Previously on City of Angels: Minority groups begin criticizing the networks for not having enough melanin on the tube. With mind-boggling serendipity, Steven Bochco says to his cell phone, "Oh, hey, Leslie Moonves, wazzzzap? I just happen to have this script that is full of minority characters. We were gonna pitch it to UPN, WB, BET, and all the other channels you guys don't watch, but I guess I could part with it for, say...your SOUL???"
Long story short: Bochco scratches another notch into his TV gun barrel, CBS directs the NAACP and LULAC toward the other networks, and Moonves wakes up the morning with a teeny tiny hole where his soul used to be.
The storyline so far -- Dr. Turner (our buddy Blair Underwood from L.A. Law) and Dr. Price (Vivica A. Fox who was the most chaste stripper in the universe in Independence Day) kissed, which wouldn't be so bad except they used to be engaged and now they have to work together. The Racist Bearded White Doctor has been giving Dr. Williams a hard time for basically being a little wuss in the OR. Dr. Turner confronts RBWD about it, assigns himself as the new chief while, inexplicably, lightning dramatically flashes during this locker-room confrontation. Dr. Veiss (er, Weiss) has been getting snuggly with Nurse Patterson and she doesn't seem to mind even though he looks like one of the Beastie Boys in scrubs.
It takes a very smart girlfriend to help me figure out that the show takes place in Los Angeles, which she deduces without having seen a single episode. I mean, who knew, just from the title? The girl is smart, is all I'm trying to say. Either that, or....
Wailing gospel vocals greet a morning skyline panning to Angels of Mercy hospital and its statue, which looks like a Mayan warrior. While the opening scene unfolds, a little graphic low on the screen lets us know that this is being simulcast in HDTV. Of course, we all know that when the engineers were coming up with HDTV, they intended it for use in digitally broadcasting second-rate hospital dramas. That was the dream, at least.
Delmar and Iris, a never-miss-a-meal couple, ask Dr. Turner for help in finding a lost relative. "Po-lice don't give a damn," Delmar bellows, while a lone policeman watches in the background, a tear in his eye. The man they're looking for, Iris's father, is seventy-five years old and six feet tall. He's been taking medicine every night for a condition called "Flubbitis," which is something one suffers by acting in a Disney film starring Robin Williams. ["No, actually, it's nothing like 'phlebitis,' smarty-pants." -- Wing Chun] Delmar and Iris wear big, bright visitor stickers, which I've never seen in a real hospital.
The Prince and the Porker
They say, "HELLO! We're Concerned Family Members!" Dr. Turner, sans decorative headgear, tells them that a John Doe was brought in the night before, which jibes with Daddy Giant leaving the house the night before, without his wallet, and in a red jogging suit. The John Doe, Dr. Turner says, had a coronary embolism. "The man had a heart attack and couldn't be revived," Turner says, in Full Compassion Mode. "The man died?" Iris asks. "Yes, the man did die," Turner says, while wondering what part of "couldn't be revived" Iris doesn't get. Turner asks if Iris could handle seeing a dead body. Delmar gives Turner a sneaky look like, "It's okay, Doc, we check out dead bodies all the time. Heck, that's why we bought the extra fridge." Turner walks Delmar and Iris downstairs to the morgue and explains the procedure for viewing a Joyce DeWitt, which is to say "a dead body." They'll gaze upon a sheeted body, give the man in the booth a nod, and after they've inserted their quarters, he'll remove the sheet.
In the morgue, the sheet is removed, and what looks like Stone Cold Steve Austin gone to seed lies on the table. "That's not my daddy!" Iris cries. Wendell, the morgue attendant, does a double take, draws the curtain and apologizes with a kindly, chagrined look that only morgue attendants seem to be able to pull off. Delmar gives Turner a dirty look while consoling his wife ("That didn't look nothing like what we got in the fridge!").
Later, inside the morgue, Turner tries to get to the bottom of the Steve Austin/Daddy Giant mixup while Wendell keeps getting in his way. Wendell says the charts may have been confused and then he commits career suicide by blaming Turner for not filing a proper death summary. Turner gets a little miffed at that assertion, but really how hard could it be? Look, here's a death summary right now: "Stone Cold Steve Austin: he's dead. Massive Fatality Syndrome. Wednesday night, 8:05 PM, right when City of Angels is on." You can have Aetna cut me a check right after the show's over. Wendell goes even further down the path of the unemployment by implying that he might have to "kick it upstairs" and then he slams a morgue door shut that Dr. Turner is trying to enter. Turner tells Wendell to move it. In a game of TV drama chess, Former Hit TV Show Star easily trumps Bit Comic Relief, so Wendell goes ahead and moves. Turner uncovers a massive, dead pig that looks like Babe without the cute hairstyle. "Is that a pig?" Turner asks. "Now how the hell that get in there?" Wendell responds, just as Steven Bochco changes the channel to see whether ABC is running enough NYPD Blue ads.
Opening credits montage with full-wail singing, which my dear friend Heather Cocks says sounds exactly like the beginning of Prince's "Gett Off." A John Doe auto-versus-pedestrian comes in and Racist Bearded White Doctor (hereafter known as Dr. Prince) immediately begins laying into Dr. Williams for yelling when he's right there. Prince likes his ER nice and quiet. Prince is thinking about his Mercedes and how nice it'll be when he works in a more upscale trauma ward, when he turns, and does a double take after seeing who's lying on the table. He roughly shoves the nurses and Williams away while ordering a "BPL on this man, pronto!" This will be the first and only reference to Hispanics in the episode. Just thought you should know. Prince orders a trip to the OR while Williams and Weiss puzzle over Prince's erratic behavior. I'd say it started right around "Sign 'O the Times." Prince hurries them by yelling, "Williams, chop chop!" which is extremely funny because they're going to the operating room. Ha ha, hospital humor.
