Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Caring About Nobody Today
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 4 | Aired on 04.18.2011
Coop: "I have many qualifications! One, my gift for tiny stitches. Two, popular among the staff."
Akalitus: "Nope."
Coop: "I've browbeat almost everyone who works here into lunch with me. Popular among the staff. Three..."
Akalitus: "Fine. Dance like a monkey and prove it, monkey."
Coop: "Like a dance-off?"
Akalitus: "The fuck? No, like overtime."
Coop, just unbearably cute and cutely unbearable at the same time : "Or a dance-off!"
Jackie lies to her husband about how happy she is for the Eddiecue, and then intercepts a hyperventilating new father who was sent to ER Admissions by maternity to get him out of their hair; she tells him to claim chest pains so she can get him in, and blows off this horrible lady Candace de la Brix, whose child isn't actually having an asthma attack but who presumably wants into the ER so she can grift extra bennies. Jackie has no time for this and ushers the guy past, then hooks him up to Zofran and Valium so he can calm down enough to go back upstairs and see his child get born.
Zoey, powerwalking in place: "Two ETs ten IVs four piss runs and a guy aspirated also known as vomited all over me so I had to change my scrubs are you comfortable?"
New Dad: "Yeah. Um are you on speed?"
Zoey, verbatim: "I AM SPEED MOTHERFUCKER."
New Dad: Gets worried again, having no understanding of Zoey's whole deal.
Jackie leads Old Crazy Zoey off to the deconsecrated Chapel, to counsel her against drugs and against actively pursuing burnout.
Zoey: "Did you get married in a church?"
Jackie: "We had a long, hot afternoon Mass, or so I'm told."
Zoey, verbatim: "I know that if I get married I'm going to be a sweaty bride. I think about that a lot. It's not good."
While Jackie tells her to chill, the pedometer tells her to get back up again and, Pavlovianiacally, she jumps up and does isometrics in church for a sec until Jackie jerks her down again with a single barked order. It's pretty amazing.
Gloria's got one of those posterboard fundraising thermometers and she's coloring it in for her fat kids, and a variety of dick-loving characters -- Thor, Eleanor -- show up and bother her about how it looks like a penis. Except it doesn't, so I guess this was funnier on the page, before Props managed to create the least phallic phallus prop of all time; it goes on for so long the imaginary penis of the thermometer starts to feel like the baby in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? because really somebody should have stepped in. Maybe this is happening because lesbians run Hollywood, or at least this show, but who knows: Trust me when I say that I know what a dick looks like, I can identify them pretty much on sight at this point, and this is... not at all what they look like.
Lou is the most loveable patient they've ever had on this show, as the entire hospital staff cannot wait to tell you, but they're also right. Just wanna eat him up. He is fifty, and he passed out in the lobby of the Time-Life Building. He was on his way to his first interview in months, but now must stick to charming the pants off everybody in the hospital with his winsome sweet ways and sad-puppy eyes and generally doomed aura. I wish he was in every episode of this show just getting hugs and secret treats and special treatment from everybody.
Coop, as Eleanor makes fun of his shoes and notifies him that he has a bunion and not hoops-related b-ball injuries, warns the Chief that he is a fierce competitor. Because there is no reasoning with Coop, Eleanor "indulges" him to the tune of pretending to race him to the next trauma, even giving him a headstart, so he hobbles off on his bunion. I don't even really know what a bunion is but it seems like something that would happen to Fitch Cooper.
Coop: (Tags Eddie into the race, as though that makes sense.)
Eddie: (Can't stop being nervous about his big barbecue date with Kevin and his sister.)
Coop: (Spaz spaz spazzing.)
Zoey: (Same.)
Lou: "I was interviewing for an ad sales job, because I am the only person on earth who has ever enjoyed doing that. I recently quit my hypertension medicine because my life is going down the toilet. It started with doing a sensible alternative-treatment regimen that was actually working, but now that I am poor and have no job and a family, and I'm living out that sad park-bench cliché of a man with no job and a family, I can no longer afford real medicine, much less fake rich-people pretend experiment medicine."
Jackie: "For being Lou, you deserve real medicine. Luckily, I am a champion stealer of medicines of all kinds."
They: (Are totally cute some more, because Lou is the best.)
Coop: "I am here to ruin everything!"
Fitch demands a cortisone shot so that he can, I don't know, challenge Eleanor to a b-ball game of the hoops, but Jackie finally breaks it to him that he has a bunion -- he acts like she invited him to come out of the closet to her in private, but then for him this is probably the masculinity equivalent because he has no clue about anything.
Jackie: "Hey, New Dad. Aren't drugs the best?"
New Dad: "I love Valium. I am now clear-headed and ready to desert my wife and new child."
Jackie: "That's not what drugs are for! Except for usually, they are. You know, it's perfectly normal to be scared."
New Dad, verbatim: "You know what's scary? Watching my wife scream for ten hours, then shit right in front of me. They tell you that might happen, but you think No, not her. Not my girl. When I was born my parents had a house. I have an alcove studio and about $1,000 in my savings account. What is that?"
Jackie: "It's a start."
(Both are valid arguments.)
Jackie marches the New Dad -- who has embraced the cliché to the point of Facebooking old girlfriends -- up to Maternity, borrowing a couple's infant on the way so he can smell the head of the baby.)
Jackie: "Put your head right here. Inhale, okay? This is what you're gonna smell every time you feel like you don't know what you're doing. Just smell. Okay?"
(It is magic*, Jackie is magic, sinners and saints, blah blah.
All New Parents: (Immediately erupt into backbiting, sniping, worried headaching bad citizenry. It is the way of things.)
*(NOTE: This only works on women. I love babies more than anybody I know, but the head-smelling trick is solely for the ladies.)
Coop, verbatim and deliciously: "I'm picking up a few extra hours this week. Bonus Coop!"
Thor: "We're working on changing our fantasy football team name from Man-Crush to Cooper-Duper."
(!!!)
Coop: "You like me better than Dr. O'Hara, don't you?"
Thor: "I'd like you a lot more if you focused on your receivers."
(Yeah yeah, that's what they all say.)
Free drugs for Lou, Lou leaves, the whole ER team goes into swoon mode about how awesome Lou is, and he totally is so well done show, and also Zoey gave him her pedometer so he can measure his slow sad march toward ignoble death one step at a time.
Jackie feels weird admitting it, but the motorcycle ride Queensward is actually kind of awesome. Eddie forgets himself and touches her hair, and she very smoothly takes that shit out of the equation. Out back, Eddie and Tunie have already hit it off, having that conversation TV people and regular people can't ever stop having about lighter fluid vs. no lighter fluid.
Grace: (Much crazy talk about CO2 offgassing, carbon footprint, turning the lights off when you're not in a room, etc.)
Eddie & Tunie: (Humor her lovingly, because at least she's not prophesying the end of days as usual. Then they flirt.)
Upstairs, Kevin's missing and there are a shit ton of clothes missing from the closet and drawers; clearl