Ok, finally my notes on EP. 9.
Spoilers ahead...
Gothic Horror. Thack as dracula. Elenor as a ghost. All those dead babies. The way Eleanor appears in the hallway, she almost glides into the BG of the frame. The musical cue when she appears kills me.
Definitely a female-led episode. They all make choices, whereas the men, either languish in the background or can't see things for what they are.
Is Barrow like a greek chorus? Seeing everything, dealing with everyone (not necessarily liking everyone) but almost like a administrator/guide over the hospital and the narrative? He kind of connected this episode for me and then I thought, shit, he kind of connected the riot episode as well, so that's how I got to that thought.
No illusions for Edwards re: Thack. But he can't fully grasp the reality of his situation with Cornelia and the reality race/class relations. Illusions for Bertie who can't see the truth of Thack.
Nurse Elkins, is just as possessed as Thack. She is obviously capable of anything. There both willing to sell themselves out, but she plays Barrow and Thack, and at first I thought, wow, all this for Thack, until that shot when she's in a total state of euphoria. This shot reminds me of the shot in Traffic when Michael Douglas finds his daughter high, and she is somewhere else, beside her father but not with him and that's what I got from this episode. So many of the characters who we knew would get together, have gotten together on the surface of things, but they are truly miles away from each other. Miles that cover: sex, race, class and gender but also different levels of attaining highs/brief moments of release where they feel a short-lived freedom from themselves or from what society says they should be. (through drugs or in the case of Edwards and Cornelia: sex, and interracial sex at that, and all the myths, cliches and historical baggage that contains)
I'm wondering if the cold heart of this show (a show that I was fooled by, especially during the riot episode) is concerned with the distance between us, as human beings and the efforts (sometimes futile efforts) that we make to connect, to associate, to love, to empathise, to trust each other or know each other.
Is Nurse Elkins the most aware character in the piece? I think so. She sees things for what they are. She is very detached and will go as far as she needs to, to get what she wants. She seems to have no scruples whatsoever.
The show built up this archetype of the drug addicted genius (in this case a surgeon) and is now stripping away at all it. These last two episodes reveal a very sick soul, who can't confront himself, his own ghosts (his mentor) and the true nature and repercussions of his work/calling, the weight of life/death in the operating theatre.
The lighting. So much Chiaroscuro in this episode. Gordon Willis was here! So much is left to darkness. Darkness seems to loom everywhere. Again, this fed my feeling of this being a tragic gothic tale. Especially the wide shot of Thack's place as Nurse Elkins knocks on his door. So ominous, so much threat through light/darkness. Pretty incredible.
