Episode Title: Emergency
Season 04, Episode 10
Episode 063 of 344
Written by Diana Gould
Directed by Larry Elikann
Original Airdate: Thursday, December
9th, 1982
The Plot (Courtesy of TV.Com): Jeff Munson
tells Abby he'll only work with Ciji if he produces her. Abby says not to worry
- she won't let Kenny stand in their way. Ginger shows Kenny a song she wrote,
and when Ciji sings it that night at
Daniel, Ginger is furious. She yells at Ciji that it is HER song, and she will
get Ciji for this. Diana collapses and needs a kidney transplant. Karen doesn't
handle it well, and the boys ask Mack to come to the hospital to support her.
Karen rejects him at first, but then lets him comfort her. Karen and the boys
don't match Diana's blood type, and therefore can't donate their kidneys. Karen
asks Abby to be tested.
Oh goody, it’s time for a really
exciting episode of KL this week. Make no mistake, at the era of KL which we have now reached I find every episode exciting, in case you
haven’t been able to tell by my gushing over the last few weeks, but the little
thirty second preview for Emergency before
the classic opening credits definitely tells us that this episode will be a big
one full of drama. Yes indeed, there is
a lot going on this week, so let’s just dive right in.
The main thrust of the episode
involves a medical crisis for Diana, and the writers (Diana Gould this week,
contributing her seventh KL script
out of twelve and her first one since the dreadful Reunion back in season three) do a good job of making sure this
doesn’t feel like it’s coming completely out of nowhere. When we first see Diana this week, she’s
looking a little sickly and multiple different characters ask her if she is
feeling alright. On another show she
would probably just collapse somewhere around the midpoint of the ep, totally
out of the blue, but here they make sure to send us viewers hints that
something is amiss with her. Now, Diana may be feeling
poorly, but she still really wants to go out with Abs and Gary to, like, some
snooty place. I’m trying to remember if
they are going to the same whites-only tennis club that Diana and Chip were
visiting back in Man in the Middle,
but I’m not sure. I remember there being
horses and stuff at this place, so it’s probably a different place. In any case, Karen doesn’t want Diana to go
off when she’s feeling sick, but she lets her go anyway, and the fact that
Diana collapses while she’s spending time with Abs provides us with plenty of
fuel for Abs and Karen to argue throughout the episode.
We also actually have a
legitimate story for Kenny and Ginger this week, so let’s focus on them for a
minute (I apologize in advance). When we
first see Kenny, he’s playing with that little bundle of joy, Erin Molly (and I
reiterate that Erin Molly is not an
incredibly stupid name) out in the yard.
Okay, I don’t like Kenny and I don’t like Erin Molly, but for some
reason I really liked how this little scene was filmed. He’s just sorta holding her up to the sky and
acting like a dad with her, but there’s something about how the sun slants
through his arms or the angle of the camera; I don’t know what it is, but I just
found it to be a unique looking little sequence and I jotted that down in my
notes. Sadly, our two boring characters
quickly become three boring characters when Ginger enters the scene and tells
Kenny how she wrote a song and she’d really like to perform it. Let’s not forget that Ginger is a singer now. We’ve seen her do some singing back in Possibilities, and let’s not forget that
her singing gig in San Francisco was the catalyst for them being completely
absent from the brilliant Night. However, now that Ciji is on the show, nobody
seems to give a shit about Ginger’s singing (if they ever really did
beforehand) and she’s understandably feeling a bit jealous. Anyway, Kenny is hardly husband of the year
here, since when she hands him the lyrics to the song, he’s like, “Yeah yeah,
whatever,” and then goes back to doing whatever he was doing. Okay, cut to a little later in
the ep. Ciji is singing a new song (but
we only get a few seconds of it and there’s no music behind it, so I’m not
adding it into her song counter) and it just ain’t working. This was kind of a funny little moment cuz we
hear her singing and My Beloved Grammy is like, “Oh no, I don’t like this song
at all,” and I was like, “Me, neither,” and then the characters on the show
immediately are like, “No, that’s not right for Ciji at all!” Kenny proclaims that Ciji is at her best when
she’s delivering some sort of power ballet, so then he hands her the lyrics to
Ginger’s song and is like, “Hey, Ginger wrote this; why don’t you sing
it?” When Ciji asks if Ginger will mind,
Kenny shows himself to be just as dumb as we’ve suspected since Pilot when he goes, “Naw, are you
kidding; she’ll be thrilled!”
