S01.E09: Dr. Chaudhary

[txhorns79]

Quote

Jeevan and Kirsten survive their first winter alone, until an argument sends Jeevan on an unexpected path.

Streaming 1/6/22.

[Rammchick]

So how does Kirsten get her book back?  Jeevan is attacked and never makes it back to her, but we know that Kirsten has it.

[Hanahope]

3 hours ago, Rammchick said:

So how does Kirsten get her book back?  Jeevan is attacked and never makes it back to her, but we know that Kirsten has it.

In a prior episode, they show Kirsten waking up the next morning, realizing Jeevan isn't there, and she runs down to the road yelling for him.  she finds the book in the plastic wrap in the middle of the road, where apparently it had fallen out of Jeevan's pocket when the motorcycle lady stuffed him into the side-seat.  

I get it must be a good book/graphic novel, but seriously, is that good that kirsten would get that absorbed in it all the friggin time?

at least we know Jeevan didn't abandon Kirsten.  unfortunately she believed he did because of what Frank said (though when Jeevan pulled out the book after the wolf attack, it had blood on it - wouldn't Kirsten had seen that and realized Jeevan didn't just leave her?)  why she opted to leave the safety of the cabin in the middle of winter though, is strange.  i would have thought she'd tough it out, at least until spring (and if she had, she would have been found).  She obviously knows how to hunt and scrounge for food.  maybe she was afraid of the wolf or thought red bandanas attacked him and could get her too?  

who got all those women pregnant?  obviously it was 2-3 months after most died, since the caption said "almost one year".  or are we supposed to believe that these women got pregnant by their spouses/boyfriends/apocalypse hook-ups in more rural areas that the virus didn't get them for a month or two?  and they somehow all found their way to the baby store without any men around?  

i didn't connect Rose's "david" as tyler right away, and the voice sounded female so i was confused at first.  then they finally showed him, and the voice fit with him so young, he must have connected with Rose not too long after he left the airport.  i'm almost surprised Terry didn't ask him if he wanted to stay with them.

 

 

 

 

[aghst]

Kirsten got a lot closer to Frank than Jeevan in that apartment, even though Jeevan saved her life.

She almost got Jeevan killed because she was reading the book rather than covering him with the rifle.  He may have resented her for her making them stay an additional day in the apartment but he kept it bottled up until he blurted it out.

But before he left the cabin that fateful night, they'd lived for months together and she preferred to read the book, crochet or throw her knife, the knife that killed Frank.  So they weren't speaking much to each other, probably why Jeevan was holding these imaginary conversations with Frank.

He shouldn't have tossed the book but despite almost dying and losing a foot, he still went back to look for her.  If he had seen her again, he still wouldn't have been mad at her, even though she almost got him killed -- they could have waited until the morning to retrieve the book in the daylight.  

Jeevan hated being seen as undependable, disloyal -- leavin' Jeevan.  Because he obviously has a nurturing, supportive nature.  It's just that Kirsten is too much of a badass to want support from him.  So in a way, he found a way to channel this nature, helping to deliver all those babies, including the one woman who showed up as he was trying to leave.  It looks like he continued to help people, even after he started a family.

Why did Kirsten bond more with the Conductor and the TS but not with Jeevan?  She'd bonded with Arthur.  Maybe because Jeevan wasn't an artiste?

Speaking of art, that book -- "so pretentious" -- and the Shakespeare plays get these characters in trouble or helps them cause trouble.  It's nice to have art in the post-apocalypse but they should be luxuries.  In the MoC, after they've achieved material comforts and needs, Elizabeth wants to put on a play -- hence why MoC was heavily recruiting the TS.  But the play resulted in their security being breached and the comic book allowed Tyler to slip in where he was able to wreak havoc.

 

Edited January 7, 2022 by aghst

[weightyghost]

9 hours ago, Hanahope said:

who got all those women pregnant?  obviously it was 2-3 months after most died, since the caption said "almost one year". 

