive," Abby gripes, being both condescending and dismissive and managing to work in a healthy dose of stereotyping. "It's a test you have to take when you graduate."
Carter wants a penknife for the door; he's thrown one by Gallant while Susan takes issue with Abby's sweeping generalization. Abby insists that she's correct, and that the aforementioned mentality is a by-product of an educational caste system that puts doctors ahead of nurses. Well, technically speaking, yes, there are things doctors know how to do that nurses don't, but it's not a matter of intelligence -- just a matter of the amount and type of schooling one chooses to undergo. "You all look down on Gallant's family because they're in the military," she insists. "Like there's something vaguely pathetic about volunteering to defend our liberties with their lives for crappy pay." Gallant agrees with her assessment. Susan swears she doesn't feel that way. Abby bets she does and reveals that she quit medical school halfway through her third year, and was second in her class at the time. Carter pauses long enough to share that he had no idea she ranked that highly in her school. "So why'd you quit?" Susan wonders. It's a completely fair question, since Abby's just touted her academic superiority, but naturally Abby hops on the Bitter Bus and lets it take her to a very defensive place. "See? You can't imagine why anybody wouldn't want to be you," she tells a startled Susan. Susan's all, "Wha? Have you seen my hair?"
Carter speaks up, pointing out that Abby didn't exactly quit school -- she was forced out because her ex-husband Rick the Dick didn't pay her tuition. "I chose not to go back," Abby defends herself while trying to open the window. This whole rant is very strange, considering that no one cares and Abby is pretty much the only one carrying the flag in this little war. "But why not finish?" Susan asks. "Hell, you were over the hard part, it was just starting to get fun." Abby has a cigarette in her mouth and bangs the hell out of the window, which won't budge. She explains that she's proud of nursing because she can really make a difference in people's lives. As she continues her rant, her assault against the window grows more vigorous. "But you can do so much more as a doctor," Susan counters with a definite air of condescension. Abby gives up on the window and crosses the room to plop back down at a table across from Susan. She disputes Susan's point, claiming doctors don't spend enough time with individual patients because they're rushing to see so many per day -- thirty, maybe forty, whereas nurses cruise through ten or twelve patients and get to bond with them and walk them through both the hard times and the miraculous ones. "I made a choice, and you just don't understand that because it's not one that you would've chosen," Abby concludes. And Susan made a choice, too, Abby. Deal with it. Man, Abby is bitter. These people are all bitter. They're one-word people today. Maybe with Abby, it's just the nic fit talking. In a second, I swear she's going to start eating her cigarettes. She does pissily rip Gallant for not letting her smoke in the room; he doesn't relent.
Carter finally opens the door and is triumphant: He's better than Luka at something. Sure, that something is a minor felony, but whatever. Take the wins where you can, Carter. Gallant isn't excited that he watched Carter break and enter. "Cool!" Carter calls out from the depths of the closet. "There's a bunch of fencing gear in here." What is this, the P.E. room? Carter struts like a peacock and brags that he fenced in college. Luka leaps up and announces that he can fence, too. "You really only see ten patients a day?" Susan quizzes Abby in disbelief. Meanwhile, Luka and Carter shove all the furniture to the side of the room so they have room to duel. Luka apparently learned to fence while he was acting in college, a tidbit that surprises Abby. "I warn you, I'm good," Carter smarms. Luka's all, "Whatever, child. I have an accent." Carter stiffly says, "En garde!" Abby goes, "They really say that?" Ugh.
The duel begins. Can you stand it? I'm so excited I'm going to stop the tape and go to sleep. "Nice parry," Carter nods. Abby whispers that they might be trying to impress the girls. "If they are, it's not working," snorts Susan. Luka lunges for Carter, and they swish several strokes in the air until Carter's epee spears Luka lightly in the chest. Luka scowls and fogs up my television. "Ouch!" Susan empathizes in her signature loud, gravelly bleat. "Doesn't that hurt?" Carter takes off his overshirt; Luka rolls up his sleeves and stretches his arms. Carter's white sneakers gleam in the bleak classroom like very bright beacons of lame. "They really are a couple of freaks," snickers Abby. "And to think you slept with both of them!" Susan guffaws. This sets off Abby's "As If" alarm. She laughingly denies it, to Susan's total shock.