Needless to say, when the big
moment comes, Ginger is far from thrilled.
We are back at Daniel and it’s nighttime and we all know that means it’s
time for Ciji to come out onstage and wow us.
In this instance, she starts singing the Ginger song, which is called You’re the One. I want to make note of this song because, for
one thing, I really like it and it’s going to come back in a big way a few episodes down the line
(just you wait, my readers), and for another thing, I want to know who wrote
it. Unlike all the songs Ciji has sung
up to this point, this is not a cover of a song that would be popular in
1982. Instead, it’s a song made up for
the show, and I have to wonder if one of the actors perhaps wrote it themselves
(I think I may have even read somewhere that Kim Lankford did in fact write it herself, but I can neither confirm nor deny
this idea). If anyone has any knowledge
of where this song came from or who wrote it, please write in to me.
Anyway, it’s been awhile since
I’ve attacked Ginger’s big bug eyes, so I’m gonna go ahead and do it now. I try to control myself from writing mean
comments about people’s personal appearances on this blog, but in this instance
I simply can’t help it. Seriously, how scary are Ginger’s big bug eyes? I don’t think they’ve ever gotten as big as
they do in this episode. Once Ciji
starts singing that song and Ginger realizes what Kenny has done with the
lyrics that she entrusted to him, her eyes get so wide that you really start to
wonder if they might explode. Kenny gets
this pathetic look on his face like, “Come on, don’t be mad,” and then Ginger
stomps off. In this instance I wanna say
that I actually side with Ginger. How
dumb can Kenny be? He knows that his
wife wants to be a singer and he knows that she wrote this song especially
because she wants to sing it herself, so then he immediately goes and gives the
song to the woman that he’s been paying way too much attention to for the last
few weeks, and then acts surprised when his wife gets angry. Kenny, you are a very stupid man.
Things get even more heated up
later in Ciji’s dressing room. There’s a
knock on the door and Ginger’s angry voice proclaims, “It’s Ginger!” Ciji tells her to come in and then the bug
eyes attack yet again. Ginger goes on
this gigantic rant about how she’s disgusted with Ciji for stealing her song
and how could she possibly do this to her and so on and so forth. Ciji holds up pretty well in this fight,
coming off as very relaxed and not afraid of Ginger or her bug eyes. I confess that if those bug eyes were coming
my way, I would shit my pants and certainly not be able to keep my cool the way
Ciji does. She also makes the fine point
that Ginger’s problems lie with her husband, not with Ciji. After all, Ciji didn’t intentionally steal
this song; Kenny just handed it to her and said, “Don’t worry, Ginger will be
thrilled.” So yeah, he’s the one in the
wrong in this situation.
Just before the scene ends, we
get a huge seed planted and I’m not
even gonna risk spoiling this for someone who is virginal to the series and
doesn’t know what’s coming, but let’s just say the seed that is planted right
here in this scene is going to grow into a fabulous flower very shortly. As the music swells and violins start to
shriek as if Bernard Hermann came back from the grave just to score this
particular scene of this particular episode, Ginger’s bug eyes get even bigger as she glares at Ciji and
proclaims, “I’ll get you for this.” With
those five words, she goes running off, leaving Ciji alone to wonder what
exactly she might mean, leaving me to gasp in awe at the skilled writing and
the sheer genius that is KL.
