The Knick 1.09 Review: “The Golden Lotus”

God. Where has this show been?

Truly. I don’t know where this version of The Knick was hiding. This is not the same show. It can’t be. It’s so much more dynamic and interesting and engaging. It’s like The Knick took a senzu bean. What a change.

Tonight’s episode really unravels the John Thackery and puts into great perspective his comrade Christiansen’s suicide. Thackery is a legit mess without cocaine. I think I asked this last episode but seriously how much cocaine was this dude doing? He gets a fix and then like a scene later his eyes are red and his hair is sweaty and he’s begging for more.

Thackery’s whole hero schtick is gone. At one point he goes to the medicine peddler from an episode or so earlier, and tries to sell his image to get cocaine. The peddler flat turns him down, no matter what Thackery offers, and you can just see the weight of not getting his fix burn right through him. Clive Owen’s performance this whole season has been a revelation but watching him portray Thackery as a man on the edge was fascinating. Thackery is on the verge of tears, so close that you can’t believe he isn’t already crying. He turns into a beggar, putting his hands on the medicine peddler so gently and desperately that it’s almost too much to watch. But Thackery is still turned away.

This episode had a lot of moving parts: Algernon, Gallinger, Cornelia, and Lucy Elkins all had a lot of stuff to do.

Algernon and Cornelia’s “lovers” storyline is probably the most illogical bit of the whole show, even as the acting and writing get stronger each week. Cornelia is pregnant and both she and Algernon want to keep the baby, but can’t. Algernon, at the last minute, is unable to perform the abortion on Cornelia.

The reason I call it illogical is because, once again, I cannot buy the idea that Algernon and Cornelia would be so foolish. I don’t give a crap about love overriding logic; if they have that baby, Algernon is dead, Cornelia is probably dead, and the baby is definitely dead. There is no other options. No matter where they go, they will be shunned and attacked. Getting rid of the baby would save both of their lives and allow them to continue on. Not doing so will result in their deaths. I believe that firmly, and it makes it hard to buy the storyline. But man, do Andre Holland Juliet Rylance make it more plausible. It’s worth me turning off my brain and just allowing that storyline to happen because they are so, so good.

Gallinger’s storyline took a turn for the dark when his wife, Eleanor, comes to hospital with their baby girl in a stroller. The baby is dead; Eleanor said it had a “brain fever” and stuck its head in a bucket of ice until it drowned. Gallinger has his wife committed.

I’m not even sure what to say about this bit. It’s really riveting to see Gallinger’s life spiral down the drain; you almost feel like he deserves it for being such a racist jerkoff but at the same time he’s lost two children and now his wife. I’m just glad to give a crap about his part in The Knick; him being interesting was always better than him not. Also his hair is kind of cool.

The big thing, though, that I want to focus on is Lucy Elkins. I think I mentioned last episode that I think she’s underage, and this episode did nothing to change my mind. At best, she’s super, duper young.

Basically, she becomes a drug mule for Thackery. On two separate occasions she manages to acquire narcotics, but she puts herself in incredible danger to do so. She prostitutes herself to the owner of the opium den, indulging the owners foot fetish for a few grams of opium and a “hundred Yankee dollars.” She steals a whole box of cocaine from the german hospital and just barely escapes. She is risking her life because she is in love with John Thackery and she has no idea. She has no idea. The world is so big and full and populated with men as wonderfully skilled as Thackery without any of the immense baggage. He allows, without reservation, to fund his coke habit, and makes no effort to stop her. He knows that she is in danger getting this stuff. He knows that because his trips to the opium den are dangerous for a man, let alone a woman.

Elkins is a child. Thackery is using her as a windup toy, for him to lay down on top of and send out for his fix. It’s one thing for a girl barely out of puberty’s diapers to make bad decisions but it’s a whole different set of evil when a man who’s supposed to know better does the same thing. She is a child. He should be guiding her, not inject cocaine into her vagina and ruining her life.

That last sentence I just wrote is really bizarre. It can’t be safe to inject hard drugs directly into your gentials. How many times can you do that before you lose all feeling, all the time?

Anyways.

This show is as good as I hoped it would be from the pilot and second episode. I can’t wait for the finale.

See you next week.

[Photo via Cinemax]