#Lucy and Thack

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

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[nicollekidman]

they really had lucy injecting thack with cocaine via his urethra in the FIRST episode…. i adore this show

[kiliinstinct]

Little Nalu Brainworm I got After Watching a Scene From the Movie “Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarfs.” - no title for now.

-

“Just keep running and don’t look back!”

Lucy didn’t move, hesitation slowed her steps as the small, clawed hand of her best friend tightened in her grip. “Are you telling me to leave you? I can’t do that!”

Her lungs burned from exertion, breath and words escaping in bursts as Lucy struggled to breathe. Her friend stood beside her, short and stubby. Their escape from the woods was more daunting to his small frame than her own. How was an imp covered in scales supposed to run the length of terrain her long legs could? Lucy gasped in the precious air her lungs needed and dug her heels into the ground. “No way, Natsu,” She said, “We’re a team remember? That means we stick tog-thack!” Natsu was surprisingly strong despite his size, twisting her body to face away from him as he shoved her forward. 

“Lucy!” He bit out, hissing just behind her, “I can’t fight these things if I’m worried about you! I’ll be fine, but you’ve GOT to keep running!”

She tried to turn again, but the warning growl he gave confused her. The imp she’d been traveling with was a short, scaled man with pink hair and horns. So many teased his stature as it barely reached above her knees. Yet, somehow, in that precise moment, Lucy was certain his voice came from just above her shoulders. How did he- She tried to turn again.

His biting roar made her heart jump, “I said DON’T LOOK at me!” The ground was shaking now, their colossal pursuer catching up with powerful steps through the treeline. Every step felt like a mini quake, shaking the ground, vibrating up her legs. 

How could Natsu expect her to run? Except her to leave him behind? She looked for a place to hide. An alcove in the nearby cliffs, bushes, anything that could disguise them! He was so small, so capable, but that didn’t amount to much when your body was the size of a child!  The trees rustled as the beast broke free of the treeline, Lucy bit back a terrified scream. They had to run. Now. They didn’t have time for this! “Natsu, we have to go!” He didn’t budge, but his grip tightened and much like the change of his voice, his hand felt larger, less hard like stone and warm like proper skin. “Do you trust me?” What? He was asking her this now? “Of course I do, but we don’t have the time to-” His voice was low, spoken behind her head and a chill ran down her spine: Danger, but not from the stone behemoth fast approaching. “If you trust me, then listen and run. I’ll find you as soon as this bastard is gone!”

“But-,” Lucy tried again, helplessly, feeling her resolve break as his presence felt somehow bigger than before, but that was silly right? “Just GO!” He roared, voice echoing through the air, “I promise I’ll come back for you, but I need you to go!”

Lucy ran, just as the beast’s steps made her stumble with every vibration that shook across the ground. Tears stung at her eyes as helpless frustration and adrenaline fueled her. She couldn’t help. Not this time. She was only human and a towering beast of stone intent to crush her was too much for her. For anyone! Why did she listen? The steps slowed, the rumblings came to a halt and a loud roar of challenge and heat washed against her back. She almost turned back, but spotted a small outcropping in the cliffs. A place to go! “Natsu, I -” Lucy didn’t turn around- noticing for the first time, the shadows just before her. Her own, and and… the broad shoulders of a tall man, wings unfurled behind his shoulders. 

“Whatever you do- “ Natsu shouted, fire and flames shooting sky high, enough for to cover the clouds above her. She skidded into the alcove and pressed herself tightly against the hard stone, lungs close to bursting as her feet throbbed from blisters. 

The beast roared as something struck it, the floor rumbled from it’s fall and loud booms made her flinch. Lucy’s confusion and fright filled her as she listened to Natsu’s voice rise above it all. 

“DON’T LOOK AT ME.”

[aion-rsa]

The Knick Is An Ugly, Atmospheric Delight

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Most early photographs look haunted. Perhaps it’s because we view these images with the knowledge that the people inside them are already ghosts. In some early photos the subject had actually already expired at the time of their capture. Photography was expensive and the first and best occasion for many families to pay for a portrait was recently after a loved one died.

But some old timey photos are just ineffably creepy beyond any easy explanation. Consider this snapshot of a surgical operating theater in 1890.

Boston City Hospital operating theater, circa 1890 | A. H. Folsom of Roxbury

The experience of seeing primitive surgeons dressed in angelic white, surrounded by seats of mustachioed men wearing their Sunday best and staring down at a lifeless body is so intensely bizarre. Photos like this are dripping with a grim atmosphere that very few documents or art can really capture. One recent entry into the prestige TV canon, however, did a shockingly good job of recreating that eerie sensation and maintaining it over two full seasons.