It was 9 months after the virus hit. The doctor had asked Jeeven when he woke up "what/who were you doing 280 days ago". It was also a few days before the winter equinox, which is December 21st (which doesn't totally make sense in the timeline, because I thought the virus hit right before Christmas). But the show is really messing with things like that, so I'll ignore that. 

That is why she told the story of the blackout in NYC where there was a baby boom, because when the world crumbled, people slept together, and boom. Babies. 

[HappyHanna]

1 hour ago, weightyghost said:

It was also a few days before the winter equinox, which is December 21st (which doesn't totally make sense in the timeline, because I thought the virus hit right before Christmas). But the show is really messing with things like that, so I'll ignore that. 

Yeah, the timeline makes no sense.  Jeevan says, when bringing all the stuff in from the store, that it is for his brother's Christmas party, and the apartment lobby has a Christmas tree.  So even acknowledging that the tree could have been up the day after Thanksgiving (end of November for those non-USA folks), these babies had to have been conceived March-ish for winter equinox births to work. But it is also full on snow drifts still 90 days later when Jeevan and Kristen leave so who knows, time has no meaning. 

I just assumed that after 3 months of not being dead from flu, thoughts turned to beyond just surviving the next day, and lots of babies were conceived. Since there were no fathers in the room, I tried to avoid the obvious thought that they may not have been conceived with consent. 

[Rammchick]

10 hours ago, Hanahope said:

In a prior episode, they show Kirsten waking up the next morning, realizing Jeevan isn't there, and she runs down to the road yelling for him.  she finds the book in the plastic wrap in the middle of the road, where apparently it had fallen out of Jeevan's pocket when the motorcycle lady stuffed him into the side-seat.  

Thanks much -- clearly I didn't remember that!

Regarding the babies -- I wondered if they were immune to the flu.  It appeared that their mothers conferred their own immunity onto them, but it doesn't always work that way.  Considering there were no fathers to be seen, the babies could have just as easily gotten their fathers' immunity -- or the lack thereof.

Edited January 7, 2022 by Rammchick

[KarenX]

1 hour ago, HappyHanna said:

I just assumed that after 3 months of not being dead from flu, thoughts turned to beyond just surviving the next day, and lots of babies were conceived.

There is clearly some in-universe cultural touchstone of “The First Hundred” (Days). There was probably some spring is coming/vernal equinox/First Hundred Days since Pandemic celebration that inspired conception.

[Hanahope]

another issue, why did motorcycle lady have to bean Javeen?  what was wrong with talking to him?  both he and Kirsten might have gone with her and helped under much better circumstances.

[aghst]

i think it's been hinted that there are some people out for themselves.  They will take whatever you may have, shoot first, ask questions later.

The first time Jeevan went to that other apartment and listened to the short wave radio, they were talking about certain places not being safe.

 

 

[chocolatine]

This episode made no sense. The virus broke out just before Christmas, and the screen caption in the beginning said "almost year one" and later "18 days before the winter solstice" so it was more than 11 months later. That would mean that with 99.9% of people dead, a dozen or so young women in the same area happened to get pregnant around the same time? And then found their way to the same department store, and the disgraced doctor happened to be there as well?

Spoiler

All of this just to have Jeevan end up the same way he ended up in the book, with a wife and children and working as a doctor, even though they completely changed his storyline between the beginning and the ending?

 

[overtherainbow]

12 hours ago, chocolatine said:

This episode made no sense. The virus broke out just before Christmas, and the screen caption in the beginning said "almost year one" and later "18 days before the winter solstice" so it was more than 11 months later. That would mean that with 99.9% of people dead, a dozen or so young women in the same area happened to get pregnant around the same time? And then found their way to the same department store, and the disgraced doctor happened to be there as well?

  Hide contents

All of this just to have Jeevan end up the same way he ended up in the book, with a wife and children and working as a doctor, even though they completely changed his storyline between the beginning and the ending?

