S04.E02: Off The Rails

[Lady Calypso]

Quote

After performing a daring on-site rescue to save a teenage girl, Drew (Brendan Fehr) is forced to re-evaluate his priorities as a new father. Back at the hospital, the ER is flooded with mass casualty victims from an amusement park disaster. Hoping to get Paul (Robert Bailey Jr.) back on staff, Jordan (Jill Flint) facilitates a rapprochement between Paul and his father (guest star James McDaniel). Meanwhile, Scott (Scott Wolf) pursues a more active role in the hospital. Kenny (JR Lemon) tries to put Cain (guest star Mark Consuelos) in his place, but Cain's deft handling of an emergency shows Kenny that he may have bit off more than he can chew

Promo:

[lor]

i cant believe this show has been on for 3 years. i just heard about tonight.

[Aliconehead]

Those bastards killed Topher. So uncool. Why couldn't they kill TC?  So I was half right, MC was a doc in Mexico. I still think it will come out later he is here illegally. 

[statsgirl]

I am a sucker for stories about foreign trained doctors, maybe because my parents and many of their friends were foreign-trained doctors.  I"m glad that Jill hired Cain but where did she get the money to do it?

Yeah, I'm sad Topher is gone.  I liked him and his relationship with his mother last season.

So impressed that Abby was willing to give up her daughter to be adopted.  And Paul's father has way overstayed his welcome.

[saber5055]

I thought I could make it all the way through this episode w/o Topher dying, then they had to screw it up at the last minute and kill my fav character/actor. TC staying in Syria means we're going to get more kidnapped/torture/combat episodes? NO THANKS. Hate it. At least Jennifer Beale was smart enough to know when to go home. And this hospital can hire anyone w/o checking references or making people start at the bottom, like Cain said would happen if he wanted to be a doctor in the U.S.? Alrighty then.

[juliet73]

This show is beyond ridiculous!  Ok, so we all knew Cain was a Dr before, but he can't be a Dr in the US because he couldn't speak English?  Dude, speaks it perfectly without a trace of any accent, etc!  Doesn't he need a physician license to practice in the US?  I guess not at San Antonio Memorial.  

The TC / Syria stuff is beyond stupid!  It's not even part of the rest of the show.  Do a spin off or get rid it (and TC).  

When did Rivera become a Dr?  Wasn't she a med student last season?

Everyone chanting "Jordan, Jordan" at the end...Gag!!  

Why did they kill off Topher?  They could have easily said he already accepted another offer.

I still don't understand why Drew had to go up in the lift to rescue those girls - isn't that a job for the Fire Dept?  

I think I'm out!  This show is too much of a hot mess!

[dargosmydaddy]

This show has ALWAYS been a hot mess, but Topher's death really hurt, and killing off his daughter, too? That was just shitty. (I know she's a fictional character, and one we've barely seen at that, but still...)

The TC bits seemed like an entirely different show, but I was laughing at his mad self-healing abilities. Didn't a nail go through his hand last week (which was like a day ago in show time)? I don't remember the particulars, but even if it went through his palm and didn't actually penetrate all the way through his hand (because the backs of both hands looked absolutely fine this week), shouldn't that make it just a bit hard to do all his McGyver-medical-procedures? Not even mentioning get shot in the shoulder and only having the use of one eye. During the scene where Syd wants to leave the terrorist behind, I kept thinking she should just knock TC out and go herself (she could drag his unconscious ass with her if she was feeling particularly kind). I was also worried that whatever tube TC pulled out of the car to siphon out the terrorist's insides would mean they were stranded, but I guess it was an unnecessary part or they put it back in after the procedure? Whatever. I don't know what kind of doctor TC is going to be in Syria with one arm and one eye, but whatever. Maybe he'll come home now because of Topher? I don't think he'll be gone much longer.

49 minutes ago, juliet73 said:

Ok, so we all knew Cain was a Dr before, but he can't be a Dr in the US because he couldn't speak English?  Dude, speaks it perfectly without a trace of any accent, etc!  Doesn't he need a physician license to practice in the US?

So much this! Maybe someone with medical know-how can weigh in on the specifics of this, but can you hire someone as a "resident" if they're not currently in any medical school? 

[Ohwell]

I missed it last night.  What happened to Topher?

[dargosmydaddy]

1 hour ago, Ohwell said:

I missed it last night.  What happened to Topher?