Before I move back to other
characters and the main gist of the episode dealing with Diana, let me take a
moment to discuss my thoughts on Kenny and Ginger at this juncture in the
series. Even though I still relish
making fun of them and saying mean things about how boring the characters are,
and even though I will definitely not be
crying when we reach season five and their dull faces have disappeared from the
scrolling squares, I have to say I’m surprised by how involved in the plots
they are at this point. This is probably
their best season for actually feeling like they belong as part of the
cast. For the last three years, they have
been so unbelievably boring, and it’s not just
that they were boring, but they also felt isolated from the rest of the
characters, like they were existing off in some other, way less interesting
show. I’d say the peak of their
boring-ness was season three when they had Erin Molly and then just spent most
of the season sorta sitting around the house and, you know, raising her. But now, they actually feel like they have
some purpose and reason to be on the series.
Kenny is no longer playing those ridiculous public domain records that
he loved blasting in seasons one through three; now he is actually working with
a real singer who sings real songs. This
is causing jealousy on the part of Ginger which manifests itself when she
explodes at Ciji here, setting the stage for some real exciting events that are
awaiting us as we move further along this season. My point is that even though I still don’t
like Kenny and Ginger and I still don’t think either of them are very good
actors, at least they have a purpose in
season four, you know? At least they
don’t feel nearly as toxic and superfluous as they did in the last three
seasons.
Returning to the saga of Diana
and her illness, she’s at the snooty whites-only club with Abs and Gary when she complains
of feeling poorly. She blames it on
eating too much for lunch and then excuses herself to go rest for awhile, but
the next time we see her, she has passed out and needs to be rushed to the
emergency room, where an angry Karen awaits.
I enjoyed the quick little argument Karen and Abs have in the hallway at
the hospital. Karen says that Abs should
have been keeping a better eye on Diana and Abs goes on her little, “Oh yes,
wicked wicked Abby” rant that she likes to go on whenever someone is mad at
her. It’s a quick scene and I enjoy how
low key it is, not too over-the-top and not too theatrical. It doesn’t take too long after
Diana arrives at the hospital for the doctors to figure out what’s wrong with
her, namely that she is suffering from kidney failure. Random notation, but I got a little nerd
boner when I realized that the actress playing a nurse in this ep, Lily Mariye,
would go on to play Nurse Lily Jarvik for the entire fifteen season run of ER from 1994 to 2009 (clocking in at
127 episodes overall). ER is one of my other favorite shows
(well, the first eight seasons are amazing, in any case) so I got a little nerd
boner seeing Lily Mariye here, knowing this guest spot is getting her warmed up
for fifteen years of ER.
Anyway, Diana’s doctor explains
to Karen how Diana is going to need a kidney transplant pronto, and until she
can get that kidney transplant, she will need to stay on dialysis and come in
like four times a week for long sessions with the dialysis machine. The only hope is a transplant, and it would
be helpful if someone from the family matched and was able to donate. If Diana has to wait for a cadaver
transplant, she’ll be put on a waiting list and it could be a long time. All of this is very fine, well, and good, but
if I have a complaint about this episode (and it’s a very small one), it’s that
I simply don’t like Diana and so it’s hard for me to really care what happens
to her. Minor spoiler alert, but Diana
is gonna be with us through season five (she even gets to join the scrolling
squares next season), so we all know she’s not gonna die, right? But what if I was a new viewer in 1982,
watching fresh and having no idea where the show could go? I did some chewing on that
thought for awhile. KL has already shown it has no problems going in surprising
directions that you wouldn’t expect and killing off vital characters that we
thought would be with us forever. Let’s
flash back to the death of Sid for a minute and how shocking that must have
been when it happened. So, knowing that
the writers have no problem with stirring up the pot and completely killing
main characters, if I was watching this upon original airdate, maybe I would
think Diana could very well die. The
question is this: Would I care? Mmmm,
not really. When Sid died, it was like a
gut punch because I loved that character and was sad to see him go. Diana has spent three seasons being annoying
and whiny and, with this fourth season, has started to morph into an unpleasant
bitch. Would I start crying if her
character wound up dying? Nope. However, I would feel sad for Karen having to lose her husband one year and
then her daughter the next year, so that’s where my feelings and emotions would
lie.
