So here we are at the end of the first half of the season, and I find I’m much more invested in this show than I anticipated. Yeah, I’m not unaware of its failings, most of them related to the technical side of things, but I find I’m responding well to the very decompressed storytelling, the slow character arcs, the relaxed pace. It’s not ‘ohmigod the Prosthetic Forehead Aliens of planet Cliché VII are going to destroy civilization’ ever week, nor is it ‘ohmigod, the Prosthetic Forehead Aliens of planet Tedium X need to learn an important lession about life, taught in the most didactic way possible.’ Instead, it’s more workaday. I just sorta’ like that.
A lot of websites decried this series as “chick stuff’ or “Grey’s Anatomy in Space,” and the advance word was, of course, that this show was intended as a sort of “Gateway drug” to get women hooked on SF. I don’t know if that’s true or not, and I don’t know if it’s worked or not (I assume it wouldn’t), but I think a much more useful - and possibly unintentional - aspect of the show is that it might serve to introduce some of the more stereotypical male members of the audience (Trekies, I’m looking at you) to the concept that human drama isn’t a bad or scary or shameful thing, and that if you can fit it in with the gee gosh wow stuff, it just makes things better all around. So, if it’s intended as “SF 101” for chicks, or “Emotions 101” for mouth breathing dudes, I find I don’t really care either way, I’m just kind of digging the show.
That said, tonight was a pretty hard episode for me to watch, and I could definitely see a younger version of my self abandoning this series for ever after what they did tonight, but we’ll get to that below.
PLAY BY PLAY
2047
After stringing us along for two and a half weeks, Zoe takes the abortion pill. As fate and politically motivated scripts would have it, she happens to take it on the day that the cadets are doing a training section on trauma. They’re taken to a hospital and divied up in to groups. Some of the old timers take bets on when the notoriously vasovagal Donner will puke or black out. Paula and Wassenfelder are assigned to watch a druggie taking some new untraceable designer chemical, so they do, and of course they get to bickering, she calls him a poser, he calls her a religious fanatic. Wassenfelder gets along swell with the druggie, but Paula clearly has no sympathy for the guy.
Donner and Evram end up getting involved in a gunshot wound case, which the resident surgeon is botching because there’s so little gun violence in the future that he doesn’t know what to do. As the victim codes, Evram just takes over the surgery, and Donner assists, and he doesn’t pass out, though he’s clearly only barely holding it together.
The druggie codes, and the doctor can’t bring him back, but Paula won’t let it slide and does CPR on the guy for a while, just because there’s a chance. Claire, meanwhile, asks Evram out for a drink, and he says ‘yeah.’
Jen and Zoe don’t do much important, but Zoe talks to a pregnant doctor lady about regrets and choices (sigh), and the doctor excuses Zoe because she isn’t feeling well. Donner leaves, too. He gets to talking to her about a pig his uncle slaughtered when he was a kid, and therefore he can’t stand the sight of blood, and Zoe passes out, obviously in great pain. Donner picks her up and carries her back in to the hospital, where they immediately give her care, and Jen immediately fesses up to the pregnant doctor lady that Zoe took an abortion pill. AJ overhears this, but says he won’t betray her, and when things are better, he goes to tell Donner everything is ok.
When Zoe wakes up, Eve is there, telling she’s had an emergency hysterectomy, and that the cover story will be “you had a cyst that burst, and we removed it.” Everything is all nicely covered up.
2052
Evram is taking a blood sample from Donner, and having trouble doing it. It takes him six tries to hit the vein, and even though Paula was bugging him, that ain’t right. He tells Donner it’s a weird reaction of his pain meds for his back, lying, of course. Jen,
Yeah, well, I guess what I really expected was that they wouldn't bother to lie about something no one cared about anyway.
"We're taking the show off the air, but we'll bring it back six months from now, we promise." (Lie)
"We're taking the show off the air because we were just burning off episodes anyway, and no one is watching it" (Truth)
The Artist Formerly Known As Republibot 3.0