Textual Exhibitionism

LAST FIVE ENTRIES
The Sunday Suicide Ritual - 03.19.06
somnambulism: n, Jeremy on a Sunday night - 03.13.06
careful what you wish, you may regret it... - 03.05.06
somebody gona geta hurt real bad - 02.20.06
=NOT(rain V sleet V dark of night) - 01.31.06

Grey's Anatomy - A Hard Day's Night (Pilot) - (10.05.05)

Welcome to my first recap. I doubt that after scrutinising this particular episode of Grey's Anatomy that I'll be wanting to do it anymore, and will simply subsist off of the delicious offerings handed down from on high over at TWoP. In the meantime, however, I've wanted to write one of these for a long time, if only to see if I could. Here goes.

We start out with...blurry naked legs. If it weren't for the blurry part, I could really get to liking this show. BUT, spoiling my fun almost instantly is a fade-in of surgery, which is not what you want to see when you're reaching for your zipper. A female voice overdubs some shit about a game, and that you either have what it takes to play, or you don't. Well, I certainly have what it takes to play with myself, but as I said, all of that gore kind of spoiled the mood for me, so thanks for that. She goes on to say that her mommy was "one of the greats" but that Voice Over Lady is not. In fact, she is kinda screwed.

We find out that she wasn't entirely lying, either, as she wakes up naked on a couch with a similarly naked (though draped with a blanket for all you delicate censor-types) gentleman on her floor. The blanket is removed from said gentleman, with the briefest of ass-shots (get it? brief?), in order to cover what would certainly be a hotter, and thereby more offensive, frontal shot of who will will shortly learn is Voice Over Lady. She replaces his Anal Bum Cover with a pillow, waking his ass, and the rest of him, up with a start. Well, I'm just guessing about the rest of them. He's on his stomach after all, but I'd guess dollars to doughnuts that the floor isn't the only hardwood in that place. You know what they say about men in the morning.

Voice Over Lady, played by Ellen Pompeo -- who reminds me of Joey Lauren Adams way too much, claims the whole "I just slept with you, why are you not gone" situation is humiliating, and tries to immediately rectify the problem by kicking the Naked Dude on the Floor out. However, now that we can actually get a good look at him, he will be known as Handsome Naked Dude. On the floor or not, his looks trump his positioning. The same unfortunately cannot be said for others; why do you think doggie-style was invented? Anyway, VOL stresses that he am-scray post-haste as she is already late, not in the "I am carrying your alien baby whose gestation time is so ridiculously short that I already know I'm" late sort of way, but the "today is my first day on the job" late. They make with the small-talk, or rather, he makes small talk and she gives off a GO AWAY vibe that would drive cockroachs scurrying. We can learn that VOL just moved here from Boston, the house was her mother's, and she's selling it. VOL mercifully ends this bit of exposition -- though no doubt we'll be force-fed some later, it is the pilot after all -- with "we don't have to do the thing...exchange the details, pretend we care" and that she's going up to take a shower and he won't be here when she comes back down. He's pretty much getting a kick out of all of this, including the fact that she's already forgotten his name is Derek. Handsome [no longer] Naked Derek. She introduces herself as Pompeous, and we've got us some character names. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to bastardise them. I think I'll stick with Handsome Naked Derek and Pompeous until something better comes along. She runs upstairs to take a shower, leaving some dude whose name she just learned alone in her livingroom. And here I thought doctors were supposed to be smart.

We're shown some establishing shots of Seattle, well, the Space Needle anyway. There are three things that Seattle is known for: the Space Needle, rain, and ferries...oh, hey, there's a ferry! I wonder if they actually film this show in Seattle, or if they shoot it in Vancouver and just pretend like every other show.

Pompeous shows up at work with a bunch of her collegues crowding around the door to the operating room, while a man voice-overs some shit about a game that our first VO was referring to, and that a month ago, they were med students being taught by doctors, and now they are the doctors. Cue the dramatic light-switch in the OR. They all wander around with awe on their faces, as if they were children thinking of all of the places they could hide candy in the room for those mid-marathon-surgery hunger pangs. Dr. Richard Webber, whose lab coat indicates that he is a M.D.P.H.D.F.A.C.S. -- which I'm hoping doesn't stand for for Medical Doctor, Doctor of Philosophy in Fucking All Cute Surgeons -- and also the chief of surgery. He says that the next seven years, those spent as a surgical resident, will be the best and worst of their lives, and that they will be pushed to the breaking point. He also inspires them all by telling them to look around at their competition, and that a bunch of them will be wimps and switch to easier specialties, crack under the pressure, get shit-canned, or whatever else happens when you decide that putting in 120 hour weeks just isn't quite what it cracked up to be. The he starts talking about this elusive game again, and I'm starting to wonder if they're all not there to just play a pickup game of baseball with a newly removed kidney and a prosthetic leg. Pompeous VO's again that she's screwed. Think the show's trying to push a common theme on us?

After commercials, we've got our cast and extras in a locker room, getting ready for their First Day of Hell. The similarities between this scene and paratroopers preparing to jump out of a perfectly good airplane behind enemy lines are not diminished by the fact that a nameless doctor comes in, reads off a few generic names, and then leaves with the victims -- sorry, interns -- following closely behind. Pompeous bitches to the closest woman she can ensnare with her Joey Lauren Adams-like voice that only six of the 20 residents are women. That's probably because many people believe that women are the smarter of the two sexes, and who in their right fucking mind would want to become a doctor? I mean, seriously, you want to deprive yourself of sleep and life for however many years just so you can fuck up once in a while and kill someone? Gee, where do I sign up?