It’s actually pretty interesting
to compare and contrast the last time we were at the hospital, back when Sid
died in The Vigil and Critical Condition, with where we are
now, because everything is a smidge more DRAMATIC than it was in that
case. Obviously I love Michele and she
is still great here, but her anger and her angst is a little more heated, a
little more obvious than it was back in those eps, where she was a master of
subtlety and realism. For instance, when
Diana hears she may have to be on dialysis, she just plain flips out and starts
screaming and crying and trying to pull the, like, chord thing out of her arm
or whatever. It’s all very over-the-top
and only makes me like Diana less. Okay,
you have bad kidneys, it sucks, get over it.
Diana makes everything into a drama and now that she’s actually somewhat
facing a life or death situation, she really
gets the chance to over-react about it.
I’m not a big fan of people who can’t handle a crisis; maybe this makes
me sound like kinda an unsympathetic douche, especially since I’ve never had
horrifying kidney problems or anything like that, but the way Diana just
immediately falls to pieces here just annoyed me. If I was living in the world of the show, I
would want to slap her.
Maybe one of the worst scenes
from this episode involves Michael crying and saying how he wants to donate his
own kidney to save Diana, that he’ll do anything for her. I don’t want to insult Pat Petersen, not just
because I hope to have sex with him one day, but also because, in general, I
find him to be a pretty good little actor, even as a kid. He usually has a real naturalism about him
and he always seems comfortable in his role, but in this particular scene, he
is not very good. I also noticed how the
scene started right away with him having tears in his eyes, leading me to
believe that they were probably those fake tears that actors can use when they
are unable to truly emote and make real, natural tears fall from their
eyes. I don’t remember if we get a whole
lot of Michael crying on the series (I don’t think so), so maybe bursting into
tears just wasn’t Pat Petersen’s thing, who knows? In any case, I think the scene is supposed to
be moving and it really isn’t. Part of
it is the acting, part of it is the fake tears, and part of it is my lack of
investment in Diana.
However, we do get a great scene
near the midpoint of this episode that involves Karen, Val, Gary, and Abs. Karen is sitting alone in the hospital
cafeteria, drinking that awful hospital coffee that tastes like reheated fecal
matter mixed with non-dairy creamer, which coincidentally also tastes like reheated fecal mater, when Val comes in to sit with her and
support her. See, Karen called Val
specifically to come and be with her in her time of need, and like a good
friend, Val rushed over. However, two
seconds later, Gary and Abs come walking into the cafeteria as well, taking a
seat awkwardly right next to Karen and Val.
Abs starts to ask lots of questions about how Diana is doing and what’s
going on and Bob Loblaw, and then Karen has one of those amazing moments
that I love where she becomes 100% direct and no-holds-barred with another
character. In this case, she looks right
at Abs and says, “Abby, I’ve asked Val to come and be with me and wait this
thing out. You’re making us uncomfortable
and I want you to leave.” It’s a
testament to Michele’s acting that she can deliver lines like this and not
sound like a bitch; instead, she just sounds like a person speaking directly
and honestly to another person. This
directness is one of my very favorite things about Karen’s character (maybe
because it reminds me of my own qualities of what some would call blunt
speaking) and I just loved how the whole scene unfolded, especially the really
grateful look that Val gets on her face after Abs and Gary disappear.
Meanwhile, what’s going on with
Mack now that he and Karen are split up?
Well, he’s decided to go and have a midlife crisis and refuses to shut
up about how good his life is without a woman in it. When we catch up with him this week, he’s
playing tennis with his friend Patrice (this is the Body Double chick who came walking out of his bathroom last week in
The Best Kept Secret, in case you had
forgotten). As they play, Mack keeps
going on and on about how he’s in the best shape of his life, how great it
feels to be single, how Karen was more trouble than she was worth. Obviously none of us are buying this, and
Patrice isn't, either. She excuses
herself from the game and says she can’t listen to Mack’s stupid ranting any
longer. Later on, we get another look
inside Mack’s fabulous bachelor pad, which comes complete with its own
fireplace (I love the idea of a
fireplace in an apartment). Now, it
turns out that he’s planning to have some friends over to watch the football
game on TV, but I didn’t know that when the scene started, so therefore I found
it very amusing when he plops in front of the couch with a six pack of beer
ready to go. I assumed he was gonna down
the whole six pack and not even care if it was cold or not, but really he’s
getting things ready for his friends to arrive.