Luka and Carter fight energetically. We're so lucky to have this all on widescreen -- that way, we don't miss any of the macho posturing. "[The sex] was a rumor Carter started," Abby says. "Oh, God, that is low!" Susan gapes. "I thought so," breezes Abby. Susan pauses, then confesses that she hasn't slept with Carter either, and it's now Abby's turn to be floored. "That definitely violates the second-date rule," she muses. Evidently, Abby's has a friend who theorizes sex should always happen after a second date so that you doesn't waste time in a pairing that lacks chemistry. Since this is generally a chemistry-free show, I can't decide if adhering to the Second-Date Rule would ultimately lead to more or less sex for the ER denizens.
Susan admits that she's unsure whether she and Carter have chemistry, but that there have been occasional sparks. "It's either there or it's not," Abby says. "You can't force it. Believe me, I've tried." That is John Wells speaking. "You Can't Force It" should be tattooed on the writers' palms. Meanwhile, Carter and Luka continue to whip around their epees. I find it hard to believe that Carter, who was traumatized so gravely by his stabbing, would fence without any protective gear whatsoever. The swords aren't razor sharp, but they are knives and I'd think epee-play without padding should make Carter a bit squiffy. Susan confesses that she thinks Abby is part of what's keeping her and Carter from growing together. "He denies it, but he's not convincing," Susan shares. Abby appears interested, but not in a deeply needy sexual sense. "Why didn't you two happen?" Susan inquires. Abby chews on this, staring at her love interests as they poke each other's bodies. How naughty. "Timing," she finally answers.
Meanwhile, Luka nicks Carter's arm. "Are you okay?" he worries. "If you're hurt, we should stop." Oh, no. Carter won't have any of that. He's all, "Bring it, bitch." Luka's all, "I can Zorro your skinny rich ass," and Carter's all, "Miss Beyoncé Knowles tells me I'm a survivor, I'm not gon' give up, I'm not gon' stop, I'm gon' work harder." Abby sighs. "This is not going to end well," she decides tiredly. The two men fence again and get into what looks like a mutual pricking. Carter gets Luka on his knees and then whacks him in the head. This part will be the basis for volumes of Carter/Luka fan fiction. Angrily, Luka stands up and goes after Carter, slashing Carter's forehead slightly. Carter freaks and the girls shriek. As Luka turns away, Carter feels a rage that's hotter than a thousand suns and whiter than his sneakers. He tucks his head down, pumps his arms, and bolts toward Luka's back to tackle him. Run, Forrest! Run!
Gallant runs to the sprawled, flailing doctors, and yanks Carter off Luka. Another classic sentence there. "You maniac!" yells Luka. "You went for my face!" Carter screams. "After you hacked at me," Luka spits. Susan drags Carter to one side of the room while Abby examines Luka on the other. "Crazy bastard," Carter seethes, glaring evilly at Luka while Susan checks out the angry red gash on his cheek. "Will I need stitches?" Carter whines. "You barely need a Band-Aid!" she snorts. "I didn't know you had a temper." Carter ignores her and continues to stab Luka with his invisible daggers of ocular malevolence. In other words, he's royally cheesed. "I can have Abby come over here and check you out, if you prefer," sasses Susan. Again, Carter ignores her, preferring to blather that Luka is a menace to society. Susan purses her lips, then leaps toward him and plants a kiss on his mouth. It lasts a few seconds but lacks passion. "What was that for?" he wonders, baffled. Susan shrugs and smiles resignedly. "Just checking," she answers. "Second-Date Rule." Carter shakes his head, not even pretending to understand, and then does the oddest thing. He turns away and licks his lips and shoots a total "Awww, yeah!" look at the wall, which feels really out of place, because the focus should be that Susan's looking pensive, and a bit rueful that Carter kisses like a cold pillow.
There's a long, silent pan across the room. Carter's tucked away on the side, scowling at the desk, and possibly coloring something with a magenta highlighter. Luka's a few rows away toward the middle; then Gallant, then Susan. Abby isn't in the shot. It's long, boring, and quiet. Finally, Susan looks up and squints at Gallant quizzically, ready to solve Nancy Drew And The Case of the Daring Dildo. "How did you get Weaver's locker combination, Michael?" she asks. Gallant says nothing. Susan sketches out her theory: He watched over Weaver's shoulder to memorize the combination, then snuck in later to deposit the dildo because Weaver said something in Trauma Green that upset him. "I'm a med student," he points out. "I could get expelled." Susan isn't satisfied with that. "It wasn't me," he chuckles, shaking his head. Susan, feeling thwarted, resumes staring at the wall.
