Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT If It Makes You Happy
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.12.2010
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Jackie suggests pot for a cancer patient, so of course Coop throws a huge stupid fit. This causes Jackie to obsess on the guy -- skillfully crafting apple bongs, setting him up with connections -- while everything comes down around her: By the end, she's cleaning out the guy's fridge and making him pot chocolate chip cookies while Eddie steals Kevin for their, like, 50th man-date.
He's really getting creepy. Well, "getting." This week's insane thing is doing the one-sided phone call on her kitchen phone with Kevin standing right there. ("Sure we'll have fun, but not too much fun, Mrs. Peyton!") But this only comes after she threatens him at work for the constant stalking, including a fierce little tantrum, and admits privately to Eleanor that she might still love him.
When Eleanor and Thor learn Nemesis Sam is a sex addict (in addition to the other things), Thor drops his crushy attempt to help while Eleanor fucks him in the chapel, despite the fact that they both claim to have girlfriends (?!). And Coop is still tweeting away his one-note joke that's now officially tired and super-dorky.
Zoey starts the day scaring the shit out of Thor by illegally intubating a cyanotic kid to keep him stable until Eleanor steps in. She spends the whole episode desperately emulating Jackie in every possible way, but when Eleanor brings her flowers for the secret intubation, only Jackie can understand the weird reaction that follows: Zoey's pregnant, probably by that cute EMT Lenny that liked her last year.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!No drugs this opening, just a very intense Jackie walking past construction and straight into Eddie's pharmacy like the hounds of hell. At least she waits for him to tell his customer Mrs. Feinberg about her medications, and helpfully tossing in a bunch of contraindications and tips without even thinking about it ("Don't take any antacids 'til morning. Be careful about getting up too fast. You might have some dizziness. Good luck") in a way that's hardcore and beautiful in exactly the way she always is. She takes care of other people without even thinking about it, just to get them off her plate. The lady stares at them for a second and Jackie screams, "Good luck!" Feinberg out.
"My house? My kids? Are you out of your fucking mind?" I'm not sure we've ever seen her this mad, I mean, she's always pissed about something, but this is a serious seething rage. It's totally terrifying. And he deserves it. "I miss you," he mealy-mouths, and she explains that showing up at her house is the behavior of a fucking psychopath. He says she's one too, then, because she has turned off her heart and he can't, and then he levels an even truer thing: "You want to know what your problem is? You're fucking greedy is what you are." Valid, and we're done. He says, pointlessly, that she has a lot of pent-up anger, to which she slow-burns that he has no fucking idea what he is unleashing, and then knocks over a whole pyramid of bottles on her way out.
Dude, if that doesn't scare you... I mean, this is a woman who will break her own finger with a hammer just so she doesn't have to talk to people about her problems. When you are the problems? You got ten fingers, bitch. She pastes on a smile as she's crossing the street away from the pharmacy, terrified enough to schedule a Date Night with Kevin complete with sending the girls to his sister's for the night. Kevin is overjoyed, because Kevin has no idea that this is just one more Jenga piece in the boardgame of today. But I confess I'm a little confused too: How will one Date Night keep Eddie from crawling all over Kevin's jock tomorrow?
Sam babbles at Zoey about how he loves not temping, because once he was like Jackie and didn't like to get close to people -- so he temped instead of inventing multiple families and backstories for himself -- but now he's into joining like softball teams or whatever's clever. We take care of people when we can't take care of ourselves; we take care of ourselves when we remember who we are. Zoey, for whom Becoming Jackie is something of a theme this week, finally blows him off with a "Sam? I don't do chatty." You can tell she's proud of herself. But the moment doesn't last -- a screaming lady comes in with an unbreathing baby, and Zoey takes control, paging O'Hara and asking if Jackie's arrived before laying the kid down in an ER bed and getting to work with Thor.
They work efficiently and admirably, but the kid stops breathing and Zoey kicks into high gear, deciding to intubate even though they're not allowed to do it. Thor, of course, gives the words of protest but also snaps into gear, and Zoey does a brilliant job. It's funny that we've watched enough TV that even without ever working or being in a hospital the sight of watching Thor and Zoey intubate a little kid seems wrong somehow, no matter how quickly and well they do it.
The kid's color comes back, but then they lose his pulse, so Thor does the breathing while Zoey does compressions, and Thor's impressed -- just as Eleanor's walking in. "Zoey just saved his life... Twice. Also she intubated. Don't be mad. No one can know. She could lose her license." I think that's the most words Thor ever said. Eleanor stares at him for a sec after she bounces, and then tells him to just stop talking about the legal issues here. Outside, Zoey gives Eleanor all the credit for the save and goes, "Dr. O'Hara's here now. She's an amazing doctor." Zoey is pretty much neat as hell this week.
At the station, Jackie and Thor talk about how nasty Lenny is (Doritos, Mountain Dew and dip) and the second Zoey appears Lenny congratulates her on the save earlier. Zoey keeps her head down -- "I just made sure someone didn't die" -- and Thor tells it the way they've agreed to tell it, that O'Hara swooped in, "in her Oscar de la Renta skirt" at the last moment. "He's alive, that's what matters," mumbles Zoey a little more proudly, and Thor grins at her. Lenny tells a story about this one time he shocked somebody back to life, and Zoey is drawn in, but remembers to tell him his food stinks, so he leaves.
"Did you intubate without a doctor?" Zoey doesn't smile yet, but when Jackie says how risky it was, she grins hugely. "Just doing what you would have done." Jackie hands her a warning tone and Zoey, feeling her oats today more than ever, doesn't drop that sly crazy smile of hers: "Huh. I never would have pegged you as someone to give me shit for getting the job done." Jackie's surprised, and just kind of stares as she wanders away. Gloria wanders through with a barked drive-by to Lenny -- "Don't eat by the urine" -- before summoning Jackie to her office later for unspecified reasons, without either of them looking at the other.
There's something about Coop's satisfied "Here, good" when Jackie enters that lets you know shit is about to get bureaucratic. Good. Maybe if he's being a cocksucker he'll forget to talk about Twitter for like one second. The patient has Stage III lymphoma, which is bad, but his third-round chemo nausea is so intense that he's terribly dehydrated. Man. This show is so many ticking timebombs that you forget just how dirty your body can get on you. Jackie runs through all the possible medications he's tried -- while simultaneously holding the barf bucket and starting his IV -- and all the side effects that resulted. It's depressing. Coop completely tunes out how bad it is, and the guy's like, "I know you've seen worse, but maybe I should just die." Jackie suggests he try pot, and Coop's jaw drops to the floor.
"I'm a tour guide for the Red Line. I do crosswords and I sing in a barbershop quartet. And I'm single. Obviously. Where's a guy like me gonna find pot?" Coop finally jumps in there to interrupt before Jackie can offer him an actual connection, and she wraps him up so tenderly I will admit, a few tears sprung up. Outside, Coop flips out for a sec before Jackie even figures out what he's flipping about, and then she's like, "Oh God no," like, we're really going to go here. Coop instructs her at length, and she calls bullshit: "Is this part of the new image? The Top 25 New York Fucking Douchebag Doctors?"