Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Waiting To Inhale
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 2 | Aired on 03.29.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.While Eddie continues stalking/bromancing her husband Kevin, Jackie's rivalry with Fitch Coop suffers a blow when the episode-long patient arc resolves in his favor: By endeavoring to go over his head and prove how humane and competent she is -- and thus, what a jackhole doofus Whiteboy can be -- she accidentally oversteps, preemptively (and incorrectly) informing a family that their son doesn't have cystic fibrosis. (It's fun, because Coop remains a tweeting, whining jerkoff, but without tipping over into cartoon/whipping boy territory, which I was worried about last week a little bit.)
Gracie, she's stepped up her Defcon on the family home and is now saving her allowance to buy top-of-the-line fire and CO alarms. Grace playing out her end-of-the-world scenarios and attempting to save everybody at once, a really moving theme from the first season, moves back into position. At least now, with the fuckup at work, Jackie seems to be taking a leaf from her suffering kid. Oh, actually this whole episode was sad. Thor's secretly lost vision in one eye to his diabetes -- not even his BF knows -- which makes all the cake stuff last week like ten times more depressing. Jackie covers for him, and even lets him take out the fake for her. Man, Thor just kills me.
And then there's Eleanor -- who wanders through the episode on E, possibly dealing with her mum's death or, you know, just doing her usual shit -- who flirts with New Guy Sam, who decides that everyone in the hospital is on drugs. Which, he's not far off the mark, but Jackie gets him in two awesome ways: First, by telling him all unknown or found drugs go in a special locker in the Pyxis room (a.k.a., Jackie's new drop box!) and second, by going to Akalitus about his rehab-evangelist ways. While she's in there, Jackie asks for a psych consult for Grace -- of course, without revealing the existence of her secret family, not that Gloria's fooled -- and gets a tiny teaspoon of that legendary Akalitus tenderness when she admits her own son had psychological issues... Which complicates her whole Baby Crazy storyline, right?
Oh, and God gets nailed in the head by an insulted agnostic. Zoey (who's getting L-A-I-D) talks Him through His near-death-experience (and ensuing identity crisis), convinces Him that if He's not God, He's at least His nephew, and by episode's end He's right back across the street, screaming at people with Zoey by his side.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Jackie's downstairs ironing and nothing's happening, and finally she notices that it's not plugged in. Her phone buzzes -- Eddie texting to apologize once again -- and immediately she remembers the box of Easter stuff ("DON'T TOUCH") with pills in the little plastic eggs. She pops one, stashes some more in her incredibly tight scrubs, and heads upstairs.
Apparently, according to Fiona, Grace has been busying herself at night unplugging all the appliances. So, par for the course. "Faulty wiring causes more house fires than cigarettes and arson combined," she explains, and shows them a torn-out ad for "the best smoke detector they make" in the excited fashion you might show off an EZ-Bake or, in my case, a label maker. Well, "excited" for Grace is a relative term. Jackie points out that rather than saving up for devices and apparatuses, Grace should be spending her allowance on fun things like toys and stickers. And label makers!
"Let mom and dad worry about smoke detectors, okay? Put your money away," they say. Except Grace's whole point, and it's a point so insightful she doesn't even know she's making it, is that mom and dad aren't paying attention. They aren't worried enough. When she says, "I just don't want the house to burn down," she's not being neurotic, she's asking them to pull it together before it does. Before the world ends. Grace is the best smoke detector they make.
So it's like, Grace has to be crazy on a certain part of the spectrum for them to realize she's crazy -- how much crazier does she have to be than that before they realize her being crazy is their problem -- their faulty wiring -- and not hers? That they -- specifically Jackie -- are the ones making her crazy? If Jackie's the king of this tiny addiction kingdom, then Grace is Cassandra: Responsible for making sure everybody knows the kingdom is rotten. And since acknowledging or dealing with that would probably mean Jackie can't do drugs any more, the answer is: Infinity. Infinite crazy.
Outside All Saints, Eleanor looks fucked up and fabulous, sunglasses on, squeezing yellow mustard onto her hotdog and grossing Jackie out: "Wow. You know the #1 ingredient in hotdogs is cancer." Eleanor finally explains -- after cramming it in her face -- is that she scored E last night, and has been tripping for nine hours. "Still going strong. You know, I think my mother's death ripped something open in me! You have wonderful daughters, Jacks. Cherish them." She covers Jackie's face in kisses and then wipes them off again, babbling about the godmother thing, and Jackie's like, "Good Lord."
Eleanor crazies all over about how she wants to bypass the Kevin part of that equation as usual, become their godmother, kidnap them from school and go to lunch at the St. Regis: "Love is more important than reading!" she exclaims. So true. Eleanor tries to wander away and Jackie grabs her just as Zoey drives up in a taxi, recapitulating Eleanor's entrance last year with the switching shoes into her clogs and shoving morning pastry in her face. Weird!
Zoey in a taxi implies that Zoey exists somewhere outside the hospital, like, she has an apartment or something, with walls, pinned to which you might find a poster of that cat, just hangin' in there, or an entire bookshelf filled with nothing but dolls' heads and superhero action figures modified to look like various heroic Barbara Streisands. Or self-portraits of herself as Van Gogh, a Picasso nude, and American Gothic with two Zoeys, both of whom have cat heads on their shoulders. Or an intense farm animal motif on every surface decorative or otherwise. I'm thinking roosters, or maybe cute little piggies.
"Hey guys," she mumbles happily on her way in, and Eleanor immediately recognizes that girlfriend got laid. "Do we think Zoey got her pipes cleaned?" Jackie suffers a full-body shudder, including an awesome death-rattle barf sound -- which the closed-caps translate correctly as dyahh -- and says the thought of Zoey's pipes is like "seeing Santa naked." Yep. I mean, Zoey's awesome and her body is entitled to whatever it wants, but damn. Meanwhile, Eleanor's squeaking and chomping on the wrapper her hotdog came in. I wish she was my doctor!
Patient is adorable little Harry, who may or may not have cystic fibrosis. His parents scheduled a sweat test at Lenox Hill, but they can't get in for a month, and he woke up choking today. Jackie immediately bonds with the kid and charms the parents by agreeing that doctors suck, and promises to get the kid a lo-fi sweat test from Coop. Out in the hallway, Eleanor is dancing around with an Hermés scarf. She bumps into a forward-charging Zoey, who screams like she's been stabbed, and giggles: "Zoey, ma petite fleur!" Jackie grabs Eleanor, who has tied the scarf around Zoey's head like an Eastern European refugee, and drags her away. Guess what? Zoey gets super weird.