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Episode cast overview, first billed only: | |||
Clive Owen | ... | Dr. John W. Thackery | |
André Holland | ... | Dr. Algernon Edwards | |
Jeremy Bobb | ... | Herman Barrow | |
Juliet Rylance | ... | Cornelia Robertson | |
Eve Hewson | ... | Nurse Lucy Elkins | |
Michael Angarano | ... | Dr. Bertie Chickering Jr. | |
Chris Sullivan | ... | Tom Cleary | |
Cara Seymour | ... | Sister Harriet | |
Eric Johnson | ... | Dr. Everett Gallinger | |
David Fierro | ... | Inspector Jacob Speight | |
Leon Addison Brown | ... | Jesse Edwards | |
Matt Frewer | ... | Dr. J.M. Christiansen | |
Melissa Errico | ... | Catherine Christiansen | |
Collin Meath | ... | Phinny Sears | |
Lucas Papaelias | ... | Eldon Pouncey |
In New York City in 1900, Dr. John W. Thackery is named Chief of Medicine at the Knickerbocker hospital when his colleague, J.M. Christiansen, commits suicide after a failed attempt at a Caesarian section results in the death of both mother and child. Now a member of the hospital Board, he finds his preferred candidate for deputy chief, Dr. Gallinger, rejected by chairman Cornelia Robertson in favor of an outside candidate, Dr. Algernon Edwards, who has an outstanding resume. To Thackery's surprise, Edwards is an African-American and he wants nothing to do with an integrated hospital. Poverty and unsanitary conditions provide a steady stream of patients for the Knick. Medicine is still in a primitive state with most surgical deaths the result of infection. Thackery has his own demons to deal with however in the form of a cocaine addiction. Written by garykmcd
My overall rating of "The Knick"'s Season 1: 6/10
This episode serves as a rather wondrous introduction to the setting and characters. The era comes across as "retrofuturistic", where surgical (and overall) science is tremendously accelerating (as attested to by Dr. Thackery in his eulogy in this episode's beginning, and in the trailer) and globalisation is taking root but so much is still of the olden days, and the advances made while grand, appear to a viewer of our age as perhaps even funny due to much larger strides still needing to be made. With the disease-wracked, backwards, primitive, corrupt and much-unregulated society making the detail-rich background (the detail of some of the windows' visible existence being argued against in the lore notwithstanding), the modest gains of reason in the operating theatres and patient wards - sterilisation, atomisers, blood-vacuums and so on - appear positively sci-fi.
We are also acquainted with the characters. They have delightful interplay, most quite charismatic and all having a reason for saying things, doing things and going to places, whether the camera follows them or merely passes by. Their speech patterns and musings feel authentic. In this episode especially we can get a good sense of the sequence of events and layout of places, as a schedule is understood and people walk together or step aside, but are all concretely placed in the locations and in the passing of the day.
So what prevents me from rating the episode any higher? Some of the more nitpicky stuff - a few scenes don't quite make sense, being a bit inexplicable within the world, or a bit cringy, and I'm pretty confident Dr. Gallanger (?) teleports in one scene, first walking away and then suddenly - and without prior sound of walking - returning to the conversation from just outside the camera's angle in an improbable location relative to his last known one. Such continuity breaks are disappointing given the surgical precision and clarity the series attempts to present.