 

It definitely doesn't seem likely they would all get pregnant at the same time unless they found an untouched sperm bank in the hospital. What happened to the men? Only the women happened to have immunity and survive some way? How were they all able to find each other? The timeline makes no sense. 

[chocolatine]

55 minutes ago, overtherainbow said:

It definitely doesn't seem likely they would all get pregnant at the same time unless they found an untouched sperm bank in the hospital. What happened to the men? Only the women happened to have immunity and survive some way? How were they all able to find each other? The timeline makes no sense. 

It would have made more sense to have this storyline a few years after the pandemic, once the survivors have gotten used to the "new normal" and found a way to sustain themselves. Then I'm sure a religious movement would have emerged with the goal to repopulate the earth, most likely with some gross men telling women of childbearing age that it was their duty to god and humanity to become a baby factory (a la The Handmaid's Tale). But I don't see women voluntarily getting pregnant 2-3 months after the outbreak, with no medical care or other resources available, and not knowing how they themselves will survive from day to day.

[aghst]

I don't think those pregnant women will be seen again right, other than the one that Jeevan married?

Although Jeevan might not be in the finale either.

[bilgistic]

No one has mentioned the graphic "crowning" scene! My boyfriend and I both screamed! He said something about how gross it was, and I told him that it's way worse than that in reality. We don't have kids, but my mother and my sisters have told me about childbirth. I noped out a long time ago for several reasons.

Why did the one young mother die but her baby live? I didn't catch what happened and didn't understand why the doctor didn't perform a Caesarean section...or did she? And was David/Tyler just her friend or...the baby's father...? He was too young then...right?

 

[chocolatine]

2 minutes ago, bilgistic said:

And was David/Tyler just her friend or...the baby's father...? He was too young then...right?

I don't think he was the father. If the women are supposed to have gotten pregnant at the start of the pandemic, Tyler would have still been at the airport with his mother. Even if they got pregnant a few months later, which would make more sense with the timeline, Tyler couldn't have been more than ten years old. I doubt a grown woman would have slept with him voluntarily, and if he raped her, she wouldn't have asked him to come to the birthing center.

[Hanahope]

3 hours ago, chocolatine said:

Then I'm sure a religious movement would have emerged with the goal to repopulate the earth, most likely with some gross men telling women of childbearing age that it was their duty to god and humanity to become a baby factory

i can go into this in the book thread.

1 hour ago, bilgistic said:

Why did the one young mother die but her baby live? I didn't catch what happened and didn't understand why the doctor didn't perform a Caesarean section...or did she?

the doctor said the woman had some condition (i missed what it was) that she didn't catch.  it caused complications with the delivery and it might have been too late for her to do a Caesarean or it wouldn't have made a difference.  i got the impression the complications caused too much damage to the mother, but yeah, they didn't explain it well.

[txhorns79]

This was like an insane version of Call the Midwife. 

4 hours ago, Hanahope said:

the doctor said the woman had some condition (i missed what it was) that she didn't catch.  it caused complications with the delivery and it might have been too late for her to do a Caesarean or it wouldn't have made a difference.  i got the impression the complications caused too much damage to the mother, but yeah, they didn't explain it well.

I believe she said dsytocia.  It's when the baby's shoulders get stuck behind the mom's public bone during birth.  My guess is the mom probably had a hemorrhage of some kind during the birth, and they did not have the ability to stop the bleeding.    

And how is it that even future Jeevan is still poorly groomed?  Seriously, the beard is gross and his hair is ridiculous.  They've shown other clean shaven or well groomed men on the show, so this is all a choice!  I will never not complain about this.

I do feel bad for Kirsten.  She was both lucky to have an adult look out for her, but she's unlucky in that her adult doesn't have the maturity to be a real parent figure to her.  Though given how far gone Jeevan is, what with the casually sitting with the corpse of that family's dad, she might be better off on her own. 

