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Jackie's got herself a post office box where she gets the bank statements for the impressive scrips she's been racking up at every pharmacy in town. Every time you think we know every way she gets drugs, it turns out we didn't even know half of them. Solution? Forget fighting with Kevin about Eleanor's offers to pay for the girls' education, and just take the money for herself. Damn.
Gloria spends the day on the ER floor, where she and Zoey compete for who is more rad. It is a tight fight, both challengers are champions, but her loopy interaction at day's end with Thor puts Gloria over the top. Also the fight she wins against the Pill-O-Matix, wherein she opens every shelf and unit on the whole machine for a drug-administering free-for-all. Of course, this means Eddie will most likely be back in the pharmacy week, which freaks Jackie right out -- but at least she's framing Sam to get fired, in about the grossest possible way.
Zoey's awesomeness takes many forms this week, including her cute/wise work with a cracked-hip college student, but the best is when she screams (legitimately) at Coop, and gets the old boob-grab. Lenny punches Coop, Coop punches Lenny, and Zoey ends up with her feet in Lenny's lap, watching TV in his hilarious stoner apartment. I'm worried about the Face of All Saints, but seeing Zoey scream in his face was more than enough to take away the sting.
The other patient is a Connecticut slimeball with a head trauma, a wife and a girlfriend. They're none too impressed with each other, but what is impressive is the amount of black blood vomit he shoots out once they both show up at the hospital. Coop gets a weird glitch about self-defense and spends the whole time trying to bully Jackie as like an advocate of domestic violence. I think this is something we'll be discussing for a bit, his weirdness about lady-hitting. Or maybe he's just secretly a Jezebel commenter.
On the home front, Grace is locking herself in the bathroom for longer and longer periods of time, which makes Jackie get all weird with the shrink about what she's up to. By the end of the episode we know for sure, and it's both scary and super sad: A silver dollar-sized bald chunk she's been steadily yanking out of the back of her head. Oh, Gracie.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Red Owl. Fiona's all excited, telling Jackie about her big Show & Tell last time, taking particular care to describe her soulmate Dr. O'Hara in loving detail -- "She was wearing a really pretty purple dress! With high heels!" -- and when Jackie reminds her that she was totally there, that it was her idea, that it was all intended as a show and tell less of Fiona's fake cast and more of Jackie's non-abusive parenting skills, Fiona can barely remember that part. "She smells like flowers!" Jackie asks Fiona what she smells like, and they're both very uncomfortable with Fiona answering that question.
In an aside, Jackie tells Kevin that she'd prefer to send Fiona to Grace's school, Immaculate Virgin. One, because she is totally weird, but mostly Two, which is that over the last year they've weathered more than a normal number of swipes at their parenting. Kevin, of course, points out that they barely have the money to send one of their screwed-up kids there, much less both, and Jackie gives him wocka-wocka eyebrows. "...No. We're not taking handouts, from O'Hara or anyone." Jackie points out that it's not a handout: It's not even for them, it's for the girls.
I'll say that again: Jackie is very clear, with her husband and herself, that Eleanor's money is for their daughters.
Kevin gets in her face several times about how he can't be overruled on this one, there won't be an appeal, and she has to promise to stop bringing it up. And to leave Eleanor's money alone. Jackie promises, and Fiona asks to eat Grace's fries while she's in the bar's bathroom. Grace has requested some privacy. That's a red flag for two reasons, firstly being that -- as Jackie puts it -- "Why does she need privacy? She's a kid" -- and secondly because it's Grace: Nothing good is going on in there.
Jackie knocks on the door for awhile, nodding apologetically at the women who clearly have been standing in line for awhile, and Grace comes out looking haunted, but swearing there's nothing going on. I thought, wished, hoped that it were something banal, like weird Catholic menstruation issues or something, but I think we all know Grace is Advanced Crazy, and thus would be having none of that. I'm sure Fiona's obsessed with that stuff and has probably educated Grace in the mysteries of her body more thoroughly than either Peyton parent could.
She still won't look Jackie in the eye, and I think honestly this is the most words she's said to her mother all season. Jackie worries at Kevin about how she needs to know what's up with Grace's sessions with the new therapist, and even when Kevin reminds her that's off-limits, she's like, "Nuts to that!" Kevin reminds her, for the third or fourth time, that Grace will talk when she feels like it. "How am I supposed to help her if everything is a secret?"