When there’s a knock at the door, he thinks it’s one of his buddies and
tells him to come on in, but it’s actually Eric coming to plead his case that
Mack needs to get back with Karen.
Actually, I’m not even sure if he’s saying that they should get back
together, but really he’s saying that Mack needs to come down to the hospital
and show some support to Karen in this time of grief. There’s a brief stall period in which Mack is
like, “Look, kid, your mother doesn’t want me around anymore,” but he quickly
relents and shows up at the hospital where, naturally, Karen is glad to see
him.
The plot continues to thicken as
we discover that nobody in the
Fairgate family has the right blood type or whatever to help Diana out. Michael and Eric both want to donate and are
unable to, and the same is true of Karen.
Who could possibly be the donor?
Well, it turns out to be Abs who is the match, but I wanted to take a
moment to point out something My Beloved Grammy said that I found
interesting. She kept predicting that
Mack would turn out to be the right guy and sacrifice one of his own kidneys
for Diana. I reminded her that Mack is
not immediate family and the doctor kept stressing that it should be a family
member, but then again, the doctor did say a cadaver transplant could be done,
so who knows how these things work? My
Beloved Grammy opined that, if she were writing the script, Mack would be the
donor. I’m not sure I agree with her
idea or not; what do you think?
In any case, as we near closer
to the ending of the episode, it’s revealed that Abs is the right match and
only she can be the donor. Karen gets
this news from the doctor just before we cut to our final scene of the ep,
which takes place at The Beach House.
Abs is reading an article or something and she informs Gary, “Did you
know that Jeff Munson has produced three certified
platinum records?” Then there’s a knock
at the door and it’s Karen, looking tired and out of sorts. She reveals the plot twist to Abs and says,
“Help me, Abby Fairgate Cunningham, you’re my only hope!” Our "Executive Producers" credits appear over a
shot of Abby’s face and big, wide baby blue eyes, beginning to wrestle with the
decision she must make that will propel us into next week’s episode.
Quite the cliffhanger, huh? Certainly if I was an original viewer, I
would be hooked. At this point, KL would officially be appointment
television for me. How could you watch
an episode like this and not immediately want to watch the next one to find out
what’s gonna happen? The best part is
that it’s not just some random little dangling thread to keep you watching next
week; it’s a legitimate moral and ethical decision and it’s also a fascinating
opportunity for Abs to show how invested she really is in the welfare of Diana.
So that was Emergency. Aside from a few
small nitpicks (Michael crying, Diana’s overacting, the fact that I generally
have a hard time caring about the welfare of Diana), this is a solid 48 minutes
of KL. There’s storylines going on all over the
place, and Diana’s kidney crisis serves as a sort of catalyst to move along
other plots such as the rekindling of the relationship between Mack and
Karen. Even Kenny and Ginger are seeming
to function as a part of the plot and the stories now, something I did not
remember and would never have expected.
Finally, that Ginger line, that “I’ll get you for this,” oh my goodness,
that was a big moment.
Will Abby find it in herself
(literally) to give up a kidney and save Diana?
Will she pass the test of whether or not she truly loves and cares for
Karen’s kids? She has a big choice to
make, so tune in next week when we discuss what happens with the appropriately
titled Abby’s Choice.
My friends and I just finished this episode last weekend, and I am convinced that once Diana has Abby's kidney, it becomes her evil center that spawns her into the mega-bitch she becomes during Season 5.
ReplyDeleteI have the same opinion now, that I had in 1982, couldn't have Diana just died? I really hated that character from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteThe editor made some bold choices in this episode. There are tons of super tight close-ups, more than I remember in any episode thus far. A bit jarring in my opinion.
ReplyDelete