  

[aghst]

I thought the doctor was worried that the mother would crush the baby while trying to deliver it.

But apparently it was the other way around, the mother was more at risk.

 

In the cold weather, that hair and facial hair may keep him warmer.

Maybe he couldn't find enough disposable razors to bother.

[Hanahope]

I don’t know how much, if any, electricity places had.  The airport had solar panels.  Some people may have found generators that run on gas, but then the gas would eventually run out too.  

Of course one could shave w/o electricity, if you have a straight razor (once other razors ran out).  But one should always be able to trim a beard with scissors at a minimum.

 

[Citizen A]

Regarding the timing, I understood this episode to be about 1 year after Day 0.  The allusion to the vernal equinox was when apparently a lot of the surviving Michiganders (or wherever) got busy after a long horrible first winter.

The store still had Christmas stuff up from the prior year, I guess.

[Nellise]

I laughed when they said in a previous episode they needed to go east and then they show Kirsten and Jeevan leave the building and start walking east when the only thing east of their building was Navy Pier and Lake Michigan (they were living in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Point_Tower) . I imagined them walking to the end of the pier and turning around right away. But this episode Jeevan says they walked across the water. Only problem with that is Lake Michigan doesn't freeze over completely. It's theoretically possible, but if it were cold enough for that they would've died from the cold. And they seemed to leave around the beginning of March making it even less likely that the lake would be frozen, but this show makes the Midwest look like the Arctic.

And apparently they didn't even go east really. They must've gone north to where wolves live (they only live on the upper end of Lake Michigan).

Did they ever give a reason for leaving Chicago and going to live in the woods? They were in a huge city that would have tons of supplies everywhere but they go off and live where they need to hunt? It's not like they went there to find somebody else or anything.

This show is fascinatingly nonsensical.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Nellise

[txhorns79]

11 minutes ago, Nellise said:

 

Did they ever give a reason for leaving Chicago and going to live in the woods? They were in a huge city that would have tons of supplies everywhere but they go off and live where they need to hunt? It's not like they went there to find somebody else or anything.

After encountering the stranger and losing Frank, my guess is they were wary of encountering other people and looked to find a more isolated place. 

[Nellise]

15 minutes ago, txhorns79 said:

After encountering the stranger and losing Frank, my guess is they were wary of encountering other people and looked to find a more isolated place. 

But they were planning on leaving before the stranger showed up. They didn't leave because of him. The were planning to leave the day before but only stayed to do the play.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Nellise

[Hanahope]

I would have thought going to the suburbs a better idea.  still a lot of food/can supplies, can find a smallish home with fireplace, lots of wood likely available.  probably could even find a home that was empty of bodies.  probably could find cars with gas and car keys around to go find more supplies.  and yes, even guns if necessary for protection.

[chocolatine]

1 hour ago, Hanahope said:

I would have thought going to the suburbs a better idea.  still a lot of food/can supplies, can find a smallish home with fireplace, lots of wood likely available.  probably could even find a home that was empty of bodies.  probably could find cars with gas and car keys around to go find more supplies.  and yes, even guns if necessary for protection.

The place where Jeevan found the body on the couch and the recording of children's voices did look like a suburb. There were many similar-looking houses close together on that street. If that place was close enough for him and Kirsten to walk to from the cabin, the cabin couldn't have been that isolated.

[txhorns79]

2 hours ago, Nellise said:

But they were planning on leaving before the stranger showed up. They didn't leave because of him. The were planning to leave the day before but only stayed to do the play.

Yes, but the question was why they chose an isolated cabin, and I was positing why I thought they may have done so.  So while they were already planning to leave, I wouldn't be surprised if their plans on where they might stay changed after Frank died.

[Nellise]

1 hour ago, chocolatine said:

The place where Jeevan found the body on the couch and the recording of children's voices did look like a suburb. There were many similar-looking houses close together on that street. If that place was close enough for him and Kirsten to walk to from the cabin, the cabin couldn't have been that isolated.

