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Code Black: Life and Limb (2016)
"Life and Limb": A skillfully done episode
Dead teenagers, terrible dads, and reuniting long-lost siblings - Code Black #2.2 didn't pull any punches. The interns are still settling into the rhythm at Angels, but even veterans of the busiest ER can learn something new.
With Mike still in a coma, Angus is seeing everything in a different light. Mario may end up having a similar experience now that his father is a patient - but maybe not. Mr. Savetti isn't exactly a warm fuzzy presence like Mike is after all.
The bus crash got things off to a strong start, and my only regret is that the energy faded out after the first round of patients. This case could easily dominate the hour, without any side cases. There probably still could have been a way to work in something about brothers to parallel Angus' situation instead of Noa's schizophrenic.
Dare I say that...the first 5 minutes of this episode felt like...the old Code Black? The show has already changed so much, and it looks that season two will only continue to reinvent and redefine the show. This is unquestionably okay since every show does take a time to "find its voice and let it sing," and season two looks to be that way for Code Black.
Focusing more on the crash would also have given us more time with Camryn Manheim. I love her so much and only wish that either her role would have been bigger or that, better yet, she'd shown up in some kind of recurring role instead of as a one-off. Leanne could use a friend outside of Mama, and Manheim would have been a good fit.
Jonathan McClendon really impressed me as the team captain. There was more to explore with his father and their relationship, but what we did see was well done. The way that Ethan and Charlotte stepped in to help him beyond what was required of them as ER docs made me like both characters even more (which, admittedly, was part of the point of that).
Leanne and Ethan butt heads over the case of the team captain.
~~~
Leanne: Let me tell you something about that girl. She finished top of her class. Her film career didn't do that for her. She did. She has a brilliant brain. She has a big heart.
Ethan: Maybe I'm just used to military protocol.
Leanne: She's not in the military. She's a first-year resident, which means she's not ready for the consequences of a mistake like that. Ethan: None of us are.
~~~
It's looking like Leanne and Ethan disagreeing will become a common theme. Let's just hope it doesn't become overplayed, as it easily could. Although, if it isn't them butting heads, it would probably be her and Will or him and Will. Likely all 3 of them. Time will only tell how it will flesh out, though.
Charlotte is obviously the writing team's favorite new intern. I like her, too, but it feels like Elliot and Noa are being overshadowed. Also, the implied photographic memory thing? I guess it makes sense why she was a star actress, but eidetic memory/genius team member is the most overplayed trope out there.
I'd honestly rather find out that she was top in her class despite it being hard for her, that not only did she have to overcome assumptions about her famous childhood, but that she had to work twice as hard academically. Or at least 1.5 times as hard.
Meanwhile, all we know about Noa is that she's got a little bit of a hard candy shell protecting her soft center and that she likes to skateboard. As for Elliot...I felt as awkward finding out that he's a virgin as Jesse and Mario did. What does that have to do with anything? Didn't he do an OB rotation?
His awkward revelation aside, the case he was working on was...interesting...just not from a medical perspective. The only takeaway on that front was that everyone should always be overly honest and upfront with their doctors, which has been expressed a million ways on TV over the years.
It's too bad that this case was relegated to a B-plot because some deeper exploration of trans issues would have helped. Instead, there was a general feeling of it being an after-school special or quick Schoolhouse Rocks! explanation for those that have been living under a rock for the past few years.
Beth having to explain the difference between gender identity and sexuality was educational, but also seemed like the show may be underestimating their audience. At the very least, it's hard to believe that Mario, an urban millennial, honestly doesn't have an understanding of difference.
~~~
Jesse: Wake up and smell the estrogen. Mario: She's trans? But you examined the pelvis, how did you not know she was a dude? Elliot: Because she's not a dude. She's a woman, dude. Jesse: You tell him, Sugarbear.
~~~
Maybe Mario was just really distracted by his blockhead of a father and that's why he was asking questions he should know the answer to. I'm curious what the drama between him and Savetti Sr. is because alcoholism doesn't seem like quite enough on its own to ramp the animosity up that high. I mean, was anybody shocked by this revelation?
Maybe Mario confronting his father will help knock what remains of that chip on his shoulder away. He's matured a lot since the pilot, but there's always room more growth. We'll have to see.
Code Black: The Fog of War (2016)
Malaya and Carla
Even though Chandra and Appleby act the heck out of their scenes I'll keep this brief. Malaya finds out about Carla being in the hospital, and at first decides to respect Carla's wishes. It takes a stern talking to from head nurse Jesse to get her to go see Carla.
Jesse: "I don't understand you two."
Malaya: "I'm trying to respect her wishes."
Jesse: "You love each other. That's all you need to know."
It's Malaya that gets Carla to induce the labor, thus they both accept that Carla's out of time. Carla asks Malaya to help her be able to hold her son, (she named him Philip) before she dies. It's questionable if that's going to happen...
