By Joe R
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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