S02.E05: hack E.R.

[thewhiteowl]

When a hacker takes control of all networked medical devices at a hospital in Dallas and threatens to kill one patient every hour if his demands are not met, the Cyber team must find the source and figure out how they accessed an airtight security system.

 

 

[ottoDbusdriver]

When a hacker takes control of all networked medical devices at a hospital in Dallas and threatens to kill one patient every hour if his demands are not met, the Cyber team must find the source and figure out how they accessed an airtight security system.

 

I'm predicting it now -- the hack is coming ....... from INSIDE THE HOSPITAL !!!!  

 

Probably some janitor that felt slighted and put his part-time mad hacker skillz to work.

[iscoffy]

A janitor whose wife (or kid) died because of evil insurance companies cut off payments, perhaps?

[Ishtalady]

Bad Dr. Lady and Crazy Computer Guy were married when they were on Judging Amy. I was hoping they would get at least one scene together.

 

Haven't watched original CSI in years. I had to look up what happened w/Jules - sad.

[iscoffy]

Huh?! So the former head doctor who rehabilitated the image of the hospital decided to not only kill the reputation of the hospital but also kill actual patients because the hospital board put someone else in charge?  And somehow she knew to lurk on the deep web to buy script to hack the pumps?  And how to set up all the other hack stuff?  Apparently her God complex gave her all sorts of hacking powers.

 

I found it quite hilarious that Krummy, who, along with his fellow hackers, likes to high-five everyone at the slightest provocation, didn't want to high-five the weirdo that Mundo stupidly charged off and got.

 

Wasn't really interested in what happened to Finn, but I guess at least there's a resolution.  They should take Patricia Arquette's Oscar back for her crying voice, though. Yikes.

[cpcathy]

Yes, it would seem that if you win an Oscar, you should be, oh, I don't know, better at acting. She seems so flat in this show, like she doesn't even care (which she might not).

[Lebanna]

Arquette's crying has always been a bit odd, her entire career. I mean, at least she can do it - a lot of people can't cry on camera, it's a skill, but she often looks and sound a little like she's laughing or smiling.

It's so strange that I wonder whether that's just how she cries in real life and so it makes sense to her, if not the rest of us.

[AlwaysWatching]

The second I saw Nan Flanagan ( Jessica Tuck ), I knew she was the hacker.  You see a guest star - they are almost always the culprit.  I watch this show for PA and TD now. Absolutely no other reason.

[ottoDbusdriver]

I finally got around to watching this today -- if anything, it continues to be comedy gold for how bad it is.

 

Would the Cyber team have been notified within seconds of the hospital hack ?  Wouldn't the I.T. team at the hospital have spent some time diagnosing the problem BEFORE making the call ? Despite the hackers giving a 4 hour ransom demand at the time of the hack, the Cyber Team didn't even start the 4 hour countdown clock until AFTER Avery arrived in CTAC. 

 

The flight time alone is about 2 and a half hours, so unless the Cyberteam has a supersonic jet how did they get door-to-door from CTAC to the Dallas hospital in under two hours ?  That's impossible.

 

Mundo has the sads because he doesn't get to go out in the field.  Boo hoo !!

 

Krummie giving it hard to the inept nameless redshirt programmers in CTAC.  Seriously, we know none of their names -- and they rarely say anything (limited budget for speaking roles, I guess).

 

So, is Finn in the Dallas hospital -- or is D.B. just having flashbacks of Finn since the patient looks like Finn ?  Nope, just Finn flashbacks.  But we already knew she was dead, so why did we need more backstory from D.B. -- because I have the feeling that most fans hated Finn and didn't care.

 

Lil Bow Wow just happens to know a guy wandering around the hospital who might be some sort of famous athlete, maybe ?  Who the hell is T.K. ?  I we supposed to know who he is from a previous episode or something.

 

Of course the TV in the patient lounge is plugged into the same network as all the other critical hospital devices. Who set the networks up at this place -- the Geek Squad from Best Buy ?

 

Mundo thinks a disgruntled former employee with mad hacker skillz is exacting their revenge on the hospital.  Really Elijah ?  I guessed that upthread without even seeing the episode.

 

Why was all that metal equipment in the MRI room ?  And no, that's not how magnetism works.  It doesn't make metal pens rise up, remain stationary, and flip around -- in mid-air, no less -- before being repulsed away.  Who the fuck writes this ?

 

So, did Mundo get a warrant to invade Artie's house ?  Because I'm pretty sure he lacked probable cause.  I'm also surprised Mundo didn't beat the crap out of him to co-operate -- or at least kill his dog, Rocky.

 

The database of airborne microbes -- is that a real thing ?  And can it nail down a location to within a radius of 10 miles ?  WTF ?  I think that was in there just to make D.B. look useful.

 

They never explained how the radiology doctor came to have these mad hacker skillz.  Sure, she was a disgruntled employee with a god complex, but we never got a motivation to start killing people.  It's a far cry from being unhappy at work so let's start murdering people when she could just go get a job somewhere else.  And what kind of doctors are these that give up on CPR on a patient after about 30 seconds ?  Wouldn't that be suspicious to any of the other doctors and nurses ?

 

And what was with the awkward and badly acted piece at the end of the episode with Grace and Avery ?  That just sucked.

 

 

I found it quite hilarious that Krummy, who, along with his fellow hackers, likes to high-five everyone at the slightest provocation, didn't want to high-five the weirdo that Mundo stupidly charged off and got.

 

 

Krummie calls Artie's idea genius and then blows him off on the high five.  That's cold, Krummie.

[Tony]

I'm basically just hate watching this show to see what crap the writers can come up with, and I'm never disappointed.

 

Besides all the points everyone listed, why did they decide to make the evil doc a radiologist and is driven to do all this because she saved so many lives but didn't get the recognition she deserved? Last I checked, most radiologists only deal with imaging and, at best, make crucial findings that they then pass onto others who then do the actually life-saving. Radiologists don't do much directly themselves, so to build up a god complex and say they should hand over control of the hospital to her because she saved so many lives is laughable.

[TribbleTrouble]

This poor show is still just so laughably bad. If you're going to do a medical episode, for Pete's sake hire a medical consultant. And if they did, not only should that person never consult again, someone should make sure they're not actually practicing real medicine, cuz those medical scenes were stupendously dumb.

After all these years of doing a crime of the week procedural in the CSI universe, you'd think they'd know by now that you don't cast a popular, well-known guest actor like Jessica Tuck and then stick them in what appears to be just a small supporting role if you want any hope that your entire audience won't figure out 'who done it' before the opening credits roll. Audiences wized up to that trick about 4 decades ago. At least be creative enough to come up with an unexpected twist ending. Even a bad twist would be better than this lazy insult to the intelligence and sophistication of their audience. It's like these show runners learned their story structuring circa 1972 and are still stuck there. You can get most audiences to go along for the ride, even when it's fairly ridiculous, so long as you respect them and entertain them and ground your story with the little details that make it at least plausibly real. Don't show me a doctor who declares a patient is in cardiac arrest after only taking a one second wrist pulse. No carotid pulse? Not even a freaking stethoscope? Or a doctor doing two seconds of chest compressions on the hospital sidewalk and declaring him dead? You're in a freaking hospital! Get the guy to emergency. Yeah, it's just a TV show, but these little details matter if you want your audience to take the ride with you without feeling insulted.

Ugh. I'd really hoped that with a little housecleaning they'd be able to pull themselves together for season 2 of this one, and it is a bit better than the disasterous season 1, but I don't know how many more stinkers like this ep I have in me.