Not to get too therapy about it, but hurt people hurt people, and Grace wouldn't need help if everything weren't already a secret. Or if she could turn it into creepy bloody funny magic, like Fiona. Or if she could pick her battles, like Kevin does. Or pretend she's a cartoon character, like Eleanor does. Or turn it into a game, like Eddie. "How am I supposed to help her, if everything is a secret?" Grace doesn't even know half of what she knows, not even that she carries her mother on her back like a dead dog; that an indefinable cloud hangs over their house, infecting everything.
If she could stand for one second to look the monster in the face, and see who it really is, it would kill her, so she's stuck. Reality and intuition are not lining up. So she stays quiet, and if she takes any satisfaction in that it's because she knows what's going on, on a level she can't access. Jackie does the same thing, punishing Imaginary Grace by taking Eddie to the movies, not because she wants to hurt Kevin or Grace but because she can't trust them anymore, to stay in their boxes. Grace is a lot less smooth about it, but the fact remains that Grace isn't being petty, or abusive: She's defending herself from her attacker.
Jackie's post office box is a thing we didn't know about. Inside there's a receipt, so maybe this is a new thing, and a statement from a secret bank account: Pharmacies all over the city, filling scrips we didn't even know she had. It's not a killer amount -- $654.25 -- but it's stress we didn't know she was under. She pops some sugar-free gum and gets a money order.
It's a full moon, so get ready. Coop's all, "Totally called it!" and they brush by him, and Jackie mutters asshole, and without looking up from a chart Eleanor's like, "Totally called it." Thor runs around stressing, and there's madness everywhere -- Zoey runs past yelling at an allergic bodypainted sports fan, "Fun when you did it, not so fun now!" -- which is the perfect time for Jackie to bring up the money. Eleanor thinks Kevin was stalling because Jackie makes more money than he does, but Jackie demurs. "No, it's no fun to talk about money when you don't have any." Anyway, Jackie tells Eleanor, he's agreed to let Eleanor set up the college fund. For the girls.
"If I believed in crying at work, I would be tearing up. I'm thrilled!" Eleanor dances around, so happy to be able to give them, and Jackie and Kevin, something finally, and eventually sweeps Jackie into her arms. Which, of course, causes her back to flare up, so Eleanor regretfully puts her down again, promising they can split it any way they like: "I really want to get Fiona into private school," Jackie says, and Eleanor's like "Whatevs." I think at this point, honestly, Jackie is under the impression that this money is going to pay for Fiona's private school, and for the girls to eventually go to college. She honestly thinks that.
Which is one of the sad things about this moment, because you and I already know where this is headed, even if Jackie has decided she doesn't. The other sad thing is how happy Eleanor is, and how much she loves Jackie, and how happy her joy makes Jackie, for this moment where we're all agreed that this is what's actually going to happen. The third sad thing is the way you can instantly jump to the many different ways this could go up in flames, and how Jackie is purposefully not thinking that many steps ahead: She wants this money for her daughters.
Full moon! They wheel in a freely bleeding stab wound and O'Hara runs off, giggling and nearly tearing up despite herself, and Jackie feels a little weird, and Sam needles her for no reason -- "Kind of slow there, Jackie. Where's the hustle?" -- and to the empty space behind him she mutters, "Prepare to die." At the time I thought it was a weird little mom-type comment, intended to make us laugh, but she really does carry out this threat later.
And honestly, it was such an unnecessary, weird comment that it's annoying on multiple levels, because it only exists to ramp up their antagonism, which I would say is already covered: She doesn't hate him because he constantly criticizes her "hustle," she hates him because he is a living accusation and a constant threat. I would like it more if she decided to take him out based entirely on his earning his six months' chip.
In the trauma room, Sam's whining about how a guy peed on his shoes, but says it's okay because he's "riding a pink cloud." This titillates Thor on multiple levels, but he explains that it's an AA term for "good mood." Talk turns to hospital snacks in this episode, for the first time, and Coop takes the opportunity to bitch about how even after he "launched" a "killer campaign" to up the profile of All Saints, there's still nobody around to "take it to the level." There is not a word in that statement that is even close to reality, but that's our Coop! "I'm like a shark, man. If I'm not moving, I'm dying." He wanders off making weird shark movements, and Thor and Sam are sort of befuddled by him. It has nothing to do with anything; Coop has nothing to do with anything.
