Battle Of The Hospital-Integrating Doctors

Who did it first?

DEPENDS ON YOUR PERSPECTIVE. Sure, we saw Bill Masters take a position at Buell Green Hospital in the Masters Of Sex episode that aired August 3, 2014 -- almost a week before Algernon Edwards arrived at The Knick in its eponymous show's series premiere on August 8, 2014. But since Dr. Edwards arrived in New York in 1900, didn't he technically beat Dr. Masters by, like, close to sixty years?

Winner: Fine: Bill.

Who's got more impressive credentials?

I'm sure Hamilton College and the University of Rochester Medical School, which Bill attended, are both perfectly fine schools. They're no Harvard, to say nothing of all the joints in Europe where Algernon was trained as a surgeon. I mean: Europe. Where they make all the fancy shoes!

Winner: Algernon.

Who has to overcome tougher circumstances in order to be effective at work?

Certainly, a significant portion of Masters Of Sex thus far has given us the full portrait of what Bill was struggling with. Personally: childhood abuse culminating in abandonment by his parents; a strained marriage; a child he wants nothing to do with; a burning love for his cool, seemingly indifferent colleague. Professionally: the scorn of his peers; prurient interest in what he's trying to make a respectable study of sex; patient attrition now that he's working out of a black hospital. Things have been better for old Bill Masters.

But you know where Bill wakes up in the morning? In a clean, comfortable suburban house with his cute convertible parked in the driveway. Unlike Algernon, Bill doesn't live in a run-down hotel in a red-light district. Unlike Algernon, Bill doesn't have to stand in line with menacing strangers to use the bathroom. And unlike Algernon, Bill wakes up next to his pretty wife and not a cockroach.

Winner: Algernon. Although: it should be noted that Bill wakes up next to his pretty wife in their twin beds; at least Algernon and his cockroach can snuggle.

Who has the more supportive patron?

Both Algernon and Bill are in the uncomfortable position of being the odd man out, racially speaking, in the hospitals where they work, and in both cases, this is no accident: both Bill's boss Dr. Hendricks at Buell Green and Cornelia Robertson, an influential board member at The Knick, pushed to hire their respective racial pioneers as a conscious effort to integrate their institutions.

Patients and fellow physicians alike are generally pretty shitty about this project in both 1959 and 1900, which is why it's all the more important for each of the new hires to feel supported by the person who brought him in to a tense and difficult situation. Cornelia plays hardball on behalf of Algernon, withholding funds to electrify The Knick unless he's brought aboard to be the Deputy Chief of Surgery, and while she doesn't get a chance in the second episode to address the fact that Algernon's been put in an "office" in the basement that's more of a junk pile, one assumes she hasn't forgotten. Meanwhile, after hiring Bill and Virginia for the Obstetrics department and allocated resources for them to continue their sex study there...whoops, he's the one who's been pulling down Virginia's flyers and thus sabotaging her attempts to recruit new subjects to the study!

Winner: Algernon.

Who's more socially conscious?

I guess Bill is doing his best, more or less, given that his picture could illustrate an encyclopedia entry on "white privilege." He's open to the idea of having black subjects in the study and categorically rejects Virginia's suggestion that the results they record should be organized by race, and finding out that his mentor is a closeted gay man has pushed Bill's thinking forward on the subject of same-sex attraction and relationships. He's even advocated a feminist sex-positive attitude to a patient whose parents had written her off as a hopeless nymphomaniac. But his initial response to being told by Hendricks that he's expected to be part of a civil rights revolution at Buell Green is dismissiveness on the grounds that it's not his fight (until Hendricks basically tells him it's not optional), and without giving away things that occur in the next episode...Bill gets backed into a corner and doesn't acquit himself well.

So let's say this one goes to Algernon, whose response to seeing an African-American patient turned away from The Knick due to her race is to tidy up and organize his basement hovel with an eye to detail and commodiousness that would give Martha Stewart a wide-on; turn it into a secret clinic for black patients; personally track down the woman he saw; and spend his evening treating her injury, presumably for free. Did I mention the organizing? Excuse me, I have to go watch that montage again. ...Oh yeah, Algernon, you line up those instruments!!!

Winner: Algernon.

Who's better at fighting?

Though Bill has talked A LOT about his formative years as a pugilist, we've only seen him in one scrap this season, and I'm not sure Doug Greathouse or any of the wiener doctors he brought along to watch a woman masturbate was that hard for Bill to defeat.

Algernon strategically lets his shoe-envying neighbour rough him up a bit before taking him down as efficiently as the fastidious arrangement of his basement clinic would lead one to expect. AND IT'S JUST AS HOT.

Winner: Algernon.

Who's the classier fighter?

Algernon quietly sets out medical supplies for his beaten opponent to clean up his wounds. Bill shoves an egg roll in a guy's mouth.

Winner: Algernon.

Verdict

Both Algernon and Bill have been conscripted into racial integration efforts they might not quite think the world is ready for. Even though things were apparently a lot easier for Algernon in Europe, he's willing to eat shit at The Knick so that he can learn from a true surgical innovator -- which, on top of all of the above, is a better reason for him to be where he is than Bill's, which could be summarized as "fucked up all other opportunities and ended up here, with a gigantic chip on my shoulder."

Winner: Algernon.