The other woman, wondering how she found her way onto the set of Chasing Amy 2: Now She's A Doctor, complains that one of the six women is a model, and claims that this fact will do nothing for their respect as Righteous Women of the Medical Workplace. As it turns out, this other woman, played by the delicious Sandra Oh, is assigned to the Resident Nazi along with our heroine. No, there isn't a Nazi working at the hospital, they just call her that because she's such a bright-shiny lady. Some other dork perks up that he's got the Nazi, too, showing that his Sunday School glossed over just how evil the Nazis were by the shit-eating grin he's got on his face. He seems to think that being tortured with a couple of chicks is going to be fun, which it might be if Sandra Oh wasn't wearing all that damn clothing. The dork, George O'Malley, gets all creepy on them and says they met earlier and then proceeds to describe what Pompeous was wearing, what she had to eat, drink, sleep, and fuck that night. He interprets their WTF stares as them thinking he's gay, ignoring the fact that he just mentioned her strapless sandals, and then proceeds to attempt to dismiss his gayness in just about the most gay way possible, short of a heavy lisp and a limp wrist. Their names get called, with Grey (Pompeous), Yang, Lucky Charms O'Malley and the yet to be shown Stevens all grouped together. Well isn't this convenient. The main characters of the show are all grouped together. That will make keeping track of their wacky hijinks so much easier. Oh, and here comes Stevens, as our Medlings all walk down the hall towards the Nazi, agast that she is a) not male and b) not a real Nazi. Stevens, wanting to prove helpful to our Exposition Fest, pipes up that maybe it's professional jealousy, and that maybe she's so good everyone calls her the Nazi because they're jealous. Maybe she's nice. I'm sure that's what it is, sweetie. I'm thinking you'll be the doctor who'd rather perform horrible painful and invasive tests than tell your patient they are terminal. YangOh, showing that not only is she hotter than an autoclave but also wise in the Ways of Exposition, deduces that Stevens is the model, which earns her a pouty glare from Stevens, a relic from her fashion shoot with Derek Zoolander.

Stevens runs to the head of the class, er...hall, to be the first to introduce herself to the Nazi as "Isabel Stevens, but everyone calls me Izzy oh my god did you do something with your hair did you lose some weight I LOVE that outfit you're wearing." Ok, not so much that last part. The Nazi glares a swastika into Izzy's forehead and angrily spouts of her five rules: 1) Don't bother sucking up, she already hates you and that's not going to change. 2) Answer every page at a run. Their first shift starts now and lasts 48 hours. Well, I'm thinking Pompeous is regretting that little sleep-over she had right about now. But not as much as she's going to later in the show. The Nazi is sure to point out to everyone who hasn't heard of the medical profession that interns are the lowest of the low, bottom-feeding scum-sucking pieces of shit, but in a network friendly way. She shows them the on-call room, where attendings and residents sleep and interns are forbidden in so much as the former two groups telling you to piss off. Which brings up rule number 3) if the Nazi is sleeping, leave her the hell alone unless the patient is dying and rule number 4) that patient had better not be dead when she gets there. In case you're thinking that rule number 4 proves that the Nazi gives a damn about her patients, you are mistaken. If the patient is dead when she gets there, she would have been woken for no good reason. I'd say it was clever if it wasn't so god damn callous. Pompeous, showing off her lightning-fast mathematical skills raises her hand about a second after the Nazi is finished talking to point out that only four rules have been listed so far. Thanks, tips. Good timing, as the Nazi's pager goes off, producing rule number 5) when the Nazi moves, you move. They all move. You know, for a German soldier, the Nazi can't run worth a damn.

They all run onto the helipad with a gurney to pick up a Medivac patient, who has this, that, and the other thing according to the EMT. The patient is having a grand mal seizure, which in case you didn't know is a very bad thing indeed. They get her into a room, where the Nazi gives orders and the Medlings look helpless and confused. They somehow manage to stop the seizure without killing her, and in comes Dr. Burke, played by Isaiah Washington, and even without the last name I still would have called him a Poor Man's Denzel. Denzel offers up a bit of personal character develpment with his first line: "I heard we've got a wet fish on dry land." Well, yes, and we also have a seizure patient. Denzel says to shotgun her, and despite his earlier statement, he does not mean to throw her back into the water and shoot her. Nazi rattles off the tests that the Medlings need to run, with YangOh on labs, Lucky Charms on patient work-ups and Pompeous gets to take our patient for a CT scan, adding that "she's your responsibility now." Well, actually, Resident Nazi, she's yours, but you go ahead and keep scaring those interns. I'll wait. Izzy's all "wait, what about me?" The Nazi, on her way out of the room, decides to make Izzy pay for trying to stick her nose up the Nazi's ass by making her stick her finger up everyone else's ass. Rectal exams. Fun!