They were also on a busy enough road that somebody thought it was worth plowing, so I guess they were just in a isolated house in a suburb-type area (that happens to have wolves). But for some reason they had to walk across Lake Michigan to find that...rather than in the hundred or so Chicago suburbs. There are even plenty of deer in the Chicago suburbs if you need to hunt (and no wolves!).

Another random nonsense thing: in the "hospital" that's presumably trying to use minimum power, someone was using one of those power floor buffers. Didn't realize it's critical to keep the floors shiny, but that's why I'm a poor doomsday prepper.

Edited January 11, 2022 by Nellise

[aghst]

Probably a good idea to avoid other survivors as much as possible, like the intruder who killed Frank and the woman who shot the beanbag at Jeevan.

That' what Kirsten was suppose to be on the watch for from the tower.

Probably less likely that people who've lived in cities all their lives would go hunting for deer but if they want fresh protein, they'd have to learn to hunt and harvest the meat.

Also I can accept that wildlife would encroach into inhabited areas once humans shrank to 1% of the previous population.  Most of the homes are empty and there aren't too many people driving or walking around even these suburbs.  But rather than deer and wolves, it would be scavenging animals like raccoons which would be lured to formerly-inhabited areas, if they smell food in the trash cans and dumpsters.

Or if the deer that they shot left a blood trail or they discarded some entrails somewhere near that cabin.

They were supplementing whatever they would hunt (including snares for smaller game) with whatever they can scavenge from empty homes  But that increases the risk of running into hostile people.

Once Jeevan decided to answer that short wave radio, he made himself known as Dr. Chaudry and that woman was probably targeting him.

That is interesting, he was mistaken for a doctor at the theater in the pilot and he was an aimless guy.  His sister became a doctor, Frank was a writer.  But being a doctor became his avocation through circumstances, though it's one thing to deliver a couple of babies, how is he treating other illnesses that people have?  Did he find some medical text books or something?

[KarenX]

4 minutes ago, aghst said:

how is he treating other illnesses that people have?  Did he find some medical text books or something?

Presumably the actual doctor trained him before she died. 

[Haleth]

Wow. I wish we’d been following Jeevan and Deborah for the last 8 episodes rather than the Tyler nonsense. Their journey is more interesting. 

22 hours ago, KarenX said:

Presumably the actual doctor trained him before she died. 

The doctor is Deborah. Isn’t she still alive?  I thought she still maintains a clinic for moms. It’s where the pregnant member of the TS wanted to stay in the 2nd (?) episode.  I wonder why Kirsten never ran into Jeevan if Deb’s community is a yearly stop for the TS. 

[Hanahope]

34 minutes ago, Haleth said:

The doctor is Deborah. Isn’t she still alive?  I thought she still maintains a clinic for moms. It’s where the pregnant member of the TS wanted to stay in the 2nd (?) episode.  I wonder why Kirsten never ran into Jeevan if Deb’s community is a yearly stop for the TS. 

in the 20 years, yeah, its possible Deborah is still alive.  

Whether Kirsten ran into Deb or her community would depend on whether the TS was near the store/hospital.  it looked like the TS stuck to more "recent"  places that people created in the aftermath of the pandemic to live.  i'm also not sure whether Javeen ever told anyone Kirsten's name, so others might recognize it and realize it was her.  and did they call him Javeen, or Dr. Chaudery?  and did Kirsten know Javeen's last name.  though yeah, you'd think that someone in these communities would have mentioned him and somehow the stories would help them find each other again.

the book went a completely different direction, so this wasn't an issue.

[KarenX]

Ok maybe I dreamed this but I have in my head she died in a fire. Isn’t that why there are statues of her in that town? And why she is St Deborah and not Dr Deborah? Or is this just some elaborate head canon?

[Haleth]

Oh, right. The community is named for her, which would suggest she is gone. That makes sense. 

