Bitter Pills

When done badly -- usually in hack comedies -- a period setting is a license for writers to make "jokes" that are basically just references for the audience to snicker at out of recognition. The Wedding Singer, an undifferentiated stew of '80sness, was the nadir of this genre until The Goldbergs came along. But sometimes even respectable dramas lean on the dramatic irony inherent in a period setting to let the viewer feel smug, like when Sterling Cooper was scrambling to land the account for Nixon's presidential campaign in Mad Men's first season, or this season on Boardwalk Empire when Nucky had his meet-cute with...Joe Kennedy! What's made The Knick more gripping to me than either of those is that it's not just a show that takes place in 1900; it's a show that takes place in 1900 in a hospital. So when these characters fuck up, the stakes are a little higher than just being on the wrong side of history with regard to promoting cigarettes.

Maybe watching the show is different for people who have a better grasp on medical history than I -- so, just about any adult. But there have been lots of times when I've had to google things like "antibiotics when invented." (For future reference: they're on their way, and not soon.) I happen to know a couple of women who've almost died in childbirth in the last few years -- don't worry: they're fine now, and so are their children! -- so the placenta previa disaster in the series premiere didn't feel, to me, like a relic of our ignorant past, but the curiosity in the finale about why blood transfusions often fail was something I hadn't even thought of. Progress will be made because smart people think to ask the right questions, and because the smartest people figure out the right experiments to answer them. And the season is bookended with two daring treatments that result in two fatal outcomes, because...that's part of the process too.

For a show that started out seeming like another Complicated Great Man story, in fact, women's bodies have sneakily become its real area of exploration (...um, as it were), which is also underlined in the finale. Cornelia discovers Sister Harriet's secret when she gets back her body from its unexpected hitchhiker -- just in time to marry a man whose father has already indicated that he has his own plans for it. Barrow's best girl sells her time to one man, then climbs off him at the direction of another so that a cockpunch may be administered. And both Eleanor Gallinger and an anonymous Knick patient are coerced or commandeered into the service of medical experimentation and/or quackery: maybe Lillian's tooth extraction won't kill her the way Thack's attempt at a blood transfusion does his patient, but if Lillian's doctor goes ahead with the rest of his treatment plan, the removal of her colon might?

And speaking of the Complicated Great Man story, I feel like I can't be the only one to have found Thack increasingly tiresome as the season progressed. I suppose that was the point -- he's a drug addict; they're not supposed to be a fun hang. But opposing him with a character like Edwards has been both exhilarating and frustrating for us to watch, much as Edwards's time at the Knick has been as an experience for him. Edwards may be just as brilliant as Thack, but with a more highly tuned sense of moral obligation, and he's had to fight like a motherfucker to get everything he has in life (and continues fighting, with strangers, because the consequences are minimal -- or have been to date, anyway -- and because his real foes, both human and conceptual, are harder to punch). Like all the best dramatic dyads, Thack and Edwards are identical (driven doctors who can't countenance professional roadblocks) and opposite (white vs. black; celebrated vs. barely tolerated; abusive vs. romantic). The evolution of their relationship has given the show its spark, and yet the more we learn about both characters, the more Thack seems like a crybaby. Aw, you wanted to work harder so you started taking stay-up drugs and now you can't quit? Aw, a lady you liked married another dude and when she came back it was after her nose fell off? POOR YOU.

In the end, Thack is finally made to see that he's come to a crisis point and has to try to change his life, and for the first time we see him on the other side of the bed, as it were. As a privileged, presumably fairly wealthy white man, he gets the dignity of checking into a private hospital under a false name. He even gets promised that his treatment will be conducted without his having to feel the discomfort of withdrawal, because good old Bayer has made a medicine that will mitigate his symptoms. But being a patient in this world means putting your trust in the people whose lab coats seem to confer confidence, authority, and wisdom. Thack's detox doctor is just as certain of his course of treatment for Thack as Thack has been with all his patients -- and sometimes, Thack has even been right! But sometimes that certainty has been misplaced, and maybe Thack's doctor's is too?