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Reviews
Chicago Med: The Clothes Make the Man... Or Do They? (2021)
misleading made up medical crisis
I seldom write reviews but felt like I should on this episode since I'm a transplant recipient. One of the several story lines was about a kidney transplant recipient who was a brilliant mathematician 9 months post-surgery who had a reaction to one transplant drug. Supposedly she was also allergic to another drug, so the only way to maintain her transplant was to treat her with an antipsychotic for the psychosis she was experiencing. But this resulted in her being mentally very dull. Her husband decided for her that she should have the transplant removed sp she had to go back on dialysis to return to being brilliant (but with a shortened life on dialysis). However, this was a false choice to create drama for the show: while the drug she reacted to and the one she had been allergic to are the most well known immunosuppressives for kidney transplants, there are other drugs that can be used to maintain a transplant. The episode was based on the dishonest premise that there were only 2 drugs, there are others (lesser known to the public) that can be used. I hate fake dramatic plots, and also don't like that potential transplant patients may be frightened by this fake plot. There is plenty of drama in real life medicine, writers should stick to the truth and portray real life problems. CHICAGO MED has always over-hyped personal and medical situations to create faux drama. I've wondered why I keep watching it, and this time I'm done with the show.
New Amsterdam: Pressure Drop (2021)
This show and this episode is just annoying.
Ok, have watched this show since the beginning, and though it was never a heavy-weight in terms of writing or theme, it's just gotten out of hand in terms of shallow preachiness. I believe global warming is real and urgent, but like the other episodes this year which dealt mainly with issues instead of actual hospital medicine, Max had to deal with it in a ham-handed, mindless way instead of a serious, even solution-based manner. It's gotten so silly in the way it has Max deal with issues-de-jure, I almost wonder if the writers/producers are doing a parody or maybe making fun of important issues. Writing, acting, production, etc, all ham-handed, making it hard to even watch the whole episode. I've lost patience and more importantly interest in New Amsterdam.
Grey's Anatomy: Look Up Child (2021)
Really boring
Never gave such a low score to a tv show I reviewed, but this was a boring and pretty pointless episode. I liked the Jackson character well enough in general, but the script, editing, acting, etc of this episode was boring and pretty annoying. If Jackson was going to leave, either make it interesting or make it part of several other themes in the episode. Gave it 2 stars because of the surprise ending with April and Harriet. I kept watching GA this year despite the plodding, never ending and preachy stories, but if this is the last season for a great old series, it was badly done and this one is the worst yet.
ER: The Book of Abby (2008)
One of the Top 10 Episodes
Abby was a complicated, sometimes frustrating character who underwent not just career evolution over the decade (from L and D nurse to intern to finally attending the day she leaves) but also a long personal evolution (recovering alcoholic, in/out of several relationships due to commitment and personal difficulties, a child, a marriage, an almost divorce, and at the end a new start with her husband and son). Some reviewers have hated on Abby, I personally liked the character as well as Maura Tierney the actress.
This episode is all about Abby's last day at County General, a day that she finally is fully liberated as a doctor who knows what she's doing and is willing to stand her ground, but is also able to show her soft and charming side as well as sense of whimsy and humor.
The goodbyes to the characters she leaves behind are short mostly, but heartfelt showing what we didn't always see on the show: that characters knew each other more deeply than we always say in episodes. Favorite moments: her scene in the OR obs room where she says what everyone thinks about Neela and Lucien, the reveal of the wall of locker name tags of departed doctors/nurses by Haleh (a really nice touch), her lovely and sweet 'last tango' with Frank, and her good-bye to a confused Archie where she points out in good humor his tendency to make everything about him, even her leave-taking. Sorry to see Abby go, she was a moderating mainstay.
ER: Out on a Limb (2006)
Good Episode on Weaver, Time for Pratt and Clemente Characters to Go
Kerry Weaver is not a very sympathetic character, though every once in awhile she reveals a human side of herself. Lately that's been about her son Henry. This episode on her need for a hip replacement shows her very vulnerable, gives more of her backstory and a glimpse of why she's the tough, no-nonsense doctor/manager she's been. Makes her understandable, and at least for a moment, likeable.