They got word at the end of the episode (after he had, off screen, agreed to come back) that he and his daughter had a head-on collision with a drunk driver, and there were no survivors.

[Ohwell]

1 hour ago, dargosmydaddy said:

They got word at the end of the episode (after he had, off screen, agreed to come back) that he and his daughter had a head-on collision with a drunk driver, and there were no survivors.

Thanks.  That really sucks how they sent him off.

[TVForever]

6 hours ago, juliet73 said:

 

I still don't understand why Drew had to go up in the lift to rescue those girls - isn't that a job for the Fire Dept?  

 

I think he was up there to attend to immediate medical needs. At least one firefighter was there to do the actual rescue, he just didn't get any lines and we barely saw him. It made it look as though Drew was running everything.

Edited June 30, 2017 by TVForever

[starri]

7 hours ago, dargosmydaddy said:

but can you hire someone as a "resident" if they're not currently in any medical school? 

Yes, albeit not in the way it was depicted here.  I mean, the show has no idea how residency works, but people do occasionally do residencies in two separate specialities, and there are certain specialities, like anesthesia and dermatology, where you have to do an intern year in either internal medicine or surgery before you start into your actual specialty.

But hey, Jordan was able to verify Cain's degree, his visa status, get him credentialed by the Federation of State Medical Boards, got him an NPI number, and got Medicare to underwrite his residency in the span of three hours overnight.

[statsgirl]

On 2017-06-30 at 0:44 PM, juliet73 said:

This show is beyond ridiculous!  Ok, so we all knew Cain was a Dr before, but he can't be a Dr in the US because he couldn't speak English?  Dude, speaks it perfectly without a trace of any accent, etc!  Doesn't he need a physician license to practice in the US?  I guess not at San Antonio Memorial. 

The ability to speak English has nothing to do with it.  Doctors who certified in the US can't work in the UK or Canada, Canadian doctors can't work in the US and I assume the UK, and British trained doctors can't work in Canada or the US.

They will tell you it's because they don't trust medical schools in other countries but the real reason is the good old union closed shop.  The union members (aka the doctors) don't want foreigners coming in and taking their jobs.  I heard (on the radio) of a couple who live near the Canada/US border so he can work in Canada and she drives down to work in the US because with her US medical diploma, she can't work in Canada.

The way to get certified in the other country is to do your internship/residency in the new country.  (My father was a neonatologist and my mother did internal medicine/cancer research but they had to re-do their internship year and all the exams.)  The problem is that the residencies are also tightly controlled.  In my area, there are seven medical schools but only two residencies that aren't allotted to those graduates.  Doctors coming into the country from foreign medical schools have a tough time getting a residency.  I think some are able to work for no pay in which case the hospital may agree to take them on but I'm not sure.   It may work differently in the US if Medicare pays but let's not hold our breathe with the new health care legislation, Medicare is going to be way broke.

22 hours ago, starri said:

But hey, Jordan was able to verify Cain's degree, his visa status, get him credentialed by the Federation of State Medical Boards, got him an NPI number, and got Medicare to underwrite his residency in the span of three hours overnight.

Yeah, but if she did it realistically, the show would be cancelled by the time he could get on board.

 

On 2017-06-30 at 11:33 AM, saber5055 said:

TC staying in Syria means we're going to get more kidnapped/torture/combat episodes? NO THANKS. Hate it. At least Jennifer Beale was smart enough to know when to go home.

One of the things I like most about this show is how realistically they do the military bits.  I just know that if Abby's mom had been in NCIS, they would have been kissing her hands and feet for serving her country instead of taking care of her daughter.  Here, it was a real dilemma -- she serves overseas but she knows that her daughter suffers and so do her parents for having to raise her.  But what can she do?  This is her life.

TC was really getting too beat up to be realistically functioning.  But I appreciate that they are trying to show the hell that is the Syrian war.  Aleppo was a modern city of almost two million, bigger than Philadelphia or Phoenix, almost as big as Houston.  Much of it is now a graveyard because people rebelled against a man who tortured and killed schoolchildren for writing graffiti.  They just want what people in the US have. I know a family who got out on their third attempt to leave the country and became refugees.  Her sister and family were unable to. Last December a barrel bomb hit their building and my friend's sister and three children under 7 were buried so deep that even if they had survived, rescuers couldn't reach them.

