The Knick: Working Late A Lot
October 3, 2014 10:08 PM - Season 1, Episode 8 - Subscribe

Thackery does drugs. Typhoid Mary goes to trial. Bertie's father pressures Thackery. Barrow goes looking for money.

This wasn't a very enthralling episode. There's a lack of forward momentum as the characters rehash where they've been and who they are.

Thackery does drugs and sleeps with Nurse Elkins. He's suffering withdrawals but his opium den is still an alternate fix. Elkins gets pouty when Thackery leaves bed to work instead of focusing on her. Despite having seen the cocaine-addicted, highly focused, arrogant, dismissive, and woman-chasing (then leaving) side of Thackery, she is dismayed at his behavior. Idiot.

Typhoid Mary is released from quarantine on a judge's orders so she's back to infecting people.

Barrow needs more money (presumably to line his pocket) so when Mr. Robertson refuses, he ends up firing two black workers for false reasons and denies them both wages and references. The more things change. . .

Gallagher's wife refuses to accept her kid is dead or to accept the adopted baby her husband forces on her. She just ignores the baby but frankly I expected her to outright kill the kid so there's hope for her yet?

Bertie's dad tells Thackery he'd rather his son be almost anywhere else than at the Knick with Thackery. This appears to bother Thackery on some level. Who knew his ego was that fragile?

The only real revelation is that Cornelia and Algernon have been sleeping together. Cornelia is sexy and confident in bed in manner that Elkins completely lacks. Could be intentional, who knows. Anyway, while they're a great couple, this will not end well for C&A. Good luck you crazy kids.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden (1 comment total)
 
Just WOW. The dramaturgy and narrative depth of this series is astounding. Take it from someone who serves with people who use drugs, Thack's cocaine withdrawal looks like cocaine withdrawal; his opium withdrawal looks like opium withdrawal. The snozberries taste like snozberries.

Barrow, despite his crookedness, really demonstrates some of the most infuriating aspects of nonprofit and charity work. A just society would not force us to beg for crumbs, groveling before morally-ambiguous industrialists, but this is exactly the case today.

It would be interesting if Gallinger's wife were eventually to be committed, giving us a beautiful character arc exploring the history of psychiatry. The look of concern on the Sister's face foreshadows this impending plotline in its implication that she thinks Gallinger's wife will do the child harm.

The Cornelia/Algernon scenes were beautiful and really made me think about what interiors looked like back when we relied on oil and kerosene to bring us light. Wallpaper dances as flame projects onto it. And of course electricity has not projected into the poorer section of the city of the city where Algernon lives (just as it is only recently come to the Knick in a wave of New York gentrification that has moved out past Brooklyn by our modern era.
posted by The White Hat at 6:25 PM on October 5, 2014


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