Abby is to Susan, leafing through a copy of Entertainment Weekly. She and Susan small-talk about Susan's past, and why she moved to Chicago from Scottsdale. "I needed to be back where the sun doesn't come out for weeks," Susan cracks, noting that the bitter cold and overcast skies better fit her temperament. And better reflect it. Abby wonders if something else fueled her departure, so Susan confirms that, yes, it was a guy, with whom she shared a "tanker-truck full" of chemistry. "Charlie Dixon," Susan says. "Dix. A cowboy. Can you believe it? The horse, the truck, the whole deal." Abby wants to know what happened between them, but Susan isn't ready to rehash the long story, and Abby backs off politely. "A cowboy," she murmurs under her breath. Susan darts her a sidelong glance, then both girls get the giggles because Susan is in a country song and she done left her boots on the welcome mat of his heart. It's about time the two most acerbic characters become friends, except I'm semi-nauseated by how tirelessly cutesy it's been.
Gallant walks up to Luka and tries to start a conversation about the army. "Did you see any action?" he asks eagerly. Luka flinches, and Gallant apologizes. "It's not what you think it is," Luka says gently. "Noble, romantic, a crucible on which to test your young manhood...." Gallant's all, "The uniform is pretty!" He shakes his head and bristles a tad at Luka's lack of faith in him. "I'm not that naïve," he insists, leaving. "Sure you are," whispers Luka emptily. Because he's deep, too. And thoughtful. And insightful. And battle-tested, mother-approved.
Abby and Susan decide to up the junior-high factor of this episode, so they turn around in their seats practically exploding with mirth, and demand to know when Luka lost his virginity. "We're playing a game," Abby explains, adding that they wagered on who was youngest. "Who'd you pick?" Carter asks, glaring at them, certain no one picked him. "She picked Luka," Abby giggles. "No, I didn't!" Susan giggles back. Then they give each other makeovers and gush about Todd Hairy-Legs from gym class and swear to be BFF. Luka refuses to play, flushing adorably. Slurp.
Since nobody wanted to know, Abby tells her tale first -- Howie Thomas, age sixteen. Susan makes fun of Howie's name. "He sounds like a plumber!" she snorts. Luka laughs in spite of himself. Carter just watches and waits. "Okay, my turn," Susan says. "Mark Greene." Ha! That did get a genuine laugh from me. Carter stabs the desk with his highlighter as Susan waves off her little joke and confesses she gave it up at age fifteen to Lloyd Walker in the shed behind her father's radiator-repair shop. Up is Gallant, who glances uncomfortably at his senior doctors. "You don't need their approval," scoffs Abby. "Give it up." Gallant, evidently, got naughty at age fourteen in the balcony of his church after choir practice. He exalted God's goodness and then rode the pony at a sin carnival. Abby and Susan are impressed. They like him better dirty.
"Carter," Abby prods. "Come on!" He doesn't want to play. "Oh, my God, you're still a virgin!" Susan gapes, probably only half-kidding. Carter rolls his eyes at her and says he was eleven when he first had sex. Susan gasps, and wow, it's pretty horrible acting. I don't know how else to describe it. Everyone's pretty startled. When asked, Carter admits the instrument of his deflowering was a twenty-five-year-old maid. They crack up, and he shakes his head, the merest hint of a smile on his face. "Hope you gave her a hell of a Christmas bonus," Susan snickers. Carter reddens and stares out the window. A lot of people have called this a case of child abuse, but Carter's demeanor, while solemn, isn't terribly traumatized. I have a hard time reading "child abuse" into Noah Wyle's performance. I just can't tell what's going on here, and frankly, I think it's a plot point they either need to make clear, or not bother with at all. If it was abuse, it's a pretty major part of who Carter is, and to gloss over it this way is ridiculous. Either way, though, the raucous laughter of Susan and Abby comes off bitchy and grating.
Abby turns to Luka and says that if he'll hurry up and confirm he was older than eleven, they can award the prize to Carter. "I get a prize?" he brightens. Carter smells a victory. "My wedding night," Luka blurts. The room falls silent. "I lost my virginity on my wedding night," he repeats. Wait, so if his wife died right before he moved to Chicago, then is Abby the second person he ever slept with? No wonder she's fallen so silent. Luka interprets it as guilt about bringing his beloved dead wife into this. "It's okay, it's a good memory," he beams. "I hadn't thought about that in years." Carter's face actually falls. He won the contest, but Luka claims the prize anyway -- the admiration of the two women, who are so touched that they look ready to mercy-screw Luka just to bang the pain further and further away. Luka dreamily recalls that his wife was religious, and he adored her, so they waited. Still there's silence. "It's okay, it's okay," he insists, grinning. Carter huffily picks up his pen.
