The Knick: Working Late a Lot review

Only three episodes left, and it feels like everyone at the Knickerbocker Hospital is careening toward disaster. Thack and his addiction. Lucy and her infatuation with her boss. Edwards and his ambition. Edwards and Robertson having sexy time. Robertson’s future father in law wanting sexy time with her. Gallinger and his incompetence. Sister Harriet and her abortions. The weasely administrator and his flea infested hookers. And then you have the Knick itself, teetering on the precipice between modernization and bankruptcy.

I love the slow burn Soderbergh has us roasting at. Thack no longer seems like the devil he was in the series premier. His rough edges have been sanded down, ever so slightly. He isn’t just a raging narcissist. He cares; about his staff, his lover, and possibly even his patients. Most of all, he cares that the Knick has run out of cocaine.

It looks like a most inconvenient war in the Philippines is disrupting production.

Oh dear. Withdrawal is a bitch and someone is starting to get mighty twitchy. But Thack isn’t upset for himself, he is upset for the patients. Don’t you know how much he cares about the patients? He cares. Twitch, twitch. He cares, damn it!

I did not realize Clive Owen could look unattractive. He can.

He looks like a sweaty wreck. Lucy manages to scrounge up three little vials of cocaine. Enough to get twitchy through his hernia lecture and the following presentation on the latest laparoscopic surgical technique (an illuminating intrascope, which allows the surgeon to see inside a body with minimal invasive cutting). Minimal cutting = more awesome.

While at the lecture, Bertie’s father lobbies Thack to fire his son, so that Bertie can go work for a more lucrative, less frantic, Jewish doctor. The horror! So nice of Bertie’s father to take such an interest in destroying his son’s current career.

Speaking of horror, Gallinger and Sister Harriet force Mrs. Gallinger to take in an orphaned baby girl, Grace. Because making a traumatized mother who just lost her child hold another baby is a super good idea. It must be some new kind of infant shock treatment. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Gallinger is a wee resistant to the new baby. Gallinger comes home to find that Grace has been locked in the parlor all day while his wife knits hats for their dead daughter. Oh, this is going to end well.

And the best news so far is that not only are Edwards and Robertson continuing their illicit interracial affair, Robertson is actually going to Edward’s boarding house for sexy time, under the pretense of working late. Did I mention that things felt as though they were spiraling out of control? That is because there are always consequences and sooner or later they catch up to you.

As the weasel is coming to learn. He goes to Robertson for more money for the Knick, but his timing is off. Those ships going down in the Philipines? They belong to Robertson. And the loss of his cargo has put him in no mood to pony up the dough for the weasel. The Catholic Church won’t give him the money. Where oh where is he supposed to come up with some spare cash? Easy. Fire some staff.

Too bad he can’t even suspend twitchy, who is completely incapable of operating at this point. Poor twitchy. With no cocaine in sight, he is only going to plummet farther down the rabbit hole.

@AtTheKnick Fun Fact: Typhoid Mary carried the disease, but didn’t show any symptoms.

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