Pratt deserved to be terminated for what he did (giving police his no-alcohol blood instead of that of DJ's father). Pratt has been way to gullible and willing to believe his friends and others when they do something really bad, and this was criminal this time. Honestly Pratt in real life would never have made it out first year, defintely not gotten to the point in his career he is in this episode with his attitude, his over-the-top handling of patients, his frequent corner-cutting, etc. It's the character, but it's also just Mekhi Pfifer's acting.
Clemente's whole character thread has been dumb and annoying throughout. He also deserved to be fired based on Weaver and Luka's knowledge he was drugged up at the time he brought Jody to the hospital. And then John Leguizama's over-acting is annoying. He's a good actor in general, but plays Clemente unbelievably. Would Weaver and County Hospital management really have hired Clemente --however short of attendings they were-- given his known history? I doubt it. At least I hope not.
7 stars for the Weaver and other storylines, minus 3 stars for Pratt and Clemente storylines.
ER: If Not Now (2006)
Two Different Pregnancies
When first broadcast, I stopped watching ER regularly around season 10 so the details of certain story lines are new to me, like this episode. Thought this episode was well done, contrasting two different pregnancies, neither of them planned, both with unique situations that made keeping them or aborting very personal, very real to what happens to actual women/couples. Luka in the middle of both.
.With Abby, he wants the baby as wants to have another family (after losing his years before) but reassures Abby its the relationship with her he wants more; his religious beliefs on when life begins are an element, but not the major one. With the pregnant 15 yr old girl who was raped, his religious beliefs are there, but ultimately he does what his medical responsibilities require him to do (even though Neela thinks he would not): ascertain what the girl wants separate and apart from her parents who have very, very strong religious beliefs. When the girl says she really doesn't want to have a baby, can't have a baby at her age, Luka assists her medically w/out the knowledge of the parents which is (both in 2005 and today) the law regarding privacy for teenagers re reproduction. At the end Abby decides not to go thru the abortion she thought she wants based on her lifelong fear of passing on bipolar disorder genes (her mother and brother both have it). It appears that Abby's decision to keep the pregnancy is a complicated decision based on her desire for a child, her comfort with Luka, and witnessing so many happy and sad child-mother situations. Having children or not, such a very personal decision, was pretty well handled in this episode with different outcomes reflecting two of the multitude of complicated life situations in real life.
What isn't very well done and is frankly very annoying (at least to me) is the Dr Clemente story line. He's been played as a loud, invasive, abrasive character, and the whole scheme of him and this woman from a previous life in NY is just ham-handed and kind of dumb. Ray Barnett's wobbling between medicine and music seems to come to a head here, at least hopefully; the character is really too old to be so undecided about careers.
The Comey Rule (2020)
Dramatization includes not only actual video but actual quotes from real characters
Given the recency of events portrayed, some of the mis-casting was a little jarring (Gleeson was a bit overdrawn on the bloated toad-like Trump, close but a little too wrinkled and voice/cadence was wrong; Daniels was of course not nearly as toweringly as Comey ---- who is?--- but he was also portrayed as much chubbier than Comey was at the time including the double-chin which may belong to Daniels; and TJ Knight's portrayal of Reince Priebus as a very young and callow chuckler was off...Priebus unfortunately for us all was actually mature and knew better than his real actions bore out.
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However, the actor who portrayed Rod Rosenstein, and the way he was directed, seemed spot-on. Rosenstein was not well-respected in DOJ circles, and by his own words, actions, and what he leaked to others was pretty much a whiny, feckless weasel who didn't have the sense god gave a goose about suggesting he be wired up in the Oval Office (yes, it would have be interesting, but it would have been terribly harmful to the whole concept of the presidency...which Trump et al were already shredding, wiring would have just made it worse)). Rosenstein was portrayed correctly as the self-serving, sniveling stiff who couldn't take responsibility for writing the letter Trump used to fire Trump.