Both seasons of Cinemax’s The Knick are now available to stream on HBO Max. Cinemax may no longer be in the original content business, but some of its better shows are finally, thankfully making their way to the WarnerMedia streaming venture. In addition to The Knick other recent Cinemax titles arriving to HBO Max include Banshee and Warrior. All three are superb shows and worth checking out, but let us highlight The Knick in particular as one of recent television history’s most underappreciated gems.

The Knick is quite simply one of the most stylish and atmospheric TV shows ever made. Premiering in 2014, it is set in a fictionalized version of the real Knickerbocker Hospital (a.k.a “The Knick”) which was located in Harlem at the turn of the 19th century. The series begins in 1900 and follows Clive Owen’s Dr. John W. “Thack” Thackery, the chief surgeon at The Knick, as he runs the hospital while barely controlling his addiction to injecting cocaine. Other cast members include André Holland as new assistant chief surgeon Dr. Algernon Edwards, Jeremy Bobb as hospital manager Herman Barrow, and Eve Hewson as nurse Lucy Elkins.

The plotting on The Knick from creators and head writers Jack Amiel & Michael Beglerare is tight and effective. The show capably balances multiple story threads at once, from the series- long arc of Thack’s drug abuse and addiction to season-long arcs about infectious diseases spreading throughout New York to episode-long stories presenting patients simply in need of help. 

But what sets The Knick apart from fellow medical dramas (and just about everything else) is the imagery involved and the tone it invokes. Watching The Knick is like staring at the uncanny oddness of that old operating theater photo until the people within it start to move around and vacuum blood out of a patient’s open abdomen. 

Television has always been seen as a writers’ medium, with the head writer on many shows often serving as de facto “showrunner” and maintaining the visual style. The Knick, however, benefits greatly from the involvement of filmmaker Steven Soderbergh, who produces and directs every episode. Soderbergh’s cameras, era-authentic gaslamp lighting, and superb production design all conspire to create one hell of a visual mood. That’s not even to mention Cliff Martinez’s excellent, synth-heavy score, which one would be forgiven for thinking is the work of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Just about every scene sounds like a tense mission leading up to a boss battle in an NES game. 

Thack and his fellow doctors Bertram “Bertie” Chickering (Michael Angarano) and Everett Gallinger (Eric Johnson) are fond of calling the Knick their “circus.” And like any circus, The Knick is only as good as its performers. Thankfully the doctors, nurses, administrators are all more than up to the task. 

Despite being only six years old now, The Knick has proven to be quite an acting talent factory. The series was Hewson’s first TV role and the Irish actress is now on her way to modest stardom thanks to roles in The Luminaries and Behind Her Eyes. Jeremy Bobb has since turned up in everything, including Russian Doll, Jessica Jones, and The Outsider. Chris Sullivan, who plays ambulance operator Tom Cleary now plays Toby on This Is Us. And Juliet Rylance portrays Della Street on Perry Mason. 

Meanwhile, Owen is a perfect fit as Thack. The actor seems to relish hiding his handsome movie star features behind sweat, matted hair, and a thin mustache. The effect makes Thack physically resemble some kind of familiar early 1900s pugilist archetype more than a Hollywood leading man. The lifelike performance flows out from there.

Holland as a talented Black surgeon extremely unwelcome in a white hospital is also superb. The actor has racked up award nominations for Selma and Moonlight, but he’s never seemed like a more capable protagonist than he does in The Knick, even if his character isn’t technically the lead. 

It does at times feel as though this is really Edwards’ story. Which makes sense, given that the most attention is frequently paid to him as a perceived trespasser in a white world. Also: it probably goes without saying, but one should know before watching that The Knick pulls absolutely no punches in its depiction of early 20th century racism. It’s admirably honest storytelling about the time period but it’s also just brutal to sit through. One season 2 plotline even involves a central character becoming a full-on eugenicist. 

Thought that understandably all sounds quite bleak, The Knick isn’t just all crushingly real depictions of racism, gore, and nifty camerawork. The show fills an important prestige TV quotient by frequently bringing something new to the table. In the absurdly crowded TV landscape, oftentimes the best thing any show can do is to present something to the audience that they’ve never seen before. The Knick has many such moments…unless you’ve somehow seen someone inject cocaine into Clive Owen’s penis before. The series also has one of the wildest series finale of all time. The finale of season 2 (which wasn’t necessarily a series finale at the time) features one moment that should take even the most veteran drama watcher by surprise. 

The show has some sturdy themes to go along with the stylish flourishes and surprising storytelling. In the series first episode, Thack describes what is simultaneously appealing and devastating about healthcare to him, saying: “God always wins. It’s the longest unbeaten streak in the history of the world.” 