Lenny brings in a sassy little kept-man husband and presumably his wife, reporting to Jackie that it's a possible DV. Jackie explains to the woman, Suzie, that DV stands for "domestic violence," and asks if that's true. The lady's like, "Technically yes?" But only after he hit her. Except, the gushing-blood guy points out, that she cracked his head open with a jar of cashews. They quibble over money and he says she kicked him. She acts like this is not classy, that he would actually tell medical workers about his medical condition, and sort of throws her hands up like, "Men!" He tells her to call her mother up and bitch about him some more, and she screams, "Fuck you!" Jackie finally steps, telling her to chill, but she does not chill.
Bandaging the guy's head, and nursing a grudge against horrible old Suzie that causes her to be a bit more present and sympathetic than usual, Jackie calls for another pair of hands. The wound is totally gross, just shooting blood everywhere, so she can't let go of it. There's no Zoey, no Thor, no nothing. Finally Gloria Akalitus comes in, and immediately springs into action like a superhero. I guess she's on the floor because it's a full moon and they need all the help they can get, but what really gets me about this episode is how great she is at it, and how well she works wi
th all of them as a nurse. It almost makes you sad that she made it to Hosp Admin. I mean, I wouldn't say she got Peter Principled -- she's awesome either way -- but watching her in action is really satisfying.
The EMTs, having been met by nobody out in the bay, bring in a guy with chest pains and stuff, and Jackie and Gloria do this balletic kind of choreography, almost without words, to take care of them both. Jackie promises to wait on Guy #2's EKG, if Gloria will grab her some morphine for the head injury. She leaves, muttering, "Gotta go find out where these other fuckers are..."
The fuckers are in the Pill-O-Matix room, which is once again broken. Gloria shoves her way to the front of the line, and seethes madly. "All right, everyone. Listen very carefully, because I'm only gonna say this once: This machine is a piece of shit."
"I think I'll say it again. This machine is a piece of SHIT!" Gloria punches in her override, and opens every little nook and cranny and drawer and cell and niche and locker at once. It's sort of amazing. The doors flop open, and the things pop out, and... There are all the drugs. "What do you need?" she asks, arms spread wide like she's Willy Wonka and the Great Glass Pill Cabinet.
Head injury dude just wants to get the heck out of there. Coop does some cognitive tests on him -- follow the finger, smile, clench teeth -- and Suzie's like, "That's easy for him to do. He's from Connecticut." She makes me want to clench my teeth, and my ass have never been to Connecticut. They bitch about money for awhile more, and finally Jackie takes her outside for a little talk. "Um, look, he's got a pretty serious head gash and clearly, the two of you have some issues..." Suzie's like, "Totally! I need Diet Coke." Jackie sends her off with Thor for "a tour of the vending machines," which he says she'll enjoy: "They're beautiful this time of year. The Skittles are in bloom."
Back with the guy, she gets the whole story (or so she thinks): "I told her we couldn't go away every weekend, she threw a jar of nuts at my head. And before she could throw the whole mini-bar, I shoved her back." Makes sense. Coop throws a fit about how you can't hit a woman, under any circumstances whatsoever, and the guy's like, "I don't hit women. This happened, and I responded." Coop expects Jackie to back him up, for some reason, and she won't do it, because he's bending over backwards to be an idiot about this. "Uh, no: I don't think men should hit women. But if someone bashes you in the head without provocation, you have the right to defend yourself." Coop disagrees, if the hitter is a woman. Which is stupid -- Jackie and the dude agree about that -- but just by the rhetoric you can tell we're way past rational thought and well into rote, brainless recitation, so shut it down before he...
"So you're advocating violence against women?" There it goes. Obviously not, you jackass: I am advocating against violence. Should have walked away. This quasi-feminist victim shit is so annoying, because it instantly turns actual conversations into grandstanding opportunities to demonstrate your own personal superiority. He's trying to turn Jackie into a puppet for his personal morality play, starring himself, which is just as gross as hitting her.