[Hanahope]

4 hours ago, KarenX said:

Ok maybe I dreamed this but I have in my head she died in a fire. Isn’t that why there are statues of her in that town? And why she is St Deborah and not Dr Deborah? Or is this just some elaborate head canon?

oh i completely missed that part.  you are right, there was a statue.  Layers!  so i guess names never got exchanged/referred to enough in the right context that no one ever put the two, Javeen and Kirsten together.  but who knows, he's still around in the general area, so maybe they will still meet up again.

[Melina22]

Partway through this episode I decided I wouldn't even try to get things to make sense in my head, but to just go with the flow of the story. Otherwise I'd go crazy. 

I mean, people are plowing roads? Buffing floors? Showing up at Walmart maternity hospitals where there are no men, but lots of medical supplies? And no crazed attackers after their power and food? Just random pregnant women showing up alone. 

Where did Kiersten learn to shoot rifles? To set snares? Who killed and perfectly skinned the wolves? 

I could go on and on, but there's no point. 

All this said, I preferred this very weird episode to the last one. A lot of people in this episode seemed odd, but overall not as evil as in past episodes. 

On 1/8/2022 at 3:53 PM, bilgistic said:

No one has mentioned the graphic "crowning" scene! My boyfriend and I both screamed

Yeah, that was shocking. I'm 99% certain it was CGI. I've been through the real thing 4 times, and to be honest, I'd rather do it than watch it. It varies, but it's not always that bad. Sometimes it's awesome. But never very watchable. 

Sadly, it was realistic that they lost a mother, although I was certain the one with dystocia was Jeevan's future wife. That was confusing. 

Also confusing... what was Tyler doing there? People were acting like he was the father but wasn't he an adolescent then? Why did no one notice? Was Rose his substitute mother who died? I hope an 11 year old wasn't the father of her baby. 

Yup. Very weird episode. 

 

[shrewd.buddha]

On 1/7/2022 at 11:54 PM, chocolatine said:

This episode made no sense.

Other than poorly explaining how Jeevan  and Kiersten got separated, this episode seemed wildly out of place.  Was there supposed to be some overall theme or something going on?  It raised so many questions that it seemed to be written by someone who didn't understand any of the surrounding circumstances.
Was the phantom snowplow operator created just to explain people riding motorcycles in the snow?
Jeevan  and Kiersten walked everywhere? Not even using bikes? But there are motorcycles?
A community that could support a well-stocked, heated birthing clinic but not other medical needs? Buffing the floors?
Only pregnant women in the building? -- being dropped off by people who lived elsewhere?
Jeevan, injured, was the best candidate to make into a doctor?  No other non-pregnant person was willing to step in to help and learn? 

[BluBarbi98]

That's what happened to Jeevan! I'm so confused how he and Kirsten never found each other again. 

[Affogato]

On 1/24/2022 at 10:06 AM, shrewd.buddha said:

Other than poorly explaining how Jeevan  and Kiersten got separated, this episode seemed wildly out of place.  Was there supposed to be some overall theme or something going on?  It raised so many questions that it seemed to be written by someone who didn't understand any of the surrounding circumstances.
Was the phantom snowplow operator created just to explain people riding motorcycles in the snow?
Jeevan  and Kiersten walked everywhere? Not even using bikes? But there are motorcycles?
A community that could support a well-stocked, heated birthing clinic but not other medical needs? Buffing the floors?
Only pregnant women in the building? -- being dropped off by people who lived elsewhere?
Jeevan, injured, was the best candidate to make into a doctor?  No other non-pregnant person was willing to step in to help and learn? 

I think the birthing clinic was a version of the museum of civilization. There are going to be these things that people keep going for a while. It must have had generators they could keep going, although the gasoline or propane would stop working fairly soon.

I don't think in the show we are told what Jeevan did before the pandemic?

My impression was that Jeevan was too badly hurt to look for her, at least for a while, and Kirsten didn't look.