Episode Report Card Joe R: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT My Anaconda Don't Want None Unless You Got Respect for the Locals, Hon'
By Joe R | Season 1 | Episode 2 | Aired on 01.19.2011
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So there's that saying that a show's first few episodes need to keep repeating the pilot in order to establish the show for new viewers. Boy, is that ever true here. Once again, Tommy -- who we'll be calling "Plastics" for as long as Dr. Cole does, which right now appears to be forever -- learns a valuable lesson about arrogance, about needing to be a better communicator, and about how the primitive jungle people need you to humor them a LOT before they'll let you bypass their idiot superstitions and treat a girl for her epilepsy rather than the demons that are entering her body through her scar. Plastics manages to earn Cole's respect by using his plastics skills to lessen the scar. HA HA, party's over, jungle demons! Mina once again learns that her brilliance is not enough (and that she should probably have brought some Rosetta Stone CDs for the trip to the jungle). She gets paired up with Dr. Ryan Clark (nee Twilight Cab-Stealer) on a house call to save a native boy's sister. But it's the boy who's in worse shape, and when he dies, Mina fails the compassion test by bolting without comforting the sister, which does not please Dr. Clark one bit. Basically, Mina and Plastics both learn that practicing medicine in the jungle means taking the community seriously and engaging it.
Meanwhile, Lily once again learns that freaky shit happens to people out in the jungle. Like the animal researcher who's being crushed to death by an anaconda. Lily, Ben, and Zee head out to save him, only it turns out the snake's vise grip is all that's holding the guy's broken body together. So they try to gurney him back to the clinic with the snake still attached (good idea?), only the snake escapes, leaving Snake-Bait to bleed out. Because the OTHER lesson Lily has to learn is that people come to the jungle primarily to advance their own personal love stories, so she shouldn't have tried to shush ol' Snake-Bait when he was trying to propose to his girlfriend, because then at least she'd have known about the engagement ring in his pocket that ends up slicing into his femoral artery.
The emergency surgery is successful (thanks to some Mina heroics), and Snake-Bait's eventual successful proposal inspires Zee to plant one on Dr. Cole. Speaking of health professionals in the throes of jungle love, Zee tells Ben not to string Dr. Clark along this time, and Clark tells Ben she's noticed the way he's looking at Lily (i.e. the way she used to look at him). Probably best for Clark she doesn't see Ben come upon Lily while she's showering naked under the waterfall, then.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously, three young punk doctors with vague-to-specific emotional damage were recruited to a remote jungle clinic despite their severe lack of language skills and were subsequently subjected to about nine thousand pronouncements about how medicine (and LIFE!) is different in the jungle.
This week begins with Lily -- though since this is a Shonda Rhimes show where everyone refers to each other like they're playing intramural flag football, I suppose it's instructive to know that her last name is "Brenner" -- getting a 5AM wakeup call from a hollering rooster somewhere, then turning her head to find a mean-looking spider on the pillow adjacent to her. At, like, eye level. She bolts and heads for the shower, where Tommy ("Fuller," but we'll be calling him "Plastics" upon decree of Dr. Cole) is giggling it up with the Bavarian chippie he brought home from the cantina last night. Lily meekly suggests that Plastics is violating the shower schedule she posted (because, again, we're in Shondaland, so there must be some kind of domestic haggling over girl-boy-girl living arrangements). Plastics, unflagging in his dopey Matt-Saracen-with-a-boner grin, is like, "Cool, let's talk later!"
Lily then heads off to grouse about this turn of events to Mina ("Menard," though we all know it's really "Streep"), who is scrubbing her face in the sink and complaining that even though Plastics's the whore, they're the ones having to bathe like hookers. Lily gets distracted by Mina's chicken -- the one she was given last week by that old lady who never breathed before -- but Mina's all matter of fact about how yup, that's her chicken now. Though she's named it "Dinner," which is either cool Mina-type irony or it bodes ill for the little thing's future. Anyway, Lily's slightly uncomfortable with her morning routine being fucked up by sex showers and free-range chicken pets -- she admits that she doesn't do great with change. Mina notes that the fact that she brought her cell phone with her kind of backs that statement up. "Does it even work out here?" she asks. Lily explains that there are some things on it that she doesn't want to get rid of, including a text message that she reads every morning. Mina takes a look: "Smile. Don't kill anyone." (Pause for audience to applaud episode title.) Lily thinks it's sound advice for a doctor. (Yeah, but is it sound advice for a doctor In The Jungle?) Mina notes it's not bad advice for new roommates either.
Zee is tending to her garden when Dr. Cole shows up with sno cones from the new shaved ice cart (and once again endearingly greeting her as "Loca"). Clearly, he's here to try to seduce her with cool ice and sugar water -- he says he was looking for her last night to take a walk out to the ocean. She sweetly brushes him off -- and clearly this isn't the first time -- saying that they work together and it wouldn't be a good idea. "So?" Cole asks, incredulous. "We're not going to get fired! There's no HR department In The Jungle." (Okay, but there is a shaved ice cart. It's not quite the dark side of the moon.) He notes that she keeps calling him "Lindo," which he says means "hot" (she clarifies that it's more "cute," like a puppy), but she tells him she's not budging. "Come on," he coaxes, "you know you want a piece of this imperialist American ass." Ugh. Almost. Almost one cute scene right up 'til the end there.