So while it's not pretty seeing TC and what goes on in Syria, I'm grateful to Night Shift for trying to show its audience a little bit of the reality that is in Syria rather than the all too common fear mongering that I see on TV and in official statements.

[Ohwell]

2 hours ago, statsgirl said:

So while it's not pretty seeing TC and what goes on in Syria, I'm grateful to Night Shift for trying to show its audience a little bit of the reality that is in Syria rather than the all too common fear mongering that I see on TV and in official statements.

I'm sorry about the family in Syria but I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "fear mongering."  Regarding reporting the atrocities in Syria, that has been ongoing, and Richard Engel, in particular, has been reporting on the situation for years.

It's just that for a television show, it's jarring to abruptly go back and forth from a hospital in the U.S. to what's happening in war-torn Syria.  

Edited July 2, 2017 by Ohwell
clarity

[statsgirl]

People who have been following the news have a pretty good idea of what's going on but I've heard many people say that we have to protect ourselves from the Syrian terrorists who are trying to live amongst us.  It takes UNHCR two to three years to vet a UN refugee family before they're cleared to move into their new country; that's a lot more vetting than most people ever get. They're people just trying to survive  (More dangerous are those already living in the West who become radicalized like Omar.  That's another thing I find realistic about this episode.)

I don't mind going back and forth between the US and Syria. There are so many medical shows on now that most get repetitive and this is something different.

That said, I expect TC to be back fairly soon.  There's only so much story they can tell there.

Edited July 2, 2017 by statsgirl

[Ohwell]

9 hours ago, statsgirl said:

That said, I expect TC to be back fairly soon.  There's only so much story they can tell there.

Well, see, that's the thing.  It's just a television show.  There really is only so much that they can tell about what's happening in Syria (which they really can't since it's a bunch of actors and not real people experiencing real life there), especially since it's supposed to be a story about the night shift in a U.S. hospital.  I'll be glad when they get back to that.

[thuganomics85]

Well, shit.  I worried that they might kill Topher off since Ken Leung was leaving, but they take him and his daughter out in car accident?  Harsh!  Why couldn't they just dump him in the mysterious hole they shoved Ragosa and Landry in?  Rhetorical question... it's for the drama, of course.

Not surprised that Cain was actually a doctor from Mexico, and was only a nurse because of how hard it is to go through residency.  Have no clue how in the hell Jordan already got him promoted, but I guess I'm not suppose to question this show too much.  Sucks for Kenny though.  He picked the wrong nurse to feud with!

Julian and Paul agree to keep their family life and professional life separate, with an assist from Scott who is able to convince Julian to let him run the surgery department (I think?), and Paul will more or less answer to him.  I'm not sure if we are suppose to find Scott shady for doing this, but I feel like he's the only person actually trying to make all of this work, while everyone else (especially Jordan)  just tries to take Julian head on, which is not a winnable battle.

Case of the week was alright, although mainly just used for Drew to realize how hard it will be to be a parent and be in the military.

T.C. finds Syd at least, but now he wants to stay for... reasons.  I'm guessing at least a romance will bloom between him and this other doctor.

[ShortyMac]

So, I totally forgot the show was back on and I saw TNS' Facebook post about Topher. OMG! :(

Aaaaaand now I'm spoiled. Maybe it's better that I know what's coming.

[starri]

8 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

T.C. finds Syd at least, but now he wants to stay for... reasons.  I'm guessing at least a romance will bloom between him and this other doctor.

As long as Amira continues to not take his shit, there are worse options.  I like her.

I guess I have to shamefully admit that I realize that I actually like Jordan now.  It may just be that the characters that I really liked just keep disappearing, but she's...kind of okay now.  She's always been better away from TC, and I found the discussion of her maybe/maybe not feelings for Scott to be something two actual adults would do.  More of that, please.

I need one episode where Drew talks about being a dad with Syd, though.

[tvfanatic13]

On July 2, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Ohwell said:

Well, see, that's the thing.  It's just a television show.  There really is only so much that they can tell about what's happening in Syria (which they really can't since it's a bunch of actors and not real people experiencing real life there), especially since it's supposed to be a story about the night shift in a U.S. hospital.  I'll be glad when they get back to that.

I am glad you mentioned it being the NIGHT shift. I can't understand why the head of the hospital now works the night shift. Also I think TC is coming back soon, just the way he was looking at the copters that were leaving without him when he heard about Topher.