Recap / The Knick S 1 E 1 Methodand Madness

"The procedure failed. Not you."

Dr Thackery is Chief Of Medicine in a 1900 New York hospital, The Kickerbocker, battling a cocaine addiction, high mortality rates and bureaucratic corruption to save lives in a world before antibiotics and blood transfusions.

The Knick reels from the suicide of its head of surgery following his procedure failing to save a pregnant girl and her child. The new head of surgery, Dr. John W. Thackery, now takes over.

Over the course of the pilot we meet the staff of the Knick, learn their major struggles, and begin learning about the state of the medical profession in the year 1900.

Tropes:

• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Many. They can be sorted into the social category and the medical category.
  • Social:
    • Dr Edwards is discriminated against because of his skin.
    • White immigrants who don't speak English are talked down to as dirty and uneducated.
    • A girl not older than nine has to leave her very sick mother's bedside because she has to get to her shift at the waistshirt factory. The child works, and there's no way in hell she's getting time off because of a family emergency.
  • Medical:
    • In the time before blood bags, a patients' excess blood is vacuumed into small jars set aside for the purpose of keeping it tidy.
    • Cocaine is used as an anaesthetic, albeit with the understanding that it's dangerous.
    • Ambulance drivers are essentially injury chasers who wait at dangerous intersections for people to need help, and are even willing to beat the crap out of drivers from other hospitals if they threaten to steal a client.
• Driven to Suicide: Dr. Christiansen, and shown in calm detail. He lays down a white sheet so he won't get the office dirty.
• Gorn: The opening surgery is shown in complete detail and it does NOT look pretty.
• Rousing Speech: Thack makes an impassioned speech at Christiansen's funeral encouraging his peers to continue in the medical profession, as it's still worth it and changing rapidly, despite Christiansen and even the manner of his death.

  Thackery: We've learned more in the past five years than in the past five hundred!

• Title Drop: Thackery, when he hits upon using a partial cocaine-based anasthetic.

  Thackery: Though this be madness, yet there's method in't.

• Values Resonance: This can once again be sorted into Social and Medical.
  • Social:
    • Cornelia Robertson keeps a patient in-hospital even when she knows they can't help her because it will make the patient feel better, even though she knows the hospital is operating at a deficit and can't afford extra expenses.
    • Dr. Edwards refuses to be disrespected because of the color of his skin, and even mentions that he's treated close to an equal in countries with less baggage.
    • Everyone is shaken by Dr. Christiansen's suicide and there's no suggestion that he should have "toughed it out" or just kept it together. Indeed, the surgeons intimately understand how he might get depressed.
  • Medical:
    • Germ theory has been discovered enough that the surgeons THOROUGHLY clean themselves and every instrument before and after surgery, not even letting a dismal failure keep them from immediately going to clean off.
    • Similarly, they know that insufficient light and ventilation and too much dirty material hastens the spread of disease and have a health inspector who threatens to harshly fine a landlord for not having his residencies up to code.
    • The doctors may seem brutal compared to modern treatments, but they have a keen awareness of the importance of anesthetic, thorough dedication to performing their surgeries as quickly and expertly as possible, and are deeply willing to listen even to people they dislike if they have a method that will work.