Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sick as Your Secrets
By Jacob Clifton | Season 2 | Episode 9 | Aired on 05.17.2010
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 previous), 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