Pretending women can't, or shouldn't have to, take care of themselves is nasty -- not to mention incredibly harmful -- because it sets up a false perspective wherein everybody on earth has a right to safety. Which is a fun fantasy, but pretending you live there -- and abandoning your responsibility for your own safety, under the mistaken impression that getting to complain about it later is somehow tantamount to never having it happen at all -- will get you killed, or worse. What, if something does happen to you it's because you didn't believe hard enough in second-wave feminism?
As a glimpse into Coop's little world, though, it makes total sense: The second you start describing women as having any kind of sovereignty whatsoever, he grabs a boob. Women can be battered crash test dummies, or sexual objects, or mommies, but they can't be people, and this is just another boob-grabbing iteration of the same: It's not wrong to hit a woman, it's wrong to hit a person.
So I guess if you put it that way, I am strongly advocating violence against Dr. Fitch Cooper.
He runs off screaming into the full-moon night, and Jackie flashes head injury guy a high-watt professional grin: "...He'll be right back." Outside, Jackie tries at length to talk Dr. Bowen into spilling the content of Grace's sessions, but eventually backs down and just asks Bowen to make sure Grace is aware that she can share whatever's on her mind with Jackie and Kevin. "All right, that's something. Thanks." She hangs up and notes two college guys on bikes coming into Triage. Both of them are annoying and talk like your mom, like, totally thinks college kids, like, talk: Cell phones and big-butt SUVs and like tubular clamdiggers and the new Nirvana LP. Jackie sends the one with a cracked hip with Zoey in a wheelchair, in such a way that it seems she's really finally trusting Zoey without even thinking about it that much.
Jackie jokes with Gloria about her Pill-O-Matix breakdown, and Gloria tries to keep that upper lip stiff. "I'd forgotten: When you're a nurse, if you say something in one part of the hospital, it will always trickle back to the station. Yeah, it's a piece of shit." Jackie tells her to get a new one, and Coop appears acting shitty and officious, so Jackie ignores him. Gloria says she's thinking of hiring a pharmacist, and has put in a call to Eddie already. Coop does a dorky backflip about that, of course, and says all the doctors will be "psyched" to have Eddie back.
Jackie, of course, fights with all her strength: "Wasn't this a budgetary issue?" quickly becomes "I'm sure there's lots of great candidates out there," so Coop starts yelling about that, and Jackie's disloyalty and whatever; Gloria explains that between the machine, the repairs, and the extra security, it's even more expensive than Eddie was. Jackie heads off to take care of Coop's patient, and quietly explains that this decision is not about making the doctors/Coop happy, because -- "nurse to nurse" -- it doesn't affect them half as much. Plus, Eddie "kinda lost it when the Pill-O-Matix came."
I love how the fact that she accidentally drove Eddie crazy is now a weapon in her arsenal. And you know her ass will do it again if she has to. Gloria acknowledges Jackie's insights in that way she sometimes does, where it's as important to her as it is to the show that we understand she's conveying respect for and confidence in Jackie. One of the nicest things about this season, how they keep pushing that particular pleasure button for us.
Sam approaches to ask for time off, and Gloria screams in his face because it's a full moon. Then Zoey appears out of nowhere, in the sitcom rhythm specific to this show, strewing rose petals and thanks in Gloria's path for deigning to work the floor with them today. Gloria tries to be nice about the weirdness onslaught, but once Zoey starts offering her warm Skittles -- "Thor says they're in bloom" -- she's forced to chase her off with eye lasers.
Coop whines to Eddie, on a park bench, about how the campaign he apparently launched could have saved them all -- "I was trying to give something back... There was so much promise in the Face of All Saints... It's just gone to shit..." -- and Eddie is distracted and sympathetic as usual. On the bright side, Coop says once he remembers that Eddie's there, Gloria's talking about bringing him back. Coop, because he always thinks that Eddie is his anti-Jackie ally, immediately starts stacking jellybeans in that jar, all, "I think your biggest roadblock's gonna be Jackie, she thinks things are fine the way they are."
Eddie engages in their usual pathetic man-games, laughing about how Jackie doesn't call all the shots and whatever, and Coop is sufficiently calmed. Asserting male power over threatening female figures is, for him, the opposite of a boob-grab; it perfectly encapsulates the diminishing, distancing effect of his fake-feminist chivalry boob-grabber nonsense: Women! Can't hit 'em, can't let 'em talk to you like that!