Susan changes the subject by asking Luka what plays he performed as an actor. "We did Hamlet," he says. Carter perks up again. "I did Hamlet," he says proudly. "I was Horatio." Of course, though, Luka played Hamlet. Carter drops his pen in aggravation, but gets a second chance to impress when Luka waves off their pleas for him to perform a monologue. He claims he doesn't remember it. "I remember some of it," Carter says, springing up from his chair. "To be, or not to be," he booms in a completely overdone British accent. Susan hangs her head in embarrassment on Carter's behalf.
Carter finally shuts up when he runs out of lines, plopping down in a different seat very delighted with himself for upstaging the dark prince. But Luka picks up where Carter left off. "To die to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream," he intones quietly. He's good, of course. Luka does everything. The writers really didn't have to work this hard to make us like Luka, but hey, at least we get long, long shots of his brooding, melancholy recitation, which switches from English to a surprisingly lilting Croatian. Susan eats it up. Carter slowly turns his head to watch, unable to believe his terrible, terrible luck that Luka is Mr. Perfect and he's the weedy sidekick. Oh, but this goes on too long. Here's my notes, verbatim: "Luka drones on, fully in character, desolately confused. He goes on. And on. And on. Still more. More. Carter gawks. More Luka. More. More. More. More. Susan admires him. Abby is touched. More Luka. Again. More." Luka snaps back into reality as Carter sinks lower and lower into his chair, outclassed, longing to disappear. "Be all my sins remember'd," he says, laughing at the melodrama. Abby smiles at him. A message to her? Who knows. Susan gulps. She wants to lick Luka's neck and press her diamond earring into the palm of his hand.
Just then, Dr. Taylor arrives to teach the seminar, and we spend an inordinate amount of time getting them all into the front row and getting their names straight. Class starts.
Class ends. The quintet bursts outside in relief, and Luka offers people a ride. "I'm on in twenty," Abby shakes her head. Gallant is, too, so he'll walk her to the hospital. Abby promises to be quiet when she sneaks in after her shift. Carter proffers his hand to Luka, who shakes it enthusiastically and with equal good grace. Susan and Abby agree to make a coffee date sometime, and then everyone leaves Carter and Susan alone on the street. It's an awkward yet touching departure, shaded slightly by their heightened understanding of one another and the varied social strata from which they come. No, I'm just kidding! It's just dull.
"She's pretty great," Susan says, as Carter tries not to watch Abby leave. "Who?" he plays dumb. "Abby," Susan prods. "I didn't know her before and I didn't think I'd like her, but I do." Carter tries to change the subject by inviting Susan to dinner, but she scolds him for making a total idiot of himself during detention. He doesn't get it. "You participated in a duel, for one thing," she mocks him. Carter stares at the ground and blushes. "Kiss me," Susan instructs. Carter is confused, but follows his orders, and leans in for another frosty cold peck. "Was it there for you?" Susan asks. Carter clears his throat and calls it a "nice" kiss, which is also known as "the death knell." Both admit there's not enough chemistry between them for this to work out, and Susan cuts Carter loose. "Are you sure?" he asks, like he's this great catch. "I regret it already," she lies. "That gold-digger alarm should be clanging like a school bell." I wish Susan didn't obsess over the money thing all the time. Carter never, ever throws it around in her face.
Then, Susan does something few formerly jealous girlfriends do -- she encourages Carter to chase The Other Woman and unburden his soul. "Who? Tell her what?" Carter asks, staring at anything but Susan. "That you're desperately in love with her and can't live a moment without her," Susan prods. Carter blushes and starts laughing uncomfortably. "You'll figure it out," Susan smiles gently. "Don't you forget about me," Carter says. "Hey, hey, hey, hey," Susan replies. Carter hopes they can still be friends. They can. They part.
Carter turns around, though, with one more thing to say. "I used to have Weaver's locker," he shouts. "She never changed the combination." Susan can't believe Carter put the dildo in there. He's the Jock! He taped Larry Lester's hairy buns together!