There is nothing that any doctor or surgeon can do to stop death. The best they can hope to do is forestall it’s arrival. Thack and the doctors at the Knick have done the best they can in this mission. When Thack proudly announces that life expectancy has gone from 39 to 47 in the past 20 years, it’s a darkly funny moment to the modern viewer. But any small medical advancement or deeper understanding of the human body always feels like a sincere victory throughout The Knick – particularly because we see the very literal blood, swat, and tears it takes to achieve them. These drug-addicted surgeons and frightened, shivering patients are indeed ghosts from an stained old-timey photo of an operating theater. They’re also people. And that’s something that the show is able to capture in addition to capturing all the terrifying gore of 20th century medicine. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Back in September of 2020, Soderbergh revealed that he and producer Barry Jenkins were planning to go through with The Knick season 3, with a pilot script having been written. Given that the Hollywood landscape is particularly turbulent at the moment, who knows if that script will ever find a home. Whether or not The Knick gets a third season, its first two will fit in quite comfortably alongside the greats in its new HBO Max home for years to come. 

The post The Knick Is An Ugly, Atmospheric Delight appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[actualmermaid]

Welp, it’s over :|

Nothing was tied up neatly in the end, as much as I would have liked to see Barrow and Henry go to jail and Gallinger get hit by a bus or something, but it was an ok ending? Like, it wasn’t abruptly canceled, so there was some closure. But still, it just ended up being sad and uncomfortable at the end, and I guess that’s fitting for the series

Love that Cornelia said “fuck this I’m out of here” and yeeted herself to Australia tbh. Also I can’t bring myself to hate Cleary even though that was a SHITTY SHITTY THING TO DO BRO WTF

Also, Thack died how he lived: showing off while stuffed to the gills with cocaine and unresolved guilt

Lucy ended up being a weird nihilist at the end, but that’s probably what I’d do if my boss had me shoot coke into his dick in the first episode, soooo

[moteloleander]

Me: What a day! I can't wait to curl up with my last two eps of The Knick and just forget it all

Thack: *Hits rock bottom*

Lucy: *going to dumb lengths to help the stupid bastard*

Bertie: *blown out in favour of Thack*

Cornelia: *wants Algie to abort his own child*

Algie: *utterly gutted*

Everett: *having his wife sectioned*

Eleanor: *getting sectioned*

Sr Harriet: *revealed to Cornelia as an abortionist*

Me: For fucks sake...

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

Impressions of The Knick (Dreams): Lucy and Thack💉🖤☠

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

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[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

Yes, I’m a little obsessed with this scene. Not enough Lucy and Thack in S2. For me anyway….

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

Lunch, A Knick Fan-Fic

It was a very hot July day, so Lucy has perched on the front side of The Knick with her lunch in the shade of the brick edifice, enjoying the respite from her busy morning.

It has been a good day in her mind since she had seen Dr. Thackery twice already. Once in the morning – he had personally found her in the patient ward and asked her to be part of a routine surgery he had agreed to perform on a woman with a large tumor which needed to be removed from her leg. And then the surgery itself, which had just been herself, Dr. Chickering Jr. and Dr. Thackery. The woman was heavy-set and extremely nervous as Bertie had explained to her how the sedation worked with the ether mask. Once Bertie had put her to sleep, the surgery itself went almost too fast. Lucy had wondering to herself if Dr. Thackery was making her his personal, favorite nurse. Her heart fluttered at the thought.

She has been a little embarrassed by the way Dr. Chickering Jr. had sweetly smiled at her several times during the operation. She has flushed – it seemed Dr. Thackery had noticed as well. She wished she could somehow convey to Bertie that she liked him as a friend but that her heart belonged to the raven-haired Doctor they both seemed to worship. Doctor Thackery had so many layers she kept discovering! He was a puzzle which kept drawing her to him, fascinating and deliciously unpredictable.

Just as Lucy was musing happily about her Doctor, John W. Thackery came out of the front entrance of The Knick. He looked casual as he had left his coat behind. He was wearing a dark grey vest over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He must have just gotten out of yet another late morning surgery.

Lucy froze and watched him expectedly. To her delight he noticed her and made his way over to where she was sitting.

"Hot day," Thackery said as he approached.

"Yes, it is, Doctor, "Lucy beamed, smelling the scent of carbolic solution which lingered on his clothes,  "Have you had lunch?"

"No, no I don't normally do lunch, " Thackery explained, flapping his arms in a fidgety, cocaine-fueled manner.

"Eating is very important for a healthy lifestyle, "Lucy countered with a rigid stare. 

"Thank you, Nurse, " Thack conceded, a little irritated, but then more gentle as he sat beside her, "So what are we having?"

