Is The Knick Bloody Great Or Just Bloody?

What Is This Thing?

In turn-of-the-last-century New York, Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen) is trying to Have It All -- which in his case means both a successful career as a surgeon and an intravenous drug addiction. But when he suddenly ascends to his former mentor's position and becomes Chief Surgeon at the titular Knickerbocker Hospital, Thackery soon learns that he may have to compromise as to the identity of his own new #2 -- all in a milieu in which medical science is still so much in its infancy that Thackery has not just to invent his own new instruments but physically smelt them himself. And since he's not always fast enough, people are dying around him all the time, generally pretty gruesomely.

When Is It On?

Fridays at 10 PM on Cinemax.

Why Was It Made Now?

The public appetite for period drama on cable TV -- first whetted by Mad Men -- has only continued to grow, leading to award nominations for the likes of Downton Abbey and Boardwalk Empire (and NOT Game Of Thrones because that is not historical, it is just pretend). Another factor in its timing is the matter of one of its primary off-camera contributors having sworn off making feature films and apparently sticking to it: see below.

What's Its Pedigree?

Jack Amiel and Michael Begler might not inspire much confidence in their ability to handle this particular material given their writing credits on films like Big Miracle and Raising Helen, and previous TV work on The Tony Danza Show and Malcolm In The Middle. HOWEVER, The Knick boasts as its Executive Producer and sole director one Steven Soderbergh, who is not only an Oscar-winning director (for Traffic) but the GENIUS who brought the world Behind The Candelabra last year and thus a Dealmaker in perpetuity.

...And?

The show pretty much demands the viewer's attention from its first scene after the cold open, in which Thackery's mentor, Dr. Julius Christiansen (Matt Frewer), walks the audience in his operating theatre through his plan for a 100-second Caesarean section on a mother presenting with placenta previa. It turns out that he hasn't worked out all the kinks in his technique, as the mother gushes blood everywhere; though Dr. Christiansen is hopeful when they manage to stop the bleeding, that ends up only being because she's basically run out of blood. Mother and baby both die, and Dr. Christiansen reacts poorly -- which one supposes he's entitled to do once we learn that this is the twelfth time he's tried the procedure, with a success rate of 0%.

The gore is hard to watch (and that opening scene is not the worst of it), but it's not gratuitous. If you've watched Manhattan, you've seen John Benjamin Hickey's continual insistence to the members of his team -- a bunch of theoretical physicists accustomed to working out problems in the abstract -- that there is actual urgency here, in that hundreds of American soldiers are being killed every day and their work, if they do it right, could stop the war. Similarly, the blood on The Knick -- and the surgeons' flummoxed or terrified reactions to the various crazy shit the human body can get up to make it clear to the viewer how important it is that an innovator like Thackery be supported in his research and experimentation: because he's figuring shit out that could stop his patients from dying in a matter of hours. Is Thackery a privileged prick about the prospect of integrating the hospital with the addition of African-American surgeon Algernon Edwards (André Holland)? Oh yeah -- a huge one. But by the end of the episode even Edwards is willing to overlook Thackery's deficits as a human being if it means staying on and learning everything he can from him, and it doesn't just feel like he says it because the plot needs him to, as we see a thing Thackery invented one day saving a man's life the next.

Anyway, medical procedurals always have drama built in -- it's why there are so many of them. But this one demonstrates how far medical science has come since 1900 (your surgeon today does more than just dip his beard in a basin of water, for instance), and reminds us of how much more there is yet to learn. I mean, honestly. It's kind of shocking any of us meatbags even manages to walk around on a day-to-day basis.

...But?

Well, I mentioned Thackery's drug habit, which feels kind of expected. We can already see he's a single male workaholic; there are plenty of ways men can destroy themselves without involving boring old drugs. But Thackery IS on drugs, which is why the cold open finds us looking at his shoes for about fifteen seconds, before a young girl wearing an open peignoir and nothing else walks into the frame, because he's in an opium den/brothel. There may have been a time when a pay-cable drama showed me some poor girl's boobs and merkin in less time, but none that I can think of offhand. Get some new ideas about what makes you "edgy," producers; we're all sick of that one.

...So?

You don't even know if you get Cinemax, probably? But this show makes it worth finding out, and remedying the situation if you don't.