Culture Blues

Two Shows Enter: Medical Mayhem

In Two Shows Enter, Ben Van Iten forces television programs to compete for his love.  His scoring system is a thinly veiled excuse to say nasty things about people who are more successful and better looking than he is.

 

 

A day in the life of a medical drama nurse or doctor is very busy.  You have to spend some time establishing a romantic relationship with one of your co-workers; in fact odds are you have never even considered dating someone that does not work at your hospital.  Then after that you have to do your nightly rounds and OH FUCK THAT GUY HAS A FORK STUCK IN HIS EYE.  Then you top it all off by learning some kind of important life lesson.  I often make fun of the absurdity of these shows, but at the end of the day no one is going to watch a hospital show where people come in with chest pains and it turns out they ate their chili too fast.  We like drama, so drama is what we get.

Here is what people have been saying about Medical Mayhem week:

“I was in a show like these once.  I try to focus on the good times…and not on how George Clooney pretends he doesn’t know me at parties.” – Noah Wyle, Actor

“When I watch Mercy my most common symptoms are boredom, and diarrhea.” – Jason Schaeffer, Television Enthusiast

Mercy

The title of this episode is “Can We Talk about the Giant Elephant in the Ambulance?”  I go to check out the summary on NBC’s website, and am overcome with emotion.

“While trying to bring a frozen boy back to life, Veronica challenges Sands to a game of basketball to win back their love. James Van Der Beek joins the cast as Dr. Joe Briggs.”

First of all, ignore the preposterous plotline about the basketball game (I know, it’s hard).  But holy crap, Dawson in the house!  Remember when he made Rules of Attraction just to get out from under the shadow of that television show?  Well, good effort buddy, but some asshole on the internet is still calling you Dawson.  Alright, show time.

-We quickly learn that the lead character, a nurse named Veronica, threw herself at one of the doctors on last week’s episode and was rejected.  Turns out we don’t have time to dwell on that for too long, because Dawson is here, and he’s a dick! (+3 point)  He’s also the new boss.

-Veronica (played with an irrational bitterness by Taylor Schilling) is paired with Chris (the previously mentioned doctor) to find a child who was left in the woods.  It’s awkward.  She calls him insensitive, and he calls her a drunk.  I can already spot that this is one of those romances that they have probably teased for a while, and eventually these two will end up together (like Joey and Dawson!).  It’s formulaic, but it seems to work with audiences.  As it turns out, I still hate it. (-1 point)

-I feel like I’m being attacked by shitty side plots. (-2 points)  One of the nurses has a 2^nd job taking care of some crazy old lady that is going to inevitably dispense wisdom in a cranky yet endearing way.

-There is another nurse that seems awfully familiar (played by Michelle Trachtenburg), and that’s when I realize she was almost naked in Eurotrip like five times.  I don’t find her all that attractive, but by the end of the movie I had been teased so many times that I had been conditioned to want her.  This show is so boring that I’ve gone on a Eurotrip tangent. (-1 point)

-Dawson is not just a dick, but a manipulative dick!  (+2 points)  He’s actually bringing some much needed life to this show.  He’s also filling the role of “guy who knows cutting edge treatments that not everyone agrees with, and he’s always right.”  Okay, so maybe that annoys me a little.  (-1 point)

-Okay, so the old lady does dole out wisdom in a cranky and endearing way.  But she’s still funny: “I used to have quite the heroin habit in the 80’s, just to cope with Reagan you understand.”  (+1 point) She’s on hard drugs to deal with her terminal illness and the show doesn’t seem to treat this with disdain, which I admire. (+3 points)

-The little boy they found is not in good shape, and Veronica is at his bedside.  But Chris quickly reminds her that “a watched kid never boils” (+1 point because I don’t think that sentence has ever been said before, and I love the visual) so they leave to play basketball.  I’m expecting this next scene to be painful.

-They are playing horse, and Chris agrees that if he loses he will date her.  Really? (-1 point)  If only I wasn’t so good at horse, I’d be getting a lot more ass. They stop their game because…

-The little boy is alive and kicking.  If you’re sitting next to someone while reading this, give them a hug…because life is precious.