I watched both episodes back to back. Not sure yet what my final takeaway is just yet, but I'm not feeling overwhelmed by the dramatics of this miniseries. It does portray Comey's good and bad points (he was a patriot and pro, but also sanctimonious and failed in key judgements), it gives the flavor of how amateurish and venal Trump and his White House staff staff were, and does show a 3.5 hr capsule of the last 5 yrs of an American law enforcement system that wasn't prepared to deal with a regime of such venality and determination to do wrong. Character after character reflected what many Americans thought as time progressed: this has been a criminal enterprise taking over the leadership of our country like it was a mob deal,
Gave it 8/10; points off for overdrawn portrayals in places, points up for how close they got to accurately portraying key facts and events. Suppose it may deserve fewer points for trying to cram into our 2020 election cycle what really is the job of the long lens of history.
Jonestown Massacre: As We Watched (2018)
OK documentary on People's Temple, Jonestown
Another reviewer criticizes this for not spending enough time on the actual massacre. If a person really needs more footage and reportage of the awful suicide/murder at Jonestown, then maybe this isn't the documentary for you. If instead you want to understand how Jim Jones and so many people wound up in Jonestown dying, then this is a decent short documentary. The story of Jones and Jonestown isn't just a spectacular one-day event of murder and suicide, it was how Jones went from an outsider boy in Indiana with a bent toward fundamental religion, to develop a once-idealilstic but progressively manipulative all-encompassing organization in rural California, on to becoming a controlling, addicted, paranoiac madman who brainwashed mostly poor and downtrodden men, women, and children into killing themselves in a terrible jungle in South America. The whole story isn't just the suicides/murders, it's about how Jones became god-like in his mind and convinced vulnerable people that life as he dictated it was somehow better than they could do on their own. Jonestown wasn't just a place, it was an evolving state of mind. This doc is too short to show it all, but a good place for people new to the subject to start.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit: Pathological (2018)
Another "torn from the headlines" episode
The storyline here is taken from the real life Gypsy Blanchard story, a young woman whose mother moved her from place to place and doctor to doctor to keep the story going that Gypsy was an unbelievably sick kid (she was actually much older than neighbors, friends, others thought because of the way her mother DeeDee kept her infantilized). Another reviewer complained that this episode didn't focus on just one issue (the issue of consensual sex between young people with disabilities), but that's only because Law & Order SVU kept pretty much to reality with only slight variations. Given that this is a take off on a real life story, the acting was pretty good: young Mariel starts out as someone with significant cognitive delays as well as health issues, and once "freed" from the Munchausen mother, her cognitive abilities evolve to more like her real age.
Munchausen's by Proxy is a very uncommon but serious mental disorder, and the ripples from it can be devastating to the child but also others around the child/family. Like SVU regularly does, this episode spotlighted an important issue that is little understood by the general public but one that we should be aware of.
Major Crimes: Party Foul (2014)
Show handled nuances of mental health well
Despite what the other reviewer says, figuring out the footprints was vitally important to solving this crime. The footprints, once sorted out, showed the "dance" of what happened during and after the stabbing, pointing ultimately to the young woman as the more-than-likely killer. As for fingerprints on the murder weapon being more pertinent: the weapon was a pair of scissors, scissors have small surfaces that at best would hold only part of any finger's print, and probably no useful print once the blood covered most of it (as can be seen on the show). It's possible that DNA may have been left by the killer...of could have been left by the second person stabbed; DNA on the scissors wouldn't have been decisive as to the killer vs one of the victims.
As for a gender bias at play with the decision to not go for homicide: watchers of the show should have heard about the young woman's history of mental health problems. Since the weapon was found opportunistically in the house, premeditated murder was unlikely to be found by a jury; given her history of mental health issues and situation of passion involved, a jury was very likely to have a hard time going for more than a low level of manslaughter (whatever levels Calif has). Getting a confession was optimal to solving the case, and negotiating a deal for placement in a state hospital until the young woman was deemed no longer harmful was the safest bet. Given her mental health history, she's likely to be hospitalized a long time; given her age and onset of her irrational behavior, the chances of something like schizophrenia is likely, which can be treated in some but not successfully for many others, so the young women would likely be incarcerated in a hosp for a long time. Good choice for police and DA to resolve the crime, get the girl off the street and into protective treatment. Our justice system would work a lot better if nuances in mental health and in how cases get resolved were handled more like this show did.