In the operating room, Prince struggles with a clamp that looks like those metal brainteasers they give you in elementary school. Prince sounds frustrated as he asks Williams to take over the procedure. He screws up the delivery, however, by calling him "Walter" instead of "Wesley." At least he kept the alliteration. Dr. Wesley Williams takes the road most traveled by wussing out, saying that such a difficult trauma might not be the best one for him to start on, what with his lack of malpractice insurance and all. "Nonsense!" Prince says, explaining that there isn't a procedure under the sun he can't take a resident through. All goes well for about 0.3 seconds until the two begin bickering about arteries and hematomas and which bone's connected to the neck bone, and pretty soon Prince is all mad because he's being lectured by a resident on vascular surgery. Meanwhile, the patient dreams of sitting up and saying "You know what? Since you don't need me here now, why don't you two come get me when you're through arguing? I'll be in the cafeteria eating pudding." Blood pressure starts dropping as Dr. Russell comes out of acting hibernation to say one of his two relevant lines from this week's show: "Whatever you just did in there, the patient hated it." So did the audience, Dr. Russell. So did the audience. Prince assures everybody that it's just a little clot, nothing to worry about, when Russell weighs in with Line Number Two: "It's awfully bright red for an O clot." Williams calmly calls for mommy by explaining to Prince that if they need help, Dr. Turner is right outside. Cut to Turner, scrubbing up in the first of several colorful Kufi hats that make him look just like Kareem Said from Oz. Prince doesn't react favorably to this. "Are you sure you're surgeon material?" he asks menacingly, at which point the patient begins dreaming of which law firm he's going to call as soon as these guys get their hands off his aorta. Prince asks for a clamp that's unavailable, and when the nurse tells him it's not on this tray, he throws his hands and screams, "How can I work without my instruments?" Interestingly, this is what the exact same reaction that Prince, the musician, used to have before he built Paisley Park Studios. Prince (the surgeon) takes out his aggression on Williams by telling him that if he's not on his team, he should get out. Williams reacts by pouting, then running away, but not before jamming his bloody hands deeper into the patient and pulling them out. He further complicates things by calling in Turner, which furthers Prince's anger.
Turner hears the situation, issues a "Gown me!" and gets into action. Prince mumbles something to himself about "White Man's Burden," then says very theatrically, "Ben Turner doesn't need a practice. Not when there's a white surgeon he can usurp with impunity!" This guy talks like most contracts read. Turner ignores the remark and while Prince believes he is putting the White Man's Smack Down, he tears into an artery the way my Uncle Oscar tears into a chicken breast. Turner takes over, ordering very expensive procedures, when Prince tears off his head lamp and surgeon's mask, yelling, "I own the saphenous vein!" Hey man, I'm sure all the ladies already know that. Prince storms out while Turner continues the procedure. "Wesley, show me the aorta," he says, which isn't as exciting a catchphrase as the one from Jerry Maguire, if you ask me. "He was shaking like a leaf," Dr. Williams says. Maybe Prince was right about he reverse discrimination. That sure sounded like Williams made a veiled racist remark about Dr. Prince's Canadian roots.
In Ron Harris' office, Dr. Price (Vivica, not Racist White Surgeon) is upset because a medical chart is missing times and dates and is written in two different-colored inks, one of them black. Get used to this. Lots of subtle cues about racism in this show. Harris points out that changing medical records after the fact is a misdemeanor and a malpractice lawyer's dream. Price says that she's found evidence of these kinds of things in other departments. Apparently, while all the other doctors are stitching up gunshot wounds and delivering babies, Dr. Price has been fighting her own private war against charts that aren't color-co-ordinated. Harris says he'll talk to his department heads to "open up a dialogue," which is a nice way of saying that despite how cute Dr. Price is, Harris has really got more important things to worry about than blue versus black ink. Price gets the hint and requests that policy meetings become mandatory. Harris acts as if this is the most amusing thing he's heard all day, because how can you expect doctors, of all people, to be responsible enough to not miss meetings? Harris throws out the strangest metaphor of the night: "Getting department heads to agree on something, Lilian, is like herding cats. The less in the room the better." Points to Mr. Ron Harris for being up on his Super Bowl commercials. Price asks whether Harris is concerned about the charts issue, to which Harris says he worries every three years when the hospital is up for review, and that things always work out. Price points out that the hospital has been up for dozens of infractions, and Harris finally gets a little defensive. "The policies work as they stand," Harris says, because he's not yet aware of Dr. Prince's little operating room tantrum. So instead of agreeing with Price, Harris says she should tend to her own problems, including a new one -- a case he hands to her where an eleven-year-old was admitted to the hospital without parental consent. Price caves like Carlsbad Caverns and gets up immediately, but asks Harris to think about policy meetings. Let's just get this out there: Dr. Price may be hot, but she has personality of a county court clerk. Harris could probably let her go, having won and all, but instead he sticks one last jab to let her know he's in charge: "See to your own housekeeping before you take the white glove to mine." Ouch.