We're threatened with a montage of interns performing their various tasks, starting with Izzy's glove-snapping, finger-lubing fun, but are spared by the Nazi spotting YangOh peering into the OR currently occupied by Her Fuhrerness. Ignoring a number of protocols, the Nazi pulls down her face mask, opens the OR door to the hallway (hello, whatever happened to that room where you scrub in?) and finds out that the patient's labs all came back clean. However, YangOh obviously didn't come here to discuss labs, as she wants to know if it's true that every year the attending on call picks the best intern to do a procedure during the first shift. After that clusterfuck of patient care we just saw a minute ago when they first got the patient stabilised, I sure hope one of the Medlings doesn't get it. The Nazi stares her down and tells her to piss off, her eyes threatening shared rectal exam duties.

Our montage-ish continues with Lucky Charms doing patient workups with some dude about to get bypass surgery whose major complaint is that he doesn't get to eat bacon anymore. If that's all you can think about it's no wonder you need a bypass. Lucky Charms says after the surgery that Bacon Boy can have all the bacon-flavoured soy product he wants, which elicits a "kill me now" from his patient. With the heavy hand of irony looming over his head from the writers, Lucky Charms replies with "I wish I could, but I'm a healer." Heh. Pompeous, meanwhile, is in the elevator with Katie, our seizure patient, who despite having a major brain malfunction a few minutes ago is still smarter than Pompeous and can see that they're lost. Pompeous attempts to shut her up by asking how she's feeling, producing the opposite result as Katie goes all Lindsey Lohan on us and starts bitching about how she's missing her Spokane Teen Miss Beauty Pageant. Apparently she was in the top 10 after the first two rounds, and I bet if she could get those judges in to see her all supine and restrained in the hospital her position would improve even more. Or at least her position in the standings. She goes on to say that this was her year and that she could have won, as Pompeous wheels her past a big metal door. I'm thinking that's the morgue, and life would be a lot easier if she just wheeled the gurney through the door and forgot about it. Oh, there's a patient on it? My comment stands.

On the right floor, Lucky Charms and Izzy are also fucking up both of their respective tasks, with Denzel having to take over for Lucky Charms since he's going to turn his patient into a whiffle ball if he keeps sticking him with that needle in the wrong spot. Lucky Charms thinks that Denzel missed a lot when he was new, which prompts a threatening prison-shower-scene "we're going to have so much fun together." Oh yeah, and you sure do got a purdy mouth.

Seven hours into their shift, the Medlings are in the cafeteria. Izzy doesn't want to eat, since she just performed 17 rectal exams. At 24 minutes per exam, it's a wonder she hasn't been slapped with a malpractice suit already. I mean, it is America, and if I had someone up my ass for that long I'd expect them to at least do a ventriloquist act. Izzy complains that the Nazi hates her, which is true, but Lucky Charms claims to be in worse shape since he has attendings hating him. YangOh mercifully cuts off their getting-pissed-on contest with...wait...inbreeding? Apparently when you're the offspring of a doctor and you become a doctor, that makes you inbred. I thought these people have gone to school for 8 years? If you want to know about inbreeding, watch that X-Files episode. Inbreeding does not a doctor make. YangOh informs us that Pompeous's mom is none other than Ellis Grey, who in this little world is (according to Izzy) one of the "first big chick surgeons," again working wonders for that respect thing. Pompeous sits down and reflects my feelings towards her patient, except uses the word "Kevorkian" where I would have used "murder" in a sentence involving "if I hadn't taken the Hippocratic Oath" and "bare hands." The other interns at the table are shocked, because they only had to deal with Katie when she was seizing, and as it turns out she's much easier to handle then.

Denzel strolls up, all cock of the walk, and announces that YangOh had indeed heard correctly, he's the on-call attending and he gets to pick the best intern to do a procedure today. I guess all of the other interns that were in the plane before were captured and killed by the Nazis -- not the resident, the German kind -- since there's only a few of them at the table. No matter, our boy Lucky Charms, despite looking to spring a leak in his patient earlier, gets to scrub in on an appendectomy later on. Lucky Charms chokes on his food while the other interns try to remember if they kept their fingers crossed while taking the Oath. Bare hands don't sound like such a bad idea after all.

The Nazi's sassing Denzel out for picking Lucky Charms, since he barely made the cut to get into the program. Denzel explains his decision: terrorise one and the rest fall in line. That doesn't matter to the Nazi, since she thinks Lucky Charms is a puppy. I know I'm only 10 minutes in, but I'm inclined to agree, except puppies are generally cute and NOT creepy. Swticheroo shot from Denzel and the Nazi heading down the hall to Katie's parents, who walk into Katie's room and reassure their daughter like good parents do on television. Pompeous helpfully explains that Katie's been given a sedative for the "CT scan" (by which she means Katie's "verbal diarrhea") so that she'll be kind of out of it. Mom and Dad start asking complicated questions like "will she be ok?" and "does she need an operation?" which Pompeous balks at and starts to try to explain before begging off to find the Nazi. Since Denzel is no longer on the case, Katie has been transferred to the new attending, Dr. Sheppard. Pompeous looks over and sees that Dr. Sheppard is none other than Handsome Naked Derek. Awwwkward. He looks up and sees her trying to crawl into her labcoat before she runs away. The look on his face is a bit of "oh shit" mixed in with "me thinks I smell bragging rights."

