ER rec(r)ap: The Providers (Season Eleven, Episode Twelve)(original air date 27 Jan 2005)

THIS WEEK'S PROGNOSES:

• Abby: Breaking deals and breaking hearts.
• Carter: A hapless knight on another crusade.
• Neela: What's worse than hapless? Clueless.

Stupidville -- Sam is jealous because Neela has a crush on Luka. When did this happen? And why? And oh, one more thing: why?

Weirdville -- Abby and Neela are in the locker room, or whatever the room is that has lockers in it, changing clothes and talking about the last time they had sex. Yes, really -- but they don't mean the last time they had sex with each other. Abby's talking about some guy on a motorcycle and Neela's reminiscing about her gross anatomy instructor. Gross. Well, except for the fact that "Abby" and "motorcycle" just appeared in the same sentence. Not gross.

Abby's wearing all black again. She should stop doing that to me. And she should stop missing the obvious opportunity:

Neela: "Well, at least we have work to keep our minds off... men. Romance. Sex."
Abby: "Yeah. At least we have that."

Yeah, that, and a lovely single woman sitting right next to you, waiting to be kissed. Wake up or shut up.

Chief Lewis -- Susan and Carter have a little bonding moment. I throw up a little in my mouth.

Disastrous pairings -- There's some kind of buddy system going on. Neela's going to be with Luka, and Abby's with that guy who used to have the beard. But somehow Abby and Neela manage to stand shoulder to shoulder in the ambulance bay, where they see a man and a woman stuck together. The man and woman (heretofore known as the Velcro couple) were having sex in the back of a car when a truck hit them, and now he has a broken pelvis (not to mention the help of a little Viagra) and they're stuck. Neela grins. Abby smirks.

Hey, it's Graham -- Look, it's Angela Chase's dad from My So-Called Life. He's playing a dad again, this time of a girl who's had a kidney transplant (his kidney, actually). Now she has something else going on that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because Luka is bugging me by freaking out about being paired with Neela. He trades her to Carter.

The best line ever -- Abby and her med student tell Mr. Velcro, with the broken pelvis, that he'll have to be abstinent for a couple of weeks. Mistress (not Mrs.) Velcro says oh, if it's just the pelvis, there must be some other positions they can consider.

Abby: "Yeah, sure, get yourself a six pack, a copy of the Kama Sutra, and shoot out the lights."

I'm speechless.

The parents of the girl with the kidney transplant (Katie) are fighting a lot. How many times can they recycle the sick-kid-with-bickering-parents storyline? I suspect I can't count that high.

So what's the theme of this episode? -- Abby examines a guy who's got a "skin breakdown around the shaft of his penis." It's not an STD symptom but rather the unhappy result of masturbating six or seven times a day -- all of which we get by implication, because in Dubya's America you can't say "STD" or "masturbating" on TV. What about "Abby needs to buy her own motorcycle and take Neela for a ride" -- can you say that?

Elsewhere, Katie the kidney kid starts to die. Already? But the music isn't thumping yet!

After the commercial, Katie starts to come around, but she might need another transplant. Chad Lowe shows up -- I guess he's been missing the show for the last seven years or so.

Not again -- Abby complains to Susan about the med student she's been paired with, and Susan figures out it's because Abby actually likes the guy. You know, "likes" in a fourth-grade kind of way. Abby tells Susan to pretend they never had this conversation. I was already there.

Something to skip -- Dr. Henry, a.k.a. Chad Lowe, a.k.a. Katie the kidney kid's neurologist, is mumbling about safe drugs and the FDA. Then he decides to give Carter a bunch of crap for still being an ER doc. Somebody's going to have to kick me in the kidneys to rouse me after this riveting scene.

That tears it -- Neela has to do some sort of femoral tear procedure thingie, which mostly involves cuddling with Luka.

As if that weren't enough to get me on Sam's side, we get this great line in the other trauma room:

Sam: "Dr. Carter, Dr. Weaver's on the phone for you. She sounds kind of..."
Carter: "Kind of what?"
Sam (shrugging): "Weaver-like."

