You should probably see a doctor about this...a competent doctor

Doogie Howser's a has-been

As far as my personal interests go, I'd say religion’s right up there with licking chunks of battery acid off an old Duracell. Though it is strange that each time something semi-seriously negative happens to me my initial reaction is to surmise why a higher being might have chosen to smite me. I spent Saturday evening in the emergency room thinking something along those lines as a tan nurse with a pair of scrub pants one size too small fitted my potentially broken thumb for a cast. Then again, I’m sure it had more to do with using the fist to punch my brother when we were wrestling than anything above-the-clouds related.

The X-Rays came back negative, and the cast is more a precaution than anything else, but by the time I was through, the fact that I’d have full use of my dominant hand for exam week was almost a non issue. (And you should have seen my powering down Buffalo wings Sunday night with the cast on. It was like Jordan going for 38 in Game 5 with the flu; just totally unfazed.)

See, the last time I’d gone to the emergency room my basin of medical knowledge had yet to be filled by the likes of “ER” and “Grey’s Anatomy”; at 19 you’re inclined to find out if any of the stuff you’ve watched is actually true. Things like whether throwing a white lab coat onto anything with a penis is guaranteed to get more pussy than catnip and a bag of Iams. The answer is yes, by the way, absolutely; Ms. TanNurse with the snug pants was on this one doctor’s jock like they were in the back of a dark club and he was putting fives in her g-string to do it. And he wasn’t even anything special; unless “having eyes a shade other than brown” is all it takes, these girls just want to fuck an M.D. I know Grey’s got in some hot water for how they portray the behavior of medical practitioners while in the hospital, but I wouldn’t put it past some of these guys. I mean, by the end of it all I was half waiting for the doctor to just give me one of those “oh yeah. 30-40 times, in places you wouldn’t believe” nod-and-winks when the nurse left.

I’d classify the pediatrician I had growing up more as a Dad type than a Guy Who Probably Doubled As The Gynecologist of His Patient’s Mother On His Nights Off, but I just assumed that was customary for the kind of doctors who made sure kids under 15 could touch their nose and balance on one leg at the same time. You know – they gave you Incredible Hulk stickers, a few pretzels after you had your Measles shot; knew what position you played in Little League. The guys who got the girls were named Noah Wiley and George Clooney in real life and only existed in the ER and other, similarly cool professions in the hospital. (Because you can’t just be a really good surgeon and make hundreds of thousands of dollars; the archetypal doctor has to also do the groin-grind with women like Maura Tierney and Juliana Margulies.)

Point is, I was expecting to see a horde of Derek Sheppards with Addisons hanging off of their arms, and Merediths giving them seductive glares from afar. And now that I think about it, I’ve had a surgery performed on me by an old, loudmouthed Jewish guy barely pushing five feet; my middle-school-field-trip-chaperone pediatrician; and the doofus with too much gel in his hair handling my cast on Saturday. If there’s that much unwarranted ass to be had in the medical fields, maybe English wasn’t the way to go.

On to more important matters: Now that Chris O’Donnell has joined the Grey’s cast as the “Former Hollywood star using a primetime drama to slowly exit an acting hiatus” (like Don Cheadle a few years back on “ER”) I think the show has officially made it. Danny, Nick, Ian, and Kyle will have to give it the stamp of approval – as they’re the only men I know who seem to have made it a Sunday evening staple – but that most recent episode was probably one of the best yet.

It opened with Addison and Sheppard finishing a round of awful sex, while O’Malley and Doctor Torres – his senorita with the built-to-scale model of the Alps on her chest – finishing a round of great sex. O’Malley really shouldn’t be capable of high marks between the sheets, not when he drove Meredith to tears when they gave it a go, but after the way his hairstyles have (d)evolved over the last three episodes, it’s a good thing he’s getting it from somewhere.

As far as Karev’s decision to play rebel and do all he could to ruin everyone’s life in the hospital, could he have made a worse decision than to let throw Addison to the wolves like that? And it wasn’t just a “wearing mascara to a funeral” bad decision; we’re talking “pawning your dad’s Porsche to pay off part of your outstanding gambling debt” bad. I guess that kind of frustration is to be expected when you don’t get to ravage Izzie in the refuge room twice a day anymore, but it’s not like he’s never seen an episode of “Elimidate” before; he knows how easy it is to find a casual lay. Meanwhile, Izzie gets in trouble for putting the moves on Denny, even though there’s really no reason at all Dr. Bailey shouldn’t just turn a blind eye to the whole relationship. You figure, until Denny got that special vest to help power his bad heart, his job was basically to just lay there and look deathly and unshaven. And if you saw the previews for next week’s episode, it’s pretty clear that he’s just a giant plot diversion who’s passable enough physically to pull a girl as attractive as Izzie. (Honestly, the guy was doing great by his standards on Sunday, and then on the preview they show him collapsing onto the floor with a ton of doctors surrounding him. It’s like the writers said “Well, right now we have a good episode. We need a great one. I got it; we’ll just pretend to kill Denny again.)

But by far the best part of it all was the dialogue between Meredith and Chris O’Donnell (whose character happens to be named Finn Dandridge…Finn) and the ensuing reaction by Sheppard. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t love every second of the lingering sexual tension between Meredith and Sheppard, so the fact that Sheppard and Addison went and finally had some most definitely un-awful sex all because Sheppard saw Meredith and O’Donnell together was pure gold.

If you didn’t see it, I’ll give you a few hints: It involved a steamy shower, and Shepard commanding Addison to join him in it as he quickly got undressed. Yeah, and after an initial, brief moment of befuddled hesitancy, she couldn’t have torn her clothes off faster if they were on fire. Hmm, I was saying something about becoming a doctor before…