Coop asks Eddie out on a man-date, but Eddie's going out with cute old Georgia, which Coop finds to be "the ultimate irony." Since it's neither "ultimate" nor, in any real way, "ironic," Eddie's a bit confused. "Well, I want to hang out with you, but you're busy because of me. It's ironic... Trust me." Love that little ivory tower dig at the end. "Trust me, I get irony." Which is great because the total main thing of Coop is how allergic to irony he actually is, and if he ever acquainted himself with it, he would explode from the constant compromises and contradictions that make up his entire life.
At the All Saints newsstand, Sam offers Jackie candy before explaining it's his AA anniversary: "Six months sober today." She's like, so very excited for him. Sam asks if he can leave for like an hour, since he's working a double shift and wants to get the chip on the actual day, when his sponsor is there and stuff. She gives him leave to go, and nods respectfully. "You know... I respect what you're doing." Which I thought was like such a neat moment, because I thought it was the ultimate irony, because only Jackie Peyton could possibly reach down into her complicated self and recognize her own admiration for her greatest enemy's rehabilitation and the abstract importance of kicking your addictions without acknowledging the inherent hypocrisy there, and isn't that something.
But ha! No! Jackie just doesn't give a fuck!
Jackie drops by Eleanor's office and pretends or legitimately says that she just wants to sit down for a minute, not get the money. O'Hara offers to pay the school directly or just give Jackie a huge check, as expected, and Jackie of course demurs at first, but O'Hara thinks she's being proud instead of wily, so -- acting as a good friend -- assumes total control of the entire situation, so they can move on, by taking out of Jackie's hands any accountability for what happens . Which is all, of course, exactly what Jackie wanted when she went in there, pretending it was weird for all kinds of reasons it isn't actually weird, like getting a huge check in the middle of a day. "It's not a sweepstakes, it's a normal-size check, for an amount that won't make me think twice. Have you eaten?" Jackie admits that her breakfast and lunch so far has been: Coffee, banana, Vicodin.
"Breakfast of champions," Eleanor says with a grin, and tells Jackie strongly, mothering her, to stop doing the heavy lifting: "You have Thor. He's a giant. Use him." And "for the love of all that's good and holy," she says, get an MRI. Jackie says the truest thing she's said all night: "I almost don't want to see the damage!" Having gotten as much mileage out of the check as she's going to be getting -- holding it in her hands while she says all of the protective, loving, worried things she could never say under usual circumstances, loving every second of it because it's the only way she can hold Jackie down long enough to love her -- she hands it over, briefly jerking it away from Jackie's hands (yikes) before letting it go.
"Closer to godmother by the second!" she laughs, leaning back, and Jackie's like, for the millionth time that literally cannot happen, because they can't rechristen them. Those gowns would never fit at this age. Jackie sort of lowballs her acknowledgement that Eleanor would be good at it, in an Auntie Mame kind of way, and Eleanor says she's willing to wait for Jackie and Kevin to die in a fiery plane crash. Which she then offers to pay for as well.
Zoey kids around with the college guy, and then O'Hara reports that he's looking at eight to twelve weeks of recovery and meds. Which is essentially a semester of being immobile. He begs her to call his parents -- "They'd feel better hearing it from someone older" -- and she stalks away with a sour smile. Zoey commandeers his iPhone in her funny, mysterious way, makes him make a very sad face, and snaps his photo: "Email that to five girls you know and write, Just mowed down by big rig. Truckers are dicks. At All Saints right now. What are you guys doing?" And then? "Wait."
I love Zoey Barkow, don't you? How she has sneaked up on competence without startling it. Jackie thanks Gloria for getting her hands dirty this shift, now that they're getting caught up, and Gloria compares it to riding a bike. But this is all just another in her unceasing plans to get her tiny kingdom back on track: "Would you mind sticking around for a little bit longer? Sam has been MIA for over an hour. I don't know where he goes. This is not the first time this has happened..." Gloria, stressed at the end of things, immediately gets pissed and snitty about it.