Back from commercials, Handsome Naked Dr. Derek catches up with Pompeous and drags her into a nearby stairwell for a little sexual harrassment. But since we're on a network we don't get to see any of the goodies, so we'll have to be content with the verbal variety. Pompeous starts off with "Dr. Sheppard," but is cut off by the same with a whiny "but this morning it was Derek." Her Holier Than Thou Moral High Road speech continues with her obviousing that they should pretend it never happened. Handsome Naked Dr. Derek, who I never claimed was Smart, requires clarification if she's talking about sleeping with him or kicking his sexy ass out earlier that morning, because he's quite fond of both memories. Pompeous must have watched Men In Black recently, claiming that there "will be no memories." I guess her vibrator doubles as a neuroliser. If you're going to be a surgeon, you gotta multitask. Anyway, while I'm dreaming of stainless steel phalluses (phalli?), Pompeous is furthering her thesis on why they should Never Speak Of This Again by pointing out that she is no longer the girl in the bar, and he is no longer the guy in the bar. HNDD goes on the offensive, claiming Pompeous took advantage of him because he was drunk, vulnerable and good looking because of the red shirt he was wearing. And modest. Clearly he's not too offended, as he asks if she'd like to repeat the advantage-taking again on Friday night. What, doesn't anyone make dates for a Tuesday afternoon anymore? Pausing enough to let us know she's not too keen on saying no, she does just that and points out that he's an attending and she's his intern. We all know how well that whole Monika Lewinsky thing worked out, so what's the big deal here? I hear there's great money in the purse-making industry. And you don't have to worry about all those pesky malpractice suits that are sure to pop up. HNDD gets all leery, looking at her like he's seen her PomPeoms. Well, duh. Remember that sex? Deciding to end her trek to the top of Ethics Mountain (via the Morality Overpass), she curtly states that all of this sexy business is highly inappropriate and leaves, with HNDD looking appalled that she was able to resist his sexual prowess. Maybe if you put the red shirt back on you'd have better luck, dude.

We cut to Lucky Charms practicing for his next cult meeting and...oh, nope, sorry. He's in the OR, scrubbed in and repeating "open, identify, ligate, remove, irrigate, clamp" over and over. I wonder if the show is trying to tell us that he's nervous. Hell, you would be, too. Your first day, an attending standing over your shoulder and all of your colleagues watching from the [peanut] gallery. Said colleagues are clearly behind him all the way, immediately placing bets as to how he's going to fuck it up. One says that he'll faint, while another counters with "Code Brown, right in his pants." Heh. When I'm a parent, that's totally going to be my code word for a dirty diaper. I don't care if everyone else knows what it means, that shit is funny. Pun intended. Others are claiming he's going to flop-sweat himself unsterile -- which, no --, cry, total meltdown, etc. Pompeous clearly hasn't quite reached the summit of Ethics Mountain, and bets $50 he'll pull it off. "That's one of us down there, where's your loyalty," she non-asks. I'm not sure if this non-asking thing is going to be a trend for Ellen Pompeo, but I'm guessing it will be since asking a question usually involves inflection of the voice and quite frankly, if her pitch rose any more I think my ears would start to bleed. YangOh shows how much she gives a shit about Pompeous and her "leave no man behind unless you just slept with him" policy and bets $75 that Lucky Charms can't even identify the appendix. Well, that's the second thing on the list, so if he doesn't get that far I'd say he needs to go back to his first year of med school. It's not hard to identify, folks. Izzy tries to sound tough with "I'll take that action" but it comes across as forced. You know, because she's a model.

Denzel cock-of-the-walks into the OR and tells Lucky Charms to get to work. Lucky Charms asks the nurse for a scalpel, earning him cheers from the [peanut] gallery. Denzel tells them to STFU in so many words and Lucky Charms goes at it. He's doing pretty well, asking for sharp metal objects with which to dig around inside his patient. Somehow a guy from the [peanut] gallery is able to spot that Lucky Charms has opened the peritoneum, from 50 feet away and through an insision smaller than yo' mama's cootchie, eliminating this particular gambler from the run for the not-actually-present betting prize. Also, I would like to note that appendectomies are no longer done with a big gash across your abdomen, they're done lacroscopically, but I guess they couldn't have someone like Lucky Charms operate like that. Besides, it's likely just an excuse for the show to spill a little blood before the 15 minute mark. Our boy gets the appendix out, but it sounds like that was the easy part, as Denzel says he now needs to invert the stump into the cecum while pulling up on some purse strings without...and he breaks them. Congratulations, Lucky Charms, you ripped the cecum! Now your patient is bleeding and her abdominal cavity is, according to Denzel, "filling with stool." Open wounds and stool are an excellent combination, especially in abdominal cavities that are about to be sewn back up. Does the word "infection" mean anything to you? Lucky Charms is showing off the Newbie Badge he just sewed onto his Boy Scout Scrubs by panicking, and Denzel's gotta kick him out. A currently-unknown intern says "double-O seven" and walks out. Izzy's not the biggest Ian Flemming fan and acts as our Expositionist: "what's 007?" "License to kill," replies Pompeous. Everybody leaves and Lucky Charms looks sad. Perk up, kiddo, you were almost able to fulfill your earlier wish!

