From Foes To Frenemies: The Cleary And Sister Harriet Story

When two TV characters seem not to be able to get through a scene together without tartly bandying insults back and forth, it usually means we're being softened up to the idea of seeing them fall into bed at some point in the future. So it's been weird, through the early going of this first season of The Knick, to see those kinds of barbs traded by two characters we can probably be faaaaaairly sure aren't headed toward sex: midwife/nun Sister Harriet, and ambulance driver Cleary. Maybe when they first met, she was still able to maintain a beatific, Christlike attitude toward him, and he was still able to treat her with a modicum of respect for her vocation, if nothing else. But if that was ever the case, they're both well settled, now, into declarations of mutual animosity studded with swears. I MEAN WILL THESE TWO EVER FIND ANY COMMON GROUND?

Cut to this week's episode, in which these two find common ground.

What I love about the plot reveal that, in her spare time, Sister Harriet uses her midwife skills to end pregnancies -- illegally, but safely -- is how it places her character in the tradition of real, hell-raising nuns. Even pre-Pope Francis, the Catholic church was supposed to be a force for social justice, but priests don't tend to have the kind of fire, at least in public, that nuns do (literally) today. Granted, the question of abortion is a thorny one even for those who haven't pledged their lives to a faith that still officially prohibits contraception across the board and that considers life to start at conception, BUT there are still pro-choice nuns who argue for a woman's free will to take precedence over the viability of a fetus. If that's still true now (you said a mouthful, sign), it makes sense that someone who works with tenement residents and sees, firsthand, daily, the myriad ill effects of unplanned pregnancy would be moved to use her talents and expertise to help women who neither want to carry to term nor...like, die.

The first scene in which Cleary reveals to Sister Harriet that he knows about her moonlighting is in line with everything we've learned about him so far: he's witnessed someone doing some shady shit, and he doesn't care about the moral or ethical implications as long as Cleary gets to wet his beak. But then he gets a call to pick up a young woman whose illegal abortion has been so horrendously botched that she dies from her injuries, and the horror of her needless death leads him to an epiphany: if turn-of-the-century abortions can't be, as we say now, safe, legal, and rare, maybe just the first one is enough. He takes Sister Harriet to a paupers' graveyard and makes her an offer: he'll steer the unhappily pregnant to seek her services, in the hopes of keeping more women from getting killed by artless butchers.

Is Sister Harriet still going to have to cut Cleary in on the proceeds? Of course. He's not a saint, or an idiot. And anyway, this is olden times, when medicine in America was still a for-profit industry, I mean just think how far we've come since then, hahaha...sigh. But the episode shows how having direct contact with a person in distress -- even one very different from himself -- could result in empathy from someone you'd least expect. The Cleary of three-quarters of the way through the episode is only willing to look the other way on illegal abortion because he can see the financial upside to himself. The Cleary of the end of the episode has had his thinking evolve and line up with Sister Harriet's, in terms of understanding that even if abortion is illegal, there's a social benefit to doing it anyway. (And yes, conservative politicians who oppose abortion rights, I am absolutely subtweeting you right now.)

Sister Harriet and Cleary may never be true friends, but at least they can unite on the issue of not letting women bleed to death from punctured uteri. Solid frenemy relationships have been built on less.