Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Sobriety Loses Its Priority
By Jacob Clifton | Season 3 | Episode 11 | Aired on 06.13.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.It's been two weeks since we last spoke; Jackie continues to feel weird about Grace self-medicating, and she's still not allowed to give patients drugs. Of course, she resolves these issues by pounding bottles of Grace's baby Xanax, so that little brush with sobriety worked out well. Horribly, she ends up begging Eleanor to refill the prescription, which just about grosses them both out to death.
Worse, Eleanor eventually offers to become Jackie's methadone source because she knows no other form of rehab will work. It's pretty much the most heartbreaking thing you can think of.
Kevin and Eddie, for some reason, like to go the batting cages at 6 AM and talk about the marriage. Apparently Kevin has noticed that he hates his wife, and that they only lie to each other about things, and he's married to a drug addict. He does all kinds of super intense looking at Eddie-type activities, and it's both hot and weird. Eddie thinks it's about the affair, and not about what it's obviously about, so he gets all nervous.
Coop is all excited about his birthday-wedding -- activating Best Man Eddie's Kevin-guilt -- so there's a lot of cute running around there. Even cuter, Zoey throws a party for Nurse Appreciation Week, despite everybody hating the entire concept, and also wears her idea of people clothes that's pretty amazing. A funny cop guy brings Zoey flowers and compliments her (admittedly cute) jeans, so now we're probably going to have to deal with sad Lenny, which might actually kill me.
Akalitus loses the Michelle Obama visit, so I finally got my Gloria-yelling-at-fat-kids scene I've been waiting for all season, plus she does a wonderful trick with a box of raisins.
Kelly invites Jackie out for a drink and finally admits that he not only did know that Jackie stole the patches, but that he's on her side forevermore and her probation is his fault. She lies and lies to him about the reasons she took them, whatever, here's the punchline: He stole more of the patches than she did... And he's never been to Haiti.
Next week: Finale! Historically the most stressful episodes of this show. Here's hopin'.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!TWO WEEKS LATER
Kevin, sneaking around as usual: "I need to go to the batting cages with Eddie at six in the morning, okay?"
Jackie: "That sounds normal. My back really hurts because of everything about my life."
Fiona's hair is all tangled, but that's the only interesting Fiona thing going on. Grace gives her a multivitamin and this causes Jackie to feel weird.
Drugs: "We miss you too, Jackie! Put us in your face!"
BATTING PRACTICE
Kevin: "Hey Eddie, did you know I hate my wife suddenly?"
Eddie: "I wish you didn't have a baseball bat at the end of your giant superhero arms if we're going to talk about your wife."
Kevin: "Mostly that's it. But also bizarre elliptical scary faces that could mean anything."
Eddie: "Stop looking at me like you're going to kill me."
Kevin: "It's okay, I'm probably talking about something else or maybe I am going to get hit by a truck and none of this matters. Have some more creepy staring, won't you?"
Eddie: "This whole situation is weirdly sexual."
GLORIA'S OFFICE
Gloria: "All of a sudden I am back to being obsessed with Michelle Obama despite having dropped the topic entirely for like half the season."
Michelle Obama: "I'm sorry but I can't come visit you today, because you are crazy. Also because the Pope called and he said you are bribing priests for statues."
Gloria: "What am I going to do with all these fat kids I kidnapped? I was going to make them fight each other in an arena for the First Lady's pleasure."
Michelle Obama: "That does not sound like a fun time to me. You should probably get obsessed with some other lady."
Jackie: "So Gloria, can I be off drugs probation? It's been two weeks."
Gloria: "I don't have time to worry about your career and your probation right now. I have a bunch of fat kids to worry about."
Jackie: "But I am freaking out!"
Gloria: "Since when are you not freaking out?"
Jackie: "Since about one second from now."
Jackie immediately eats an entire bottle of Grace's Xanax, because she has been holding on for dear life. "Hands off, head down," Gloria said, and when Jackie replied that she was at the end of her rope Gloria said, "Then make more rope." And you know what they say about more rope. It's not like a huge surprise, less so even for Jackie, but it's still a concession and it's not a proud feeling to watch her do it.
Gloria: "Fat kids, there is no Michelle Obama for you. Just me, instead. Let's eat healthy snacks and exercise our bodies."
Fat Kids: "That sounds fabulous."
NEWSSTAND
Coop & Thor: Have won wedding money from the fantasy football. Only one of them can legally get married.
Thor: "Can I be your best man?"
Coop: "I'm calling Eddie first."
Thor: "But I got my braces off! Check out how cute I am now!"
Coop, quick-thinking: "No, you can just sing at my wedding instead."
Thor: Falls for it.
NURSE'S STATION
Jackie: "Zoey, what's wrong with your eyes and why are you dressed like Class President?"
Zoey: "I have decided it's time for a Nurses' Appreciation Day party."
Sam: "Don't invite Jackie to your parties. Plus, that party sounds awful."
Zoey: "Just because it's a party in the basement! Doesn't mean it's going to suck!"