It's Hour 19, and our Medlings are in some dark hallway relaxing; Pompeous and YangOh are reading like good interns, while Izzy's doing yoga and Lucky Charms is moaning about how everyone's calling him 007. Hey man, as long as the ladies associate you with James Bond, you're going to have a way better chance than you do now. The other Medlings weakly attempt to convince Lucky Charms that no one's calling him 007, but he's not buying it, so I guess he's not a complete idiot. Pompeous gets a 9-1-1 page for Katie, our seizure patient from earlier, and takes a few seconds before remembering that 9-1-1 means VERY BAD and HURRY THE FUCK UP and takes off running. Well, the sort of plodding gait that really skinny girls have. Lucky Charms starts to think that may he should have gone into geriatrics, because nobody cares when you kill an old person. Except for their family and friends, but hey, they were old and it had to happen sometime, right? The nice, young, incompetent "doctor" was just helping to expediate the process. YangOh appropriately makes fun of people in geriatrics, saying it's for freaks who live with their mother and never have sex. Lucky Charms doesn't inside-voice that he has to get his own place, luckily sparing us the details of his non-existant sex life. At least, when one lives with his mother and never has a girl over, you gotta hope they aren't getting any.

Pompeous's just finished running up the stairs to Katie's floor and goes stomping down the hallway, yelling at people to get out of her way like the Nazi did earlier, but people actually care about what the Nazi says, so Pompeous almost bowls someone over. She gets to the room, where Katie is reading a fashion magazine and complaining that it took Pompeous long enough to get there. Apparently, our little Spokane Teen Miss Princess of the Goddamn Universe is bored, so she's taken it upon herself to seek entertainment from an intern. Well, it's not like Pompeous was doing anything important anyway. Katie goes on to bitch that if her rival walks away with her crown, that she has to see it on TV. But since the hospital doesn't get that channel, she wants Pompeous to call someone. What, do you want a webcast? Or would you prefer that they download it to your iPod? Pompeous attempts to put Katie in her place by pointing out that this is an actual hospital, she should go to sleep and stop wasting Pompeous's time, which I'm sure would be much better spent having HNDD leer at her some more so she can keep saying no. I bet that would be productive.

Aaaaaand it's the Nazi. But she's being nice to everyone right now: she's sleeping. I would have loved to see a bit of drool coming out of her mouth, but I guess the show isn't too keen on making me happy. We pan over to Izzy standing in the middle of the hallway and...wait, what the hell? The Nazi is just passed out on a gurney in the middle of the hallway? Rule number 6: don't sleep in the goddamn hallway. Jesus. There pretty much seems to be only two attendings and one resident in this entire hospital, so surely there must be a bed free. Hell, shack up with Denzel, it's the perfect tall guy-short girl scenario. He could just pick her up and oh god now I need to wash my brain. So Izzy's obviously needing to ask the Nazi something, but doesn't want to have to repeat all of the rectal exams she had to do earlier. Once is enough, but having someone crawl up in there twice in one day has to cross some sort of line. A nurse beside Izzy asks what she needs, who says that some junkie needs a central line. The nurse tells her to start one and immediately follows with mocking her because she doesn't know how and points out that she's gotta wake Sleeping Drooly up. Izzy does so, elliciting a fuck off in so many words. Rather than walking away like she normally would, Izzy sighs until the Nazi gets up and asks what the hell she wants. The Nazi puts in Izzy's central line and tells her that the next time she calls her, there'd better be a tag on this guy's toe. Doesn't that violate rule number 4? This woman is sending us mixed signals! Again, she doesn't seem to care if her patients live. Maybe she skipped the class where they took that silly Oath everyone's always talking about.

Goooooooood morning Seattle!!! Doesn't have the same ring to it, does it? The as-yet-unknown intern from earlier is berating a nurse that since she didn't go through four years of medical school, she clearly doesn't know that his patient needs antibiotics. Judging by this nurse, I'd say she's been at her job longer than the intern's been alive, so I'm thinking she's got your four years covered several times over, asshat. He walks over to Pompeous and continues his bitchfest, saying how much he hates nurses. I half-expect him to think Pompeous is a nurse, but since we're going to be seeing a bunch more of him, it's important that his testicles remain outside of his abdominal cavity. He introduces himself as Alex, and then...oh. He just called her a nurse. Fortunately for him and unfortunately for the gene pool, Katie picks this particular moment to page Pompeous again, who stalks off at a decidedly slower pace than last time. Once out of earshot, Alex asks a random intern if Pompeous is seeing anyone, since she is hot. Whatever you say, man. Lucky Charms decides to pipe up that he's friends with her, because clearly when two men are conversing in a testosterony way, the most prudent course of action for inserting yourself into said conversation is to make yourself look gay. Next time, try talking about her strapless sandals, too. Alex does us all a favour and tells Lucky Charms to stop talking. You know, I just might like this guy after all.