It's funny, because Jackie's also using Gloria's bureaucratic Coop mentality to help with this, because if Gloria took notice of nurses as people, even Jackie to a certain small extent, she would remember that Jackie was standing right there when they had that conversation. On the other hand
, this is a case Jackie's been building since he showed up, so you don't really have to do more than she's doing. "Son of a bitch," Gloria grumbles, as Jackie stalks off with a job-well-done smile.
Jackie's wheeling head injury out of there with Suzie -- warning him that his haste to get out of there, which was a red flag none of us saw coming, means he's leaving against medical advice -- when a blonde lady comes running in, freaking out over him. "Tim! What happened to you? I just got a call from the insurance company. They're denying coverage because you didn't pay the premium? Why don't you let me pay the bills?" Ouch! She sees Suzie and starts demanding to know what's going on, and Jackie's petrified for a second, but then luckily "Tim" stands up and barfs some scary black blood, so she gets to vamoose.
"He vomited blood, passed out," she tells Coop, and checks out the kicking damage on his torso, which is getting seriously bruised. Coop, of course, immediately clambers back onto his soapbox about how this is what she really wants, because she wants everybody to hit everybody all the time. Zoey asks them to chill out, checking his monitors, while Jackie once again, in all futility, tries to explain that she's not the one that kicked Tim. "Well, you might as well have, because you're a domestic violence advocate!" Jackie points out that he is abusive to nurses, which has the extra benefit of being true, and the whole time Zoey's like taking care of the patient, his BP's dropping, they need to intubate, and Cooper's ranting -- it's the opposite of the smooth Gloria/Jackie dance that started Tim's treatment -- and screaming about how really he isn't abusive at all, compared to how much shit he wants to actually talk: "You'd be reduced to tears on a daily basis!" Finally Zoey, just exhilaratingly awesome, climbs in his face: "Dr. Cooper, pay attention! You need to pay attention!"
...And there's the boob grab.
Zoey screams and starts slapping at the offending hand, hilariously, but then unluckily Lenny appears, and immediately jumps to her defense. He shoves Coop back -- just like Tim did to Suzie, when she was attacking him -- and Coop reacts with a punch to the face. Which is not only the ultimate irony, given Coop's belief that we should turn the other cheek or risk moral uncertainty, but also puts the larger issue on shout: It's not hitting women that's the issue, it's treating them like objects. Whether that's a punching bag or a boob-haver, there is no difference. To Coop, there is a difference, because he relies on silly sayings in lieu of having actual thoughts or taking any kind of inventory. It's also very, very funny.
So they fight for awhile, and the ladies try to explain Coop's whole Tourette's thing to Lenny, and instead of laughing and punching him again, Lenny starts apologizing for hitting him. Dr. Cooper's kind of still weaving, nose now bleeding, and Jackie summons him back over so they can intubate the guy. She sends Zoey to find Eleanor, and then holds onto Coop's bleeding nose while he takes care of the patient. In its own way, it's sort of beautiful to watch them all pull it together -- especially knowing that, even with that moment of static and dude stuff, it was Zoey that got them to stop fighting and start working again.
"Fabulous!" exclaims Thor, which exactly, and "Who hit who first?" Zoey nods, sort of proud and sort of embarrassed. "Well, Dr. Cooper swung first, but Lenny connected first." Thor thinks this is very romantic, but Zoey's not sure: "I don't need defending," she says, but he knows better: "Oh, everyone needs defending." And suddenly Coop's little tirades turn everything sideways. Grace isn't being petty, she's defending herself. Any abuser, from Jackie to Coop on down, has no idea they're doing it, or give themselves a pass for doing it, in any million ways.
Coop sees no connection between hitting a woman and invading her person with his hands: In one case she's a victim, in the other case she's the attacker. He is defending himself from the threat. And then Eleanor, she thinks she's saving Jackie from poverty, when really she's just defending Jackie's sovereign right to keep herself happy regardless of what it does to everybody else. Zoey's even sort of surprised by these ideas getting acted out around her body, because she thinks being the recipient of abuse makes her a victim: Would it be better if she'd popped Cooper one herself? Sure, but nobody would think to do that, because he's a victim of his disorder, and acknowledging that he's over the line means you lost control of your boobs for a second.
