So The Knick Is Saying Heroin's Not A Good Cure For Cocaine Addiction?

As we return to The Knick in the Season 2 premiere, it's 1901, and with all our characters in very different situations than they were when we first met them, the show has very considerately given us an episode that reminds us of their current circumstances. Cornelia has, in fact, married Phillip and moved with him to [shudder] San Francisco -- where, in her current role as a married woman, she's probably supposed to be doing charity work and shopping, but instead is doing some secret social work on behalf of the plague sufferers the mayor has quarantined. Sister Harriet is incarcerated, awaiting trial on her abortion charges. Things are still supes awkward between Lucy and Bertie since Lucy's still hung up on Thack and now Bertie knows it. Edwards is Acting Chief Of Surgery, and Gallinger is pretty sure he'd rather wait to return to work until Thack comes back than report to Edwards. But is Thack going to be back soon, or ever? Because he's in rehab, and the miracle cure he's on might not actually be helping him kick his addiction.

Those are the broad strokes; there are lots of questions still to be asked!

So Thack's still going to go ahead and do revolting medical procedures even while he's in "rehab"?

So it seems!

Extra points for rebuilding this woman's nose using a pin he just pulled out of her hair.

This guy doesn't sterilize shit! He's too punk rock!!!

Because the physicians running this program may have an imperfect understanding of addiction, Thack's cocaine addiction is being treated with heroin, and I guess it's worked in the sense that now he's addicted to that instead of cocaine, and is performing these procedures in exchange for extra doses of his medicine -- or so I surmise when he offers to "tattoo her lips to make them appear plumper" for the low low price of four vials. Dr. Nick Riviera's going to have to make some deep cuts on his rate sheet to remain competitive with this quack.

Has San Francisco always been one of the world's worst places?

According to this episode: maybe not "always," but at least for the last hundred-plus years. The now-Mrs. Showalter has made friends with a Dr. Feng who, along with what appear to be hundreds of other "coolies" (charming, SFPD officer), has been quarantined in a ghetto where no food has been delivered in days. Knowing about this requires Cornelia to do something, so she sells some of Phillip's grandmother's jewellery and uses the proceeds to buy more than a dozen horse carts' worth of food and bribes her way in to deliver it. I will give these particular San Franciscans a pass for mobbing the first cart and roughing up Cornelia in the process because they are starving. That said: there is a clear line of descendance from these legitimately troubled citizens and the dirty hippies cluttering up the San Francisco of the present day.

Hasn't Mother Superior heard about "Nuns For Choice"?!

One of the things I loved about Sister Harriet's Season 1 storyline is how it lines up with the badass nuns of our own day, and while she's obviously facing the consequences now of acting according to her conscience and against the laws of the day by performing abortions for women who need them, nothing she says in this episode suggests that, though she knows she's technically a criminal, she feels she was wrong. In fact, when her Mother Superior shows up to visit and exposits that Harriet came to the order after her emigrant mother abandoned her in the middle of nowhere, it gives more weight and justification to Harriet's work ending unwanted pregnancies: she knows first-hand the pain an unwanted child might feel. But for someone whose job it is to minister to spiritual seekers, Mother Superior sure doesn't approach Sister Harriet with much understanding or empathy, either for Harriet herself or for the women whose situations were so desperate that they required her help. A hundred years hence, the Catholic church is shedding members faster than any other denomination in the U.S.; attitudes like Mother Superior's -- rigid about doctrine, without allowing for the challenges imperfect people might face -- are why.

How long before Edwards has to out himself about his eye?

Our first scene with Edwards finds him visiting a specialist about vision problems: his extracurricular fist-fighting has caught up with him, and now his vision is impaired by a detached retina. The only cure is several weeks' undisturbed rest, which Edwards can't afford to take: he's got to do everything he can to keep himself from getting bounced out of his current position as acting Chief Of Surgery -- a post several members of the hospital board later say, to his face, they don't intend to let him keep even if Thack never comes back. He's already avoiding certain steps in his surgeries under the guise of teaching Bertie, but that can't last forever. He's only got one ally -- Cornelia's brother Henry; can Edwards trust him with his secret while also counting on his continuing support?