Pompeous is meandering up the stairs towards Katie's room, but upon exiting the stairwell she notices that the hallway is abuzz. For some reason, a few nurses grab things and run in the opposite direction of Katie's room, but I suppose they needed to busy up the scene a bit. Pompeous runs into the room where a nurse yells at her that Katie is having "multiple grand mal seizures." All at once? How does that work? Our heroine, if you could call her that, panics, like you do, and asks the same stupid question over and over. "Did you page HNDD?" What, you want some nooky NOW? You got bad timing, lady. I know it's a great stress relief, but I think you got some shit to take care of, first. The actress playing Katie has decided that she's had enough poorly acting out a grand mal seizure and stops her heart. Sigh, if only. Code Blue, crash cart, charging to 200, clear, boom, still no pulse, you know, the basics. If you've ever watched ER you've seen this segment about 100 times. And not once have I ever seen even a remotely realistic kick from a patient. When someone gets hit with those defibriliator paddles, that's a lot of voltage running through them. They BOUNCE. Anyway, the nurse points out that after 60 seconds of cardiac arrest you're supposed to administer another drug, but Pompeous, looking to squeeze her way into the sequel of the not-so-popular Jamie Foxx flick, Breaks All The Rules and demands the nurse charge to 300 again. She hits Katie with the zapper, whose heart starts. Aaaaand here comes HNDD. Good timing! He asks what the hell happened, which is explained and earns Pompeous a verbal kick in the ass. "You were supposed to be monitoring her." HNDD kicks Pompeous out of the room, who looks all pissy like she's not going to have sex with him. At least until this shift is over.

Pompeous walks out of the room and runs into the Nazi who is...also walking. The Nazi bitches her out that Pompeous should have called her immediately when she got the 9-1-1 page, and that Pompeous's patient is the Nazi's patient and her ass is on the line, too. So why the hell is the Nazi walking like she doesn't care if the patient kicks it? Oh, right. She doesn't. Pompeous, properly chastised, wanders out through the hospital past YangOh, whose keen Woman Sense tells her that something's up. In the most accurate scene in the first 21 minutes of this show, Pompeous wanders outside into a torrential downpour, and the Seattle Trifecta is completed. S.A.D. anyone? Once outside, Pompeous makes a bee-line for some bushes and promptly paints them in technicolour, complete with hangy-stringy bits from her mouth. Awesome. YangOh watches silently, and Pompeous threatens that if she tells anyone, ever, that Pompeous won't have sex with her, either. Ok, she didn't say that.

Hour 24! Keefer walks off into the...wait...wrong show. HNDD is getting a new asshole bored for him by Katie's parents, since about all HNDD can say to Papa Kat's questions is "I don't know." Understandably, this is a little upsetting to hear, so Papa Kat bitches some more about how Seattle Grace is supposed to be the best hospital in Washington, and that that's his kid in there. Well, I guess we can scratch the paternity test off Katie's chart, the guy seems pretty sure about that one. Mama Kat stands there and looks sad. HNDD stands there and nods. Wow, giving bad news is easy! Papa Kat continues his tirade and says he wants another doctor, since HNDD is clearly not working hard enough because he doesn't have any answers yet. He might if he hadn't just spent the last half an hour having angry You Almost Killed My Patient Sex with Pompeous in the stairwell.

Cut to Denzel reassuring our Bacon-Flavoured Soy Product guy that he's very good at what he does, and that despite the fact that it's still surgery and hence there are risks, it's a relatively simple procedure. He actually comes off as a decent guy when having to deal with patients. I guess he just saves all of his shit up in a big jar every week so he can dump it on his interns. Lucky Charms comes along and blows some smoke up Denzel's ass to the patient, retracting his earlier statement that "[he hears] Denzel is good" and replacing it with "he is good." Lucky Charms then goes ahead and breaks the cardinal doctor rule with some help from the patient's worry-wart wife: never promise a patient is going to be ok. Silly, silly boy. You just condemned that man to death, and all he did was eat a shit-load of bacon.

Our Medlings are all gathered in a small room with the rest of the interns, where YangOh is practicing sutchers on a banana. She can practice procedures on my banana any day, just not, you know, SURGICAL ones. Lucky Charms laughs at her until she pulls the 007 card, but he doesn't care because he just comforted a family and gets to hang out in the OR. HNDD strolls into the room and says that he normally doesn't do this, but he needs the interns' help. Katie's a mystery to him, since she's having grand mal seizures with no known cause. He says she's going to die if he doesn't make a diagnosis, which is where the interns come in. He wants them to figure out what's going on with Katie, and sweetens the pot by saying that whomever finds the answer will get to scrub in on the procedure that Katie will likely have to go through because this is a show about scapel jockeys. The Nazi throws a bunch of copies of Katie's file on the table and the interns climb over each other to grab one. I suppose every second counts when you're going to be ignoring your other patients.

Speaking of which, Alex is griping to the nurse about how he doesn't care if the antibiotics he [mistakenly] prescribed to his "ancient" patient earlier aren't working because he has a chance to scrub in on a patient who wasn't alive during the civil war. Obviously Alex didn't spend any quality time with Katie while she was conscious, he might just change his mind. Pompeous walks by and YangOh catches up to proposition her. But since gay marriage isn't legal in the state of Washington, she disguises it as offering to work together with Pompeous to figure out Katie's problem. Pompeous doesn't want the surgery because she doesn't want to work with HNDD, and offers to give it to YangOh if their Survivor Alliance wins the race. YangOh is curious, but back-stabbing enough to take the deal. That whole scene reeked of the Gilmore Girls. Too much dialogue crammed into too little time. If they keep this up I might start calling them Rory and Lorelai.