Everybody: "Zoey, Underling Appreciation Days are condescending and fake. They compartmentalize what should be an ongoing respect into teddy bears and stupid coupons. This is just one of the many ways you still don't get it."
Zoey: "If we don't celebrate ourselves, nobody will."
Thor: "Kind of right, but kind of wrong."
Eddie: "Jackie, we have a problem."
Jackie: "There is no we."
Eddie: "I think that Kevin might kill both of us."
Jackie: "I think that he is the most boring person and you're wrong."
Eleanor: "I need everybody in Trauma for Patient One. Except for you, Jackie, who cannot be around drugs because you are a giant junkie. And even though Eddie knows this and we've spoken openly about this, the three of us, I'm still going to act cagey and weird."
Eddie: "That sucks that you're not allowed to do your job because of being a huge drug addict."
Jackie: "That sucks that your face because your stupid ass face."
PATIENT ONE
Jackie talks to a taxi driver, who I guess ran over the people. She comforts him, and he goes into some kind of shock. Kelly and Jackie continue their détente of being the two best nurses and respecting each other without chatting about it. Medical words are tossed about.
Kelly: "I'll get O'Hara to bring in a chest tube."
Jackie: "No, I'm feeling powerless and neglected as a professional, so I'm going to do some medical thing I probably shouldn't be doing. Go get me some drugs."
Kelly: "Go get your own drugs."
Jackie: "Go get me some drugs or else. I can't do drug things anymore."
Kelly: "I am amazed by you telling me that, so I will do whatever you want."
Jackie: Chest tube! Whooshing breath sounds! Amazing!
Eleanor: "Hey, nice chest tube!"
Jackie: "I even followed the rules."
Eleanor: "I'm so impressed that you are ten minutes into the episode and you haven't brought anything crashing in on all of us."
Jackie: "Yeah, I'm feeling sort of like this need to prove myself or something."
GLORIA'S FAT KIDS
Gloria: "We hate sugar, right?"
Fat Kids: "No, we think it's awesome. The entire food industry is about the fact that it is awesome, and we're just falling in line because the food industry is not really subject to any kind of regulation and American health is marginal to profit as legislated by lobbyists for the people-killer food industry and its attendant remora industries. Also corn."
Gloria: "You know what's really cool? Raisins."
Fat Kids: "Stop patronizing us, thanks."
Gloria: Does an amazing trick where she makes the raisin box squeal really loud, like a grass whistle. Also she has lost one of the fat children.
PATIENT TWO
Is a coughing ginger lady named Ruth. Gloria marches the fat kids through there; Ruth keeps talking. Coop drags Jackie to the Chapel, causing her to cross her furious arms even more furiously than ever before.
Coop: "People are scared of you! You'll make the perfect wedding coordinator."
Jackie: "No. Make Zoey."
Coop: "Nobody listens to Zoey! Plus my moms!"
Jackie: "This is your last divorced-parents card, Coop."
Coop: "Playing it! Also, my fiancée Cricket reminds me of you."
Jackie: "Really. Well. Good luck, then. With that."
BASEMENT PARTY
Lenny: "Do you throw yourself a party down here every week? Because this is very dramatic. Is this about an anniversary or some shit?"
Zoey: "No, it is about appreciation. See the sign?"
Lenny: "Nope, later."
Thor: "Look at the intense way you have thrown this party! There are fifty balloons, streamers everywhere, a buffet on a gurney, and a giant x-ray lightbox display that says THANK YOU NURSES. Is your theory that by making this as big a deal as possible, you will proportionally turn down the volume on how pathetic it remains?"
Zoey: "That is sort of my whole life."
Thor: "You are so sweet. And I am singing at Coop's wedding. Let's start now."
People singing makes me so uncomfortable.
Zoey, begging: "No. Stop."
ELEANOR'S OFFICE
Jackie: "Can you refill Grace's Xanax please?"
Eleanor: "If she's already out, she's taking too many."
Jackie, ashamed: "That's not the issue."
Eleanor, stunned and sad: "Oh, Jackie..."
Jackie bounces; Coop enters.
Coop: "Whatcha wearin' to my wedding?"
Eleanor: "Not going."
Coop: "Too painful?"
Eleanor: "Now I'm definitely going."
Has anything ever been less interesting than this Coop's Wedding arc? Points for making his three acts work together -- the divorce, the childhood stuff, now this -- but because the rest of the cast has such dogmatic responses to him in every circumstance, rolling the eyes, it feels a lot more simplistic and repetitive than it has any need to be. The thing with Eleanor is funny, but it's one joke. The thing with Jackie was moderately funny, but still: One joke. Frankly, the only joke that ever happens with Jackie: She's a bitch, but that's somehow amazing and heroic. A bitter, snarky, mean joke that never gets old.
Also, you can feel the anticlimax from here because what, like it's actually going to happen? Taking the entirety of his characteristics off the board? On a show that can't manage anything but immediately backsliding to the status quo even when it's trying,