On our second-to-last Emily Owens episode ever (dramatic sigh), we’re presented with the classic hospital drama plotline: the Clusterfuck. There’s been an accident with a commuter bus; three people are already dead, with a multitude of injured on their way in. And, of course, there’s also a massive snowstorm occurring, meaning blocked roads and a lack of extra doctors. Good times!
Before we get to this, however, there’s a bit of exposition for what will also unfold in everybody’s personal lives: Emily and Micah continue to be indefatigably adorable and charming with one another, as he helps carry a bundle of office supplies she’s bought for herself from her car to her new office she’s receiving for being Bandari’s new research assistant. Shocker: Emily loves office supplies! Who doesn’t! The “office,” of course, ends up being a desk in a medical supply closet, but still, it’s a pretty nice medical supply closet!
Cassandra and Will are waiting for coffee nearby while Emily and Micah scuffle around with the label maker and the post-its. Will looks over jealously and Cassandra is sad and then Will says, “Hey, I know you’re sad about the assistant position and also the fact that I keep shooting longing glances at Emily Owens, but you should just try to not be so sad, okay?,” the ultimate move in trying-to-comfort with the result of not-comforting-at-all, a move that we have all probably employed at some point when someone we care about is sad and we don’t know what to say. But still, since Will is the worst, this sounds particularly stupid, way more awful than when we would ever use it, right? Right. Cassandra’s hair is flowing in the icy wind under a cute winter hat and she occasionally brushes it away from her face, looking fed up and a little lonely as she tells Will to just stop being a jerk. She seems genuinely vulnerable for one of the first times on the show, and accordingly, you like her more. I wish we could have seen more of this Cassandra. Will follows Emily to her office closet to say “Hey, Cassandra still feels weird about us, so I thought I should follow you into your office closet alone to tell you,” and Emily says, “Oh, haha, guess what, I’m over you! Now help organize my medical office shelves,” all while wearing Emily Owens Ridiculous Oversized Sweater #48. Also in the first five minutes, Tyra is given a hard time by her dad about still living at home; she rolls her eyes and is like “GOD, DAD.” In addition, this old-but-new doctor guy continues to cement his place as a complete sleaze who won’t leave Bandari alone. After he inappropriately flirted with her at her fundraiser during the last episode, she pulls him aside today to say, “Hey, don’t inappropriately flirt with me again,” and apparently thinking Bandari is playing hard to get or something, he pulls a big sleazeball smile and says, “Well, that was your fault…that dress you wore.” Such a great misogynistic precursor to rape shaming! Classic! Go to hell! Back in Emily’s office closet, Micah has found her a new, better desk chair because he loves her, and he brought along a poster, too, to help make the place homey. He unrolls it, saying, “Just ignore the skin cancer part,” which is super cute when you see the poster! She says it’s perfect! They joke about how it’s probably St. Something, how they’ve always wanted to go to St. Something. Their chemistry is so natural and lovely!
Guys, I love the poster!
But now: Clusterfuck time. Emily is put in charge of triage, which naturally looks like this: We meet the peeps who will be our main storylines, a pre-med student whose arm took the brunt of part of the destroyed bus, and a military guy with a deep headwound. While they don’t know each other, Dan, military guy, has decided to keep an eye on Chloe, arm injury girl, because he’s naturally such a decent military guy.Ow ow ow ow ow ow owy.
Dan goes in for an MRI and the blood starts to build up in his brain so Emily has to drill into his head real fast, no big deal. He’ll need more intense surgery once a specialist can get there, which is what they keep saying to pretty much everyone. While Chloe’s waiting for her own specialist, she and Emily share a heart to heart about their families, because Chloe is really excellent at being both scared and sweet, meaning she and Emily are destined to be BFFs. Emily reveals that she only met her dad once when she was five years old, backstage at one of his concerts, as he’s a world famous classical musician. She only met him that once because her mom was the “other woman.” This is a fascinating story, and one I wish we could have heard so much earlier in the season. You know, less cattiness between Emily and Cassandra, less pining over Will, more stories about only meeting your classical musician dad once when you were five–that might have been a good move. Oh, and, and, Emily also helps out a blind man’s dog until he can be transferred to a vet, even though she’s really not supposed to as they’re at a human hospital and everything, but how can she not when she has an Emily Owens heart and the dog’s eyes look like this?But back to people news, Chloe has to go into her surgery before her specialist can arrive, and the arm is not doing well. So unwell, in fact, that Bandari is forced to cut off the arm to save her life. Emily cries outside afterwards because this is traumatic and Chloe had wanted to be a doctor and what if there was something else Emily could have done?! Micah finds her and hugs her and the hug feels weirdly intimate but maybe because hug are always weirdly intimate when the people really mean the hug? To add on to Emily’s crying, when Chloe wakes up, she also excels at hysterical crying. Something else that happened during this episode was an otherwise completely healthy mom dying during an emergency C-section, which was enormously sad, but she wasn’t as well developed as Chloe and so Chloe’s arm seems sadder even though the woman losing her life was obviously in actuality much sadder, and isn’t that weird? In better news, Dan’s brain surgery goes okay and we also get to meet his dad, who gets to learn on top of the brain surgery thing that Dan is re-enlisting in the army. Knowing that he will go back to never actually being able to sleep soundly again, Dad is upset but he’s just such a good dad, big and burly and red-cheeked, one of those rough but gentle teddy bears of dads that I love so much. He belatedly reaches out as Dan is wheeled off to surgery, his hand reaching empty air for a second until it falls back to his side, in that always heartbreakingly way that people belatedly reach out to nothing. So now that everyone’s either died or lived or lost an arm or been successfully transferred to a vet, it’s time to hit the bar and resolve lots of emotional chaos! First up, let’s start with some more sexual harassment! Doctor Sleazeball approaches Bandari once more as she sits alone at a table in the dark. First of all, why are you even at the bar, Bandari? I don’t see you much as a drinks-at-the-bar-after-work type person. If you were, people wouldn’t be as scared of you. And shouldn’t you be at home with your husband who complains he never sees you? And clearly, when you do go to the bar, you just sit by yourself, which is both sad and bait for Doctor Sleazeball. She tells him once more that she and her husband are happy together now, and to back off. Doctor Sleazeball says he’s up for the challenge. EYEROLL. You are not a good person, Doctor Sleazeball. Thankfully, Micah witnesses part of this interaction, and calls Doctor Sleazeball on being a sleazeball. Like any good sleazeball, Doctor Sleazeball says, don’t worry about it, bro! Micah starts to realize he needs new friends.
Tyra, meanwhile, has realized that yes, she does need to stop living with her parents, but she has also called out her dad for treating her like a child, particularly in the hospital, as he has done throughout the episode. She and Emily celebrate this breakthrough! But I’m so enjoyable!
Meanwhile in Bad News Land, Cassandra has found the picture Emily snapped of Will falling asleep on her couch during the bookshelf building fiasco. Whoopsie! Cassandra sits Will down and admits to herself that whether there’s something going on between Will and Emily or not, just feeling that there is makes her feel second rate which is overall a bad way to feel, especially for Cassandra. Will sputters. “But, but. Our chemistry has always been so…non-existent! Why is this happening?”
And then finally finally finally, Micah approaches Emily while she’s having an existential crisis in the snow about whether she can ever find organization in a chaotic world, or something, and then he kisses her, yay yay yay.
And then Will bursts out of the bar and shouts, “Cassandra broke up with me, wah!” And then Tyra bursts out of the bar and shouts, “Roomies!” and drags Emily away, and then we all say, “It’s such bullshit there’s only one episode left of this!”
What were your thoughts? What would comprise the perfect finale?