In the library, interns are looking at things on the shelves because they don't have anything better to do. Like look after patients. YangOh and Pompeous are sitting in the stacks, with YangOh going alpha male and medibabbling a bunch of crap off that I won't bother listing. Basically, everything's clean and nothing's wrong with the patient. Except for the seizure thing. Oh, and YangOh still wants to know whey Pompeous wants nothing to do with HNDD. YangOh only knows him as HDD, but doesn't make the 3.5" floppy connection. YangOh asks again, making it an even three times she's asked, and like Mustafa, Pompeous cannot say no once asked three times. She tells YangOh not to say anything, make a face or react in any way, then spills the sexy beans. YangOh goes 1 for 3 and says "what about an aneurysm?" Smooth. She starts back on her differential diagnosis then breaks down and asks if the now upgraded HNDD was good. Well I'm certainly not going to tell YangOh my secrets anytime soon. She can't keep a promise worth a damn. Neither can Lucky Charms (spoiler!), though, so maybe I just shouldn't trust doctors. Pompeous non-deftly avoids YangOh's questions by worrying what will happen if no one comes up with anything to figure out what's wrong with Katie. YangOh helps our short-bus viewers along with "you mean if she dies?" Pompeous thinks its sad that Katie won't ever get to turn into a person, and that the best thing about her is going to be almost winning Miss Teen Whatever. Better than being known as the Miss Teen Whiny Brat, I guess. They start making fun of Katie for liking rhythmic gymnastics, because that's what you do to make yourself feel better that your patient is dying, and Pompeous gets an idea. They take off.

The catch up with HNDD getting into an elevator and YangOh blurts out that Katie competes in beauty pageants. HNDD says he already knows that but they have to save her life anyway. Hee! YangOh starts blurting out reasons why Katie doesn't have an aneurysm, but then asks what if she had one anyway. I'm sure everyone on the elevator with HNDD are really enjoying this little interuption. She starts yammering about how Katie fell and hurt her ankle a while back, and that the doctor didn't even care enough to mention it to her during the history. Wait, Pompeous has been the intern with Katie this whole time, why did YangOh take the history? Anyway, HNDD bursts their bubble by saying that the chances that a minor fall could burst an aneurysm are one in a million as the doors shut in the Medlings faces. Well, so much for that idea...oh, here he comes to find out if Katie's one in a million. Awww, that HNDD. Is there anything he won't do to watch pretty young interns scrub in? We next see Detectives Dick, hOhlmes and Meredith, PI in the control room of some fancy scanner that's showing blood flow through the major arteries in Katie's brain. Yar, there be hemorrhaging in thar! HNDD says he'll be damned. Yes, yes he will.

HNDD thanks the two Medlings for doing his job for him, and despite his desire to kiss their asses (I wouldn't put anything else past him, either), he's off to tell Katie's parents that they're idiots and should have listened to him when he said he was working hard to figure out what was going on with their daughter. Or at least they should have listened to the working hard part, not the part where it was actually him working hard. YangOh pipes up that he said he was going to take someone in to scrub up, and since he can only take one of them, he's taking Pompeous. YangOh looks at her expectantly, waiting for her to pipe up and say that she can't work with HNDD because instead of holding a vital clamp or something, she'll be thinking about clamping his vital and obviously that can't bode well for the patient. Pompeous is all shocked and dismayed and completely silent as HNDD walks off. YangOh glares at her like Pompeous just read her diary and stomps in the other direction. Harumph!

Denzel's working on Bacon Boy while Lucky Charms stands in the scrub room watching. Then he's in the hallway. Then he's back in the scrub room, but now he has a juice box. From the brief window into this hospital I've seen, they need to change a few things. One, first-day interns should not have life-or-death patients. Two, no sleeping on gurneys in the hallway. Three, no fucking juice boxes in the scrub room. Jesus. While Lucky Charms is doing a crossword, everyone in the OR is running around like someone's...oh. Bacon Boy is dying. Denzel's got the defib paddles that go right onto the open heart and is givin' 'er, but to no avail. Since there's some crappy music blaring at us, he's forced to over-enunciate "time of death" so we understand that Bacon Boy just Bit the Bullet. Apparently his heart was too messed up for the bypass or whatever, so Denzel "had to let him go." It's not like releasing a crow you found on the side of the road with a broken wing and nurtured back to health. This was a human being that just died. You didn't let him go. He died. Denzel says this is the worst part of the game. STOP REFERRING TO THIS LIKE IT'S A GAME. Lucky Charms looks devastated, since he promised Bacon Boy's wife that he'd be fine. Oops! Denzel leans on him that you don't promise shit like that, especially when it's not your case. According to Denzel, the only one who can keep a promise like that is God, who apparently hasn't been showing up to work lately. He's none too pleased with Lucky Charms and makes him go tell the wife that she's a widow. Ouch.

Izzy and YangOh are downstairs again, where YangOh is ripping the label off a water bottle. You know, I've heard that people who do this aren't getting enough sex. If I may be so bold, YangOh, I...I could help you. You don't need to rip labels anymore, baby. Sssshhhh. It's ok. I'm here for you. Pompeous shows up and tells YangOh that she'll tell HNDD that she changed her mind. YangOh guilt trips that she doesn't need any favours. Non-sexual favours, anyway. She gives Pompeous a one-way ticket on the Guilt Express and says that she did a cut-throat thing and has to deal with it, even if it makes her feel all bad in her warm gooey places. Um... She twists the knife that she supposedly got stabbed with into Pompeous some more by saying she doesn't get picked for surgeries because she slept with her boss and she didn't get into med school because she has a famous mother, some of us earn what we get. Well, she just got a cold shoulder from Pompeous, who walked away without another word. You've gotta come up with a better comeback than that, or else this show is going to be boring.

