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The series is a look at the professional and personal lives of Dr. John W. Thackery and the staff at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital, where they try to maintain their reputation for quality care while struggling to keep the doors open.
Despite the show feeling like a procession of foreseeable tragedies sometimes, this was still an excellent penultimate season episode. An episode that worked to take Thackery down a peg in everyone's eyes, except Lucy.
Its swing away from medical and social history, which it does very well, and toward addiction and romantic melodrama, which it doesn't, was just about complete.
There's no telling where the show is going to lead us as it heads towards its season finale next week. There's little chance of a big happy ending to send us all off smiling into the fall and winter.
"The Golden Lotus" is no lugubrious slog through perfectly ironic misery like other cable dramas. For one thing it's funny, and in ways that I can't quite capture with transcription because the jokes are so character-based.
There is one secret revealed in the very uneven ninth episode: our protagonist's middle name. He's John Wilkinson Thackery, according to the arresting officer whose palm is crossed with the captain's silver in exchange for all charges dismissed.
It's a striking look that's not particularly pleasing, but it is fascinating to see Owen's lip curl underneath that mustache of his, while his eyes are seemingly busy penetrating the wall just beyond the audience's field of vision.
It's so gripping, in fact, that when Captain August Robertson (Grainger Hines) and the Knick's administrator, Herman Barrow (Jeremy Bobb) bail Thackery out, it feels almost disingenuously comforting.