But what Zoey would do is turn right around and broadcast that college guy's weakness, in order to bring some other white knight girls around to help him. The one thing Jackie won't do -- not to get rid of Sam, not even to get rid of Eddie -- is play the victim. She'll find another way. And what Zoey is saying is, she's learned to do the same. Regardless of Lenny's intent or the way it made her feel, the appearance of weakness is worse than being weak. So if she rewards Lenny, or scolds him, it won't really matter as long as it's her choice, because ultimately it's up to her to decide how bad of an attack the boob-grab really is. The boobs belong to Zoey. She is well-acquainted with them.
But the thing that grosses me out the most is that Coop would sure as hell jump onboard that train -- tell Zoey what her response should be, and how it should be dealt with -- if it were any other type of abuse, according to his personal definitions. Because women can't take care of themselves and shouldn't be expected to, and to say otherwise is to blame the victim and advocate abuse and whatever other spurious accusation the self-righteous need to cling to, in order to privilege their own moral superiority over the mind and faculties of the person whose business it actually is.
Three cute girls wheel the college guy out in his chair, and Zoey knowingly asks what's up. "This is Bethany, and Thomason, and Jane. Uh, they all offered to help me 'til my hip heals. So I don't have to go home now." They've got him all organized and wrapped up and taken care of, just as Zoey planned, but she keeps a low profile on her satisfaction with the outcome. He thanks her, sweetly, and she slaps the air with modesty. "Now get out of here, you crazy kids!" And watching those girls wheel him out, she grins to herself. "...That's not gonna end well." She's a deep one.
Eddie's flirting with Georgia, back of course at Kevin's bar, talking all kind of Sensitive Male about how he had four sisters and yes, she's right that guys raised around a lot of women are more trustworthy and more emotionally advanced, and whatever guys do when they want to fuck you, and then Georgia gets a text from Coop, who is in the ER. Not just like he always is, she explains, but as a patient. "Well, it's about time," Eddie says, which is absolutely true, and tries to pay their bill, but Kevin loves him so much, I guess, that he only accepts the tip, and they rush out.
I think that Kevin is more like Jackie than we give him credit for being. We'll see, I guess, but I have this thing about when parents form alliances with their kids. He's on a team with Grace lately, against Jackie, and I hate that more than anything in this entire universe. If you go there, or let your kid do that, something is seriously wrong. In this case, the something wrong is Jackie's fault, but you should never ever let it happen. It gives me the fucking creeps.
Gloria dresses Sam down for awhile, accusing him even of insubordination, and he weakly protests that Jackie said it was okay, but she is not fucking hearing it. Not today. She puts him on probation, but I think probably he already knows what Jackie did. Not smart to tease the bear that hard, Peyton. Now he basically has to retaliate. Which will inevitably lead to his actual murder.
Thor drops by, gets freaked by the gothic scariness of Gloria's office, and then tries to explain how cool she was today. She stares at him like a robot and tries to think of words. "Okay. Well, thank you. I miss it. Being with patients. And I quite enjoyed your pithy remarks." He grins and tries to wubba-wubba her into some kind of intimacy -- "I try!" -- but she seriously just shuts down, staring at him like that robot just went dead. She looks like her circuit board is sparking. She stares, unmoving, slowly turning him into Zoey Barkow, until he's finally like "Well? Bye bye?" He gets the fuck out of there, it's so awesome, and she continues to stare into space. I hope Thor did not break Gloria.
But the full moon and the crazy day have taken their toll on everybody. Jackie tries to wrangle the wife-and-girlfriend of Head Injury, to explain that he's stabilized and she can see him in a few minutes, and Suzie wants to see him too, he loves her too, et cetera, and they almost get into a punching match, and Jackie tells them both to sit the fuck down. Wife says, awesomely, "What am I supposed to do here, share my peanut butter crackers with her?"
That's when Jackie's circuit board starts sparking too. Between talking Eleanor and Sarah through their non-monogamy, and trying to explain Ginny Flinn to Kevin, and hooking back up with Eddie only to have him meanly get another girlfriend, her entire thought process of compartmentalizing her relationships has taken quite a hit this season. If she were in the ER and Eddie and Kevin were both there, she would expect them to... You can see her try to answer this question while she babbles: "No. What has to happen, because... when... sh... when he first came in, sh... ordinarily, the wife... the husband... uh... this woman is your husband's... this woman is your husb... when he... all right..."