Lucy smirked, looking in the square tin on her lap, "I'm almost finished, but you can share with me if you like."

Thackery peered over into Lucy's lunch tin as she rummaged. She had found a hard-boiled egg, already peeled.

"Would you like this?" Lucy asked, holding the egg between her small, dainty fingers.

Thackery considered, "I don't want to take your whole lunch, Nurse Elkins. You need all the energy you can get for the end of the day."

"Just take a bite then – here – " Lucy held the egg closer to Thack's mouth with a smile.

"This isn't very sanitary. Germs, you know, "Thackery teased.

"I'm sure there's nothing I wouldn't mind catching from you, Doctor Thackery, " Lucy replied with an intense stare, "Go ahead."

Thackery was enjoying the game now. He leaned towards the egg to take a bite from Lucy as she held the egg steady. As he pulled away, Lucy quickly popped the other half of the egg into her own mouth with relish, not taking her eyes off Thackery's stare. They both chewed for a moment in silence, smiling.

Lucy could feel a quick heat in her corset and she had to look away to cool off. She rummaged again in the tin, her heart throbbing.

"What else do we have?" Thackery asked, edging closer to her.

"I have grapes."

"Red or green."

"Green," Lucy took a grape from a folded napkin and held it between her fingers as well, "Would you like to try one?"

Thackery was watching her very closely now, almost in a trance. It was surprising how nicely this little flirtation was taking his mind off the stress of the day!

Thackery nodded.

Lucy's blue eyes were swimming. She held the grape up to Thackery's mustached mouth. He leaned towards her again to take it with his teeth. Lucy held onto to it for a half-second too long, pulling him towards her before releasing. She felt a little shudder of dominance in her action. Her mind reflected on when she found Thackery helplessly incapacitated in his own bed, shivering and in need of her so badly.

Again, she quickly took another grape and ate it herself, staring at Thackery while he stared back.

"Anything else I can take from you? "Thackery asked with an easy grin, then thought it best to explain a little more specifically while he finished the grape, "From your lunch pail?"

Lucy's eyes had grown very wide then settled.

"I'll save my dessert for later, " Lucy smiled sweetly, closing up her lunch tin and quickly checking the pocket watch which hung on the side of her dress, "I'd better go."

"Have a good day, Nurse Elkins."

"Good day, Doctor Thackery."

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

The Knick - Fan Fiction “Inconsolable” Part 1

"Laudanum."

Bertie, disheveled and disconsolate, cast a quick glance past Nurse Pell, who was solemnly packing away Mrs. Alford's belonging in the private room on the patient wing of the Knickbocker hospital.

"What?"

"Laudanum," Dr. Algernon Edwards repeated, holding up a small glass vial and dropper which had been tucked neatly away on the small tabletop next to the patient's bed, ominously close to a nearly empty glass of water. Algernon picked up the glass and swirled the water, sniffing it closely.

"She must have ingested this before the surgery. It's the only explanation."

Bertie, who was leaning against the back wall to support his exhausted, compact frame, seemed to gain a little energy back, "That would explain it perhaps. The laudanum would certainly have depressed and slowed down her functions, most critically her breathing. And then when I applied the chloroform –"

"It was too much for her system to handle. A standstill," Algernon was glum as he fingered the laudanum container, "She must have been taking this for anxiety or insomnia perhaps. We didn't know about it, so we couldn't have predicted the outcome."

Nurse Pell hurriedly picked up as many items as she could, her natural inclination to eavesdrop tempting her to linger a little longer.

"Thackery needs to know it wasn't necessarily the anesthesia which caused the problem, Bertie. As a man it might hurt but as a doctor, I think he would want to know the reason why."

"I'm afraid he blames me. He's inconsolable. He hasn't left his office since we had to move Mrs. Alford down to the morgue."

"It wasn't your fault Bertie, you know that. It was a calculated risk which Thackery himself took for the surgery, just like any procedure, yet with very tragic results," Algernon explained. "Let me try to talk to him."

*********

"Dr. Thackery?" Nurse Lucy Elkins inquired firmly, knocking on the Thackery's polished office door with a determined wrap of her knuckles, "Dr. Thackery?"

"Any luck?" Dr. Algernon Edwards approached.

Lucy Elkins tried to erase the fear in her voice, the display of too much concern which she could feel pulsing in her veins. She already suspected that Algernon knew everything about her and Dr. Thackery, so being here with Dr. Edwards made her flush.

"No, I need to be sure he's alright. He didn't speak a word when he left the surgery room. I'm afraid he might do something to himself. "

Dr. Edwards nodded solemnly and moved the young nurse aside, as if stepping back into the shoes of the hospital's leading surgeon once again.

"Dr. Thackery, we're coming inside now, "Algernon