Can we hurry it up with Eleanor's dentures, guys?

Because...no thank you to getting this view of her un-grill for many more episodes.

Geh.

Do we care about Lucy's boy problems?

For a woman of her age to move from the South to a literal life-and-death job in New York is a bold move and probably indicates that Lucy is smart and tough and that there's an interesting story that led to her doing it. So can we find out more about that instead of hearing her pining letter to Thack, who possibly isn't even going to read it and hasn't answered any of the ones she previously sent, and watching her awkwardly give a birthday gift to Bertie when he clearly doesn't want to talk to her outside of his professional obligation?

"How can a New York girl be expected to get her bearings in a place like this?"

You said it, Phillip's gross pervert of a father! I'm partly joking: in her pre-wife life, Cornelia had a very important position at a major hospital and doesn't need Hobart to condescend to her over his notion that she sold jewellery that was gifted to her to feed hungry victims of discrimination because San Francisco is such a crazy whirl that it confused her and reset her values or something. And, of course, his main goal here is to find a pretext to get Phillip and (really) Cornelia back to New York so that he can resume preying on her sexually. Claiming he has an 11-bedroom apartment on Central Park South (!!!) to give them and then being all, oops, it's totes not done, well you can just move in with me for five months, nbd, is classic him.

Heroin's not a good cure for cocaine addiction?

So from the start, Gallinger has been the most openly opposed to Edwards's joining the hospital staff -- even more so than Thack, who is pretty racist, but not such a bigot that he couldn't recognize Edwards's talent and skill. Toward the start of this episode, Gallinger comes to the hospital to talk about ending his bereavement leave, but when he finds out Thack still isn't back and that Gallinger would have to report to Edwards in Thack's absence, he decides he'll just wait, and heads for Thack's hospital to get an idea of when he might be back.

MAYBE NOT FOR A WHILE JUDGING BY WHAT A JUNKIE HE IS NOW. So Gallinger comes up with a pretty daring plan:

He kidnaps Thack from the hospital -- probably not that hard, between a bribe to the right orderly and the patience to wait until Thack nods out from his latest dose of "medicine" -- and, while he's unconscious, ties him up in the hold of his sailboat. Out in the Atlantic, Thack will have no choice but to detox. But there's more, in the form of an extremely WASPy test: Gallinger tells Thack he has to tie the first ten knots on a poster above the bunk. Once Thack's accomplished that, Gallinger will bring him back to shore. This is...pretty ingenious? I mean, obviously it's better than anything the so-called mental specialists are likely to try, but it's also a clever way for Gallinger to get Thack to prove he's recovered his concentration, his dexterity, and his will. Has Gallinger actually been a pretty good doctor this whole time and we just didn't notice because of what a racist he is?

When can I buy this knot guide as a poster from Restoration Hardware?

For real, though.

In fact, this whole space -- from the bunk to the built-in side table to the dish under Thack's two brown hard-boiled eggs -- would make a handsome vignette in a West Elm store.

How many people will this Dr. Mays end up killing?

Behind Edwards's back and in order to cut costs, Barrow has hired a Dr. Mays, someone he claims was also trained as a surgeon, so hey, maybe this dude can just pull double duty and they won't have to hire another surgeon after all! But this is the danger of letting administrators make medical decisions: assisting Bertie in surgery, Mays is pretty frank about the fact that he hasn't kept up his surgical skills as advancements have been made in the field, and would rather hang back and chat with Bertie about his dad than actually touch the patient. Some might say they wouldn't blame him for that, under the circumstances.

Most people confronted by this kind of pus fountain would instinctively try to avoid getting any on them. But it is actually his job -- or it will be, until his negligence and/or incompetence kills more people than is considered acceptable in a time when even good doctors seem to kill people all the time.