Just TILT. Like the Supercollider, putting two things that must never touch in the same single space. What would you do? Don't know, because it cannot ever happen. But this, like Coop's take on abuse and fake outrage, is just mental rote: Trying to actually do the math for these poor shitty women is just incredibly taxing. You don't get the MRI because you don't want to know the extent of the damage. She can't do it for herself, but she's supposed to do this for two women who both dated that little ferret? One of whom cut his head open? Her eyes practically cross for a second. Then she abruptly squares her shoulders, and breathes, and says with great honesty: "I know nothing about this sort of thing." And with that, she leaves. It's awesome.
In the hallway, there's Eddie, smiling and creepy. Georgia's nice as usual, and she's curt with Georgia as usual, and sends her down to Trauma to see Coop. "What kind of doctor gets his nose broken?" Georgia jokes, and bounces off.
You know, it's annoying that every week everybody talks about how could Hot Young Muscled Kevin (1969) ever possibly love Mean Old Dyke-Haired Junkie Jackie (born a whopping six years ), as if she's not totally gorgeous. But what's even more annoying is that not a single person has mentioned the same thing about Georgia (1979), and Eddie (1962). He's a sexy man, I'm not saying they should: I'm just saying.
Jackie asks Eddie why he's not in there checking on him, since they're such great buddies. Little does she know Coop, the human Twitter feed, has already cemented his decision to return to All Saints by pointing out how much it would throw her off: "I didn't break his nose," he giggles. "I'm just here with his friend."
Which seems to confirm that Eddie is friends with Coop only as a lifeline to Jackie, which is very Jackie of him, and in some ways almost seems crueler than his ongoing bro affair with Kevin. At least he likes Kevin, but this makes Coop's adoration of him seem really pathetic. Or maybe he's just bluffing: "Got me in your orbit, baby. Ain't nothing you can do about it." She swears she doesn't care about the pharmacy job, and he makes a brash attempt at threatening/flirty that mostly comes off creepy and not sexy at all, and she's like, "WHY?" Why would he come back? Why is he there in the hallway with her instead of with Georgia, in a t-shirt reading "Our Muscle Is Better"? "She's not my girlfriend. You know who my girlfriend is." As much as I believe they do care about each other, sometimes they are just flesh-crawling together.
While Sam works on Coop's nose, Georgia adorably puts the screws to him -- "It's gonna be straighter than before!" she says, knowing he'll freak out about both parts of that idea -- Zoey settles in at Lenny's apartment, setting him up with a soda while he nurses his black eye. "Would you mind if I suggested something to watch? It will not be sports," she says, cuddling down into the couch, and when he sweetly says she can do whatever she wants, she lies back, stretching her legs over his, like a girlfriend would, and only flips about three channels before looking over at him, and he's stealing a look at her from underneath the frozen peas when she does so, and they smile at each other, quietly. Like they've sneaked up on something together, without startling it.
Jackie pounds and pounds on the bathroom door at home, screaming at Grace. Kevin comes running around the corner and pops the lock, and Jackie is terrified, even though she doesn't know why; she holds her daughter's face in her hands and begs Grace not to lock herself away anymore. "This is none of your business!" Grace screams, again and again, and Jackie assumes she means the "your" in that sentence is plural. "What is none of our business?" she asks, but that's not what Grace meant at all.
She's in trouble, and she knows it. She's taking control of the situation, defending her position: Putting the abuse somewhere that makes her feel better, that gives her a physical reminder of the control she does have. Every tiny pinch as she pulls them out, one by one. Hiding it on the back of her head, as far away from consciousness as she can, where nobody will see it. She's not being petty, she fighting her attacker: None of this is Jackie's business, at all.
Jackie's hands come away with strands of hair in them, fine as silk, and Jackie gasps quietly, looking over Gracie's shoulder at the pile of hair in the sink. She finds the bald spot and holds her daughter tightly, closing her eyes against it all. When Grace asks to go her room, she just holds her tighter. "Honey, you have to talk to me. I'm right here. We cannot have secrets in this house."
Kevin watches, but he doesn't speak. How
are you supposed to help her, if everything's a secret?
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