-Game on!  Chris wins, but then kisses Veronica anyway.  Perhaps someone should have explained the rules to him better.  This is supposed to be a joyous moment, but I just don’t feel it.  In trying to make her delightfully neurotic, the writers accidentally made Veronica an annoying bitch that I can’t root for. (-3 points)

TOTAL: 1 POINT

This was actually not nearly as bad as I thought it’d be, but still generally mediocre.  Hell of a job keeping the show in positive digits, Dawson.

House

Comparing Dr. Gregory House (played with unrelenting cynicism by Hugh Laurie) to the main character of another medical drama might not be as relevant as comparing him to a fictional character from another genre: Sherlock Holmes.  Like the famous Detective, House is not kind to his body.  But perhaps the most interesting similarity is he does not want to take patients based on the urgency of their situation, but instead on the level that they interest him.  If this column worked that way, I would have never watched According to Jim. This episode is called “5 to 9.”

-This is a unique episode of the show in the sense that the main character is not House himself, but the hospital administrator Lisa Cuddy.  We start the show with a montage of her pre-work activities.  Originally I am disappointed by this turn of events.  (-1 point)

-While the focus of the episode is on Cuddy, House appears early and often.  One of the first times we see him we catch a conversation that we don’t have any real context for in which Cuddy tells him, “I won’t let you infect a patient with malaria!” (+1) House’s team relies on a kind of trial and error form of medicine, and I don’t know if this is realistic, but it usually makes for interesting television.

-Speaking of his team, hey there’s Olivia Wilde! (+2 points)  I’d like to meet her.  That’s a euphemism.  For sex.

-We follow Cuddy as she endures a brutal day.  She has to fire an employee for stealing, negotiate with a brutal insurance company, deal with lawsuits, and she has a sick child.  This particular show you see Cuddy cleaning up House’s mess a few times as well.  This episode works because of the new perspective on things.  Where most actors who were given the role of stick in the mud to House and his ridiculous requests would appear rigid and lame, Lisa Edelstein portrays Cuddy with a sort of bitchy (but not too bitchy) vulnerability that makes the dynamic work.  (+5 points)

-House has the AC cranked so a surgeon will be uncomfortable and hurry up on a procedure, so one of his patients can get into surgery quicker.  This is stupid, and is the kind of over the top stuff the show needs to leave out.  No one would get away with this crap, no matter how brilliant they were. (-1 point)

-There seems to be a lack of Olivia Wilde this episode (-1 point).  So instead of making more lewd comments, I will use this space for a fun fact.  She was actually born Olivia Jane Cockburn before legally changing her name.  Special thanks to Two Shows Enter research assistant Craig Trost for this bit of info.  I can sympathize, as I was born Benjamin Vaginawarts.

-Negotiations break down with the insurance company, and this is a huge crisis, or whatever.  But this got me thinking, what if one of the networks green lit a heartfelt drama about the trials and tribulations of an HMO and its employees.  Put some dreamy guys in there, give us a love triangle, and regular Americans who get ass fucked by insurance companies on a day to day basis would set their DVR’s every week for this hour long monument to irony.  The phrase “pre-existing condition” could finally be sexy!

-One of the things that makes this show good is they allow their know-it-all genius to be wrong from time to time. (+3 points)

-Well, things worked out for Cuddy.  The insurance company caved in to her demands, the terminated employee’s attempt to blackmail her went awry, and her kid is alright.  It’s enough to make you want to dance.

-I felt legitimately satisfied by the ending of this show, as predictable as it may have been. (+4 points)  The difference is the writers, the actors, and the execution.  In a genre that is often painfully formulaic, House bucks the trend more often than most, and proves to be more than tolerable even when it doesn’t.

TOTAL: 12 POINTS (a new high score)

Random stat – the FOX network is now 3-0.

HOUSE (1-0) DEFEATS MERCY (0-1) BY A FINAL SCORE OF 12 TO 1.

Culture Blues caught up with Hugh Laurie, to ask him what this victory meant to him.  “Well, being honored by this website is not the greatest thing that has ever happened to me per se.  You can put the microphone down, that’s the end of my thought.”

Join me next time when I alienate all of those pussies who cry during Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

 

Tagged as: dawson, house, hugh laurie, james van der beek, medical mayhem, mercy, rulse of attraction