Lucky Charms peeks around the corner to see Bacon Boy's wife, who is just meeting what appears to be a couple of family members. This just keeps getting better for Lucky Charms. Remember how things were going so well for him? He tells the wife and family that Bacon Boy had some complications during surgery, and that his heart had a lot of damage. The wife goes straight for her own stages of death, since her husband didn't get to, and steers herself headlong into Denial. It's short-lived, as she shifts gears to Anger and tells Lucky Charms to piss off. Something tells me her reaction wouldn't be a whole lot different if Lucky Charms hadn't promised everything would be ok, but who am I to question.

Meanwhile, HNDD is shaving the right side of Katie's head for the surgery. Oh no, now she'll NEVER be Miss Teen Whatever. Not learning Lucky Charms's lesson, HNDD says that he promised he'd make her look cool. But since she's unconscious he makes fun of her because apparently, being a bald beauty queen is the worst thing to happen in the history of the world. Pompeous asks if he chose her for the surgery because she slept with him. Sure did. Oh, he was kidding. Sort of. He says that she's Katie's doctor, and on her first day with blah blah blah and blah blah blah she helped save Katie's life. HNDD says that the fact that they had sex shouldn't get in the way of taking her shot. Yeah, since she already took his shot. What, too soon?

Lucky Charms and Pompeous are sitting outside commiserating about how they should have taken other professions. She gives him some inspiring crap about how her mommy didn't want her to go to med school, but dammit she did anyway. Lucky Charms asks if they're going to survive this. Pompeous doesn't answer. That's the best response she's given all episode.

Alex is back in the hospital, talking with Webber, the Chief of Surgery, about his patient that he prescribed antibiotics to. Webber asks if Alex got medibabble this and medibabble that, to which Alex replies in the affirmative. Webber asks what he saw from those test results, which Alex obviously didn't look at because he was trying to either get in on Katie's surgery or boink that nurse he was berating earlier. I'd totally bet he's into MILFs. Webber asks Alex what the most common causes of post-op fever are, and of course because douche bags don't have brains, he can't answer without looking in some book he carries in his lab coat. Webber shouts it out so that any conscious patients in the room get a sense of just how incompetent his doctors are, and no one can answer without looking at their books except Pompeous. She rats Alex out by saying that pneumonia is easy to assume, especially if you're too busy to do the tests. Webber asks Pompeous what she would do, and after channelling her textbooks, Webber orders Alex to do what the nice lady says and then tell his resident to kick him off the case. As Webber's walking off, he says Pompeous is the spitting image of her mother. He then welcomes her to the game. That had fucking better be the last time.

Pompeous walks into Katie's surgery, where HNDD says it's a beautiful night to save lives, and "let's have some fun." That's why the anaesthesiologist puts the patient out before the doctor gets there, I guess. Don't want to scare them that fun will be had with their unconscious body. Also, someone needs to get Pompeous a mask that fits. It's way too big on her face, making her look even scrawnier than she already is. We get a voice-over from Pompeous the VOL that she can't think of any reason why she'd want to be a surgeon, but can think of a ton of why she should quit. So can I, but then it'd be Lucky Charms's Anatomy, and no one's going to watch THAT. She says they make it hard on purpose (no shit), and that there comes a moment when it's more than just a [non-game]. She could quit, but she loves the [totally not talking about a game, here].

After the surgery, Pompeous's sitting in the hall and YangOh stops by. YangOh says they don't have to do the thing where she says something then Pompeous says something then someone cries and they have a moment. Well thank god for small mercies. YangOh tells Pompeous to get some sleep, she looks like crap, to which Pompeous retorts "I look better than you." Seriously, she needs to go to Comeback School. YangOh says it's not possible, to which I'm inclined to agree. And with that they're A-OK. HNDD walks out of the OR and starts doing up some paperwork. After about 10 seconds of Pompeous trying to burn a hole through his sexy head with her stare, she pipes up: "that was amazing." "What, the sex? I know," HNDD doesn't respond. She gushes about how it's such a high to be standing over the operating table, and that it's nothing like practicing on cadavers. She wonders why anyone does drugs. Um, because they're cheaper and easier than becoming a doctor? I'm just guessing. HNDD sighs in a leery sort of way and then says that he should "go do this," causing thousands of women and gay men to change their names to This. He takes off, with her chasing him with "see ya's" and pouty Renee Zellweger lips.

It's the end of their shift, and the Medlings are all heading home. Pompeous VO's that "you'd like them...I think," speaking to who we will later learn is her mother. She's also not going to sell the house, and get a couple of roommates. Now she's sitting with her mom, who asks Pompeous if she's the doctor. Her 5th-grade comeback education lets her squeak out a "no, I'm not your doctor, but I am a doctor." Mama Grey asks what Pompeous's name is, which doesn't even take a pre-school education so even Pompeous can pull this one off. Mama Grey thinks she used to be a doctor, and Pompeous replies that, yes, yes she was. She was a surgeon. Just like me! Mom, you're not watching. MOOMMM!! YOU'RE NOT WATCHING!!! Oh, you have Alzheimer's. Right.

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