Carla makes it through that ordeal, and the preemie baby Philip does too. Once he's stabilized Malaya brings the baby up in his incubator, takes him out in and puts him in Carla's arms so that Carla gets to see and hold her son before she dies. I'm pretty sure there's not a dry eye watching this.
The episode's final scene is Mama finding Malaya and saying he's heard the news. Carla has died.
Carla: "She saw him. That's good, right?"
Jesse: "That's better than good."
I still have a few questions about this story. We've not heard a thing about how this baby was conceived. Is there a father in the picture we know nothing about who hasn't been around? If it's artificial insemination who exactly is supposed to take care of this child? Malaya? Like, that was considerate of Carla: dump your girlfriend come back dying and pregnant and stick her with your son. I'm sure Malaya's current girlfriend (who we've seen briefly--once) will be thrilled to learn her girlfriend is taking on her ex's kid. As sad and well done as the actual scenes are, there's still a part of me thinking the entire scenario has too many holes in it.
Code Black: Cardiac Support (2015)
This is one for the books
Oh, Mama.
You'd think that beloved head nurse Jesse's heart attack would be drama enough for one episode, but Code Black #1.10 upped the ante as always, throwing in some touching side stories. Mario got to show us how much he's grown in his time at Angels, and Cole and Rollie came to a new understanding.
Obviously, the main case was Jesse's heart attack. I hesitate to say that I "liked" this storyline because it seems really awful to "like" a nice person like Jesse having to go through that, even if they are fictional. It was, in no doubt, deeply tragic, though.
But it was well down, and not without purpose, so I suppose I'll just have to resign myself to Jesse's suffering serving the greater good. It highlighted his selfless generosity with Leanne in a truly touching way.
I loved how he was able to joke with her through it all. We may know next to nothing of Jesse's history outside of the hospital, but things like that tell us everything we need to know about him...for now at least.
I'm really hoping that his recovery allows us to know Jesse as a complete character and not just as "Mama." Mama's great and all, but there's got to be more to his life than running the ER and being Leanne's personal cheerleader. He's the one preaching about living life after all.
With Leanne running off to supervise Jesse's care (a good thing, since he ended up having to diagnose himself), Neal was left in charge of the residents and the ER. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite have Leanne's skill at resident-wrangling or commanding authority. He's definitely going to be rethinking his friendship with Christa after this. He had already gotten a little weird with her after their Bloody Mary brunch, but I suspect he'll take some giant steps back now that he thinks their relationship is interfering with the work. Definite awkwardness to come on that front.
I was a little surprised that he took such a hard line with Mario about leaving. He was right to insist that Mario stay at the hospital under the circumstances, but I expected some more helpful guidance from him than telling Mario to call social services to handle it.
I liked how Mario has finally made some real progress, and really hope that we don't have to watch him backslide again. It was great how the other residents supported him in spite of his previous behavior. They're really starting to come together as a team.
Elsewhere in the hospital, things went south for Cole and Rollie just as they were starting to connect. We still don't know the whole story of their falling out, or what happened to Cole at his last hospital, but I'm more intrigued by the minute.
Rollie finally figuring out that he couldn't just try and play happy families with Cole was a great moment, and I think it was actually what Cole needed from him. Totally switching up their usual dynamic was a total wakeup call for him. If he's going to succeed at Angels (and with Leanne), he's going to have to adjust that attitude.
Code Black: Ave Maria (2016)
All I can say is...WOW!
This episode calls to question the fate of many doctors of Angels Memorial, as well as brought something new to the show.
TV fans would like to believe that we haven't just seen a mass write-out (or in Melanie Chandra's case a temporary break), and hopefully, that's the case. You'd like to think that since the show already had to lose two stars between seasons it wouldn't then drop three more ten episodes later. But...
If somebody didn't actually leave the whole conclusion to this episode would have no meaning, and this show doesn't pull stunts like that. So who would be the most likely candidate? At least in Rollie's case, it stands to reason that his diagnosis might mean the character has to be written out at some point. Even though he's now in treatment, would he really be allowed to keep treating patients with Parkinson's?
And as Campbell notes, Jesse's failure to disclose did mean that he broke the law and put the hospital at risk. But if Code Black didn't have Jesse, it would lose the nurse's perspective on the goings-on in the hospital. So if you want to make a semi-informed guess, Chandra and Luis Guzman should be back while William Allen Young might not. (Point further driven home by the fact that the next episode is called "Exodus," which sounds like it should've been the title of this episode.)
Let's get into the cases of the week. As the "previously on" noted, Campbell having a daughter was kind of hinted at earlier in Season 2 but actually introducing her gives the opportunity to further shade his character. He remains a complete jerk but we now understand that's not all he is and sort of grasp why he can be such a control freak sometimes. At the same time "Ave Maria" doesn't totally soften him either. He's a character who's got hard edges and the show keeps those in place even as we learn more about him.
The dilemma is, as Rorish points out, Campbell reacting more as Emily's father than a doctor. This is completely understandable and proves that even he isn't immune to the emotional concerns of life and death situations.
The situation of Emily, where you want to be normal and not be handled differently, is completely normal for someone like her. But there's also the point that Campbell makes that you're not normal and acting as if you are can make it a lot worse.
Elsewhere Marlee Matlin's guest appearance is really the best part of her subplot. Not that Kathy's story isn't watchable but it doesn't necessarily stand out either. It's the latest example of what this show has been driving home a lot this season - that the road to physical healing often involves healing relationships. We've seen many cases in Season 2 where someone and their friend, lover, or a family member are in Angels Memorial and through the course of treatment ultimately come to find one another again. That's great, but it is getting a bit familiar.
And the 'C' story with Willis's commander doesn't have enough screen time to really flesh out. It seems to exist mostly to put the concern in our head that Willis could leave - almost like a little bit of misdirection to have us worrying about him and not about the people that do wind up exiting.
"Ave Maria" is a worthwhile episode for giving us a more complete picture of Campbell and a great performance from Boris Kodjoe, but it does feel like it's more setting up for something else bigger around the corner. We'll have to wait a while to see what that is, though.
Code Black: Pilot (2015)
Code Black: My Kind of Show
Finally, some doctors are more interested in medicine than extracurricular activities in the on-call room.
While perhaps not quite delivering on the promise of being "the heir to ER, " Code Black #1.1 certainly delivered high-quality medical stories told at a breakneck pace.
It's impossible to avoid comparisons to the two longest running medical shows, and truthfully, Code Black struck me as something of a love child of those two behemoths. The pacing and the cases presented feel more like ER, while characters with mysterious pasts and medically improbable but touching scenes evoke Grey's Anatomy. Given time, Code Black is on track to establish its own footprint in the genre. It already has a really good foundation to move forward from.
Marcia Gay Harden did an immeasurable job as Dr. Leann Rorish, the doctor tasked with carrying both Angels Hospital Emergency Room and the show centered around it. It is already apparent that she is the star of this show. While I didn't find the "mysterious trauma in her past" to be entirely necessary, it looks to bring great stories to the show if it is not abused. I know it's supposed to make us understand that it's affected her medicine, but I was a little confused about why Neal was still so invested in her tragedy when it happened three years ago. Losing your family is a big deal, but Dr. Neal Hudson (presumably) has his own life, so unless he's sleeping with Leanne, his fixation on her perceived instability is odd. He's not even voicing his concerns out of an attempt at self- advancement...but...I digress.
And thus, so far all we know about Neal is that he was a student of Leanne's and that he's overly invested in her life. He seems like a competent doctor and is obviously the main foil for Leanne. The writers will have to move past the whole idea of Leanne wanting to try something crazy and Neal objecting if the show is going to make it.
The residents (as with basically every medical show) are the audiences entry point into the world of Angels Memorial. They are just as new to everything as we are, and allow for some obvious exposition to occur. All four newbies show promise as characters, with the women standing out.
Malaya Pineda seems to be the most gifted medically (or at least the most experienced with an ER), and Christa Lorenson brings a different experience to the typical medical resident.
The men fall more into stereotypical roles ... a poor little rich boy suffering from low self-esteem and the kid from the school of hard knocks who has had to fight for everything. I'm really looking forward to those two sharing scenes. It's an obvious but relatable conflict, and I can't see the two of them getting along.
The two other doctors featured in the premiere are likable enough, but not very well-developed, which is a shame. If Code Black is to flourish, it will really need to expand the staff of the ER, and eventually the hospital. While I'm not for ripping off other shows entirely, one of ER's strengths (and Grey's weaknesses) was the size of the cast. In addition to casting a deep bench of doctors, the extended support cast really sold the believability of the ER.
Having only one nurse featured is a drawback, especially since we didn't even see Luis Guzman doing anything particularly nurse-like.
Granted, as the head nurse, he may be spending more time on administrative duties than taking temperatures and delivering med. Nurses play a vital role in hospitals. It would be great if the showrunners could find a way to highlight that.
The show struck a good balance between realistic medical portrayals and cutting-edge medicine. I was especially impressed with the skateboarding teenager who ended up having a subdural hematoma. Usually, when a TV patient is going to have a secondary injury like that, it's made to be super obvious, but in this case, I was just as surprised as the doctors when he collapsed.
The meeting between Ariel and the heart recipient at the end stole the show. It brought me to tears, and I am sure it was the case for many others.
Also, one thing that I really LOVED was that the set decorators did a really good job of building a believable inner city ER.
Overall, Code Black showed a lot of promise and kept me engaged for a significant percentage of the episode.