This scares John, so he says he'll call her back. I hope this means she'll come crutching through the door any minute now.

Ta da -- Look, there's Weaver! She's looking kind of Weaver-like, which to me is a very good thing. She's ticked off about Carter's post to a newsgroup, which was about the drug that may have caused Katie's renal failure. They start to scream at each other about the FDA and politics while Susan looks on helplessly. Eventually Kerry says "come here" like she's calling a dog, and takes Carter to the drug lock-up. She proceeds to give him an object lesson in how drugs save lives and how pharmaceutical companies donate money to hospitals and how a doctor's job is to take care of patients, not go on a crusade. Did anybody else think of Dr. Legaspi just then?

Carter looks plenty peeved. Walk out the door, John. Don't look back. Do it for me.

Sugar rush -- Over at the tiny Jumbo Mart, Neela confesses that she has a crush on Luka and compares him to a cupcake. Abby waxes philosophical about Neela's attraction to authority (remember the tryst with the gross anatomy professor, which Abby also calls "gross"), so Neela bites back, pointing out that Abby's being a bit weird about her med student:

Neela: "So you're hung up on a subordinate--."
Abby: "No I'm not."
Neela: "I have a thing for a supervisor..."
Abby: "Oh, so what? I'm like the yin to your yang?"

Exactly. If you two would just try a little yinning and yanging, I might have something interesting to write about.

Hooray for the FDA -- Carter and Chad Lowe tell Katie's parents that the new drug is the most likely cause of her kidney failure. Angela Chase's dad (whose name is Gabe on this show) looks like he's going to rip out Chad Lowe's kidneys with his bare hands.

More gross anatomy -- Abby guides the med student's fingers as he does some sort of procedure. Her voice is way too sexy as she does it, and she keeps using words like "deeper." Sam says what I'm thinking, only in a nicer way:

Sam: "Somebody put something in the water today?"

Clearing the air -- Luka makes sure that he hasn't given Neela the wrong impression. Does that mean it's over now? Please?

And more clearing: Chad Lowe confesses that he's a ho for the drug company and has been putting lots of patients on the new drug. He and Carter walk out into the ambulance bay, where they have no idea that Katie's dad is within earshot. Dad starts to cry and waves a gun around. Then he points it at Chad Lowe, and then he shoots himself. And we all feel glad that the FCC has seen fit to edit out body parts and words like "masturbation," but not the image of a man sticking a gun in his mouth and spattering his brains all over the concrete.

Bet you didn't see that coming -- Carter and Neela and Dubenko try to save the dad. It doesn't work. Next thing we know, Carter's trying to convince some sort of donor administrator type to let him take the dad's kidney for Katie. Shouldn't that be a no-brainer? Sorry, poor choice of words.

That's the Kerry we know and love -- Weaver is hollering at a reporter, who's there about the scandalous suicide in the ambulance bay.

Weaver: "Go climb back under your rock."
Reporter: "Hey, I'm from the Trib. It's a good paper."
Weaver: "Yeah, right. You guys endorsed Bush."

Lewis sends Carter out to meet the press. Just as that starts to get interesting, the camera pans over to Abby and that med student whose name I still don't know. He's asking her to go to dinner; she says no, so he takes that as a good sign and wants to know about the "thing" between them. Abby says there are lots of reasons why it's a bad idea, but there's one that's a deal-breaker: "You're my student." Abby is the only ethical person left on the planet.

The way of things -- Big surprise: John told the press everything. Lewis yells at him, Luka encourages him, and Weaver's on the phone again. The good news is that Katie's going to get her dad's other kidney.

Just in case you didn't hear it the first time, we get one more little message about the dangerous game that is the pharmaceutical industry. At least it wasn't another Velcro/penis breakdown scene.

NEXT WEEK ON ER: Something will be missed, something will grow, a tree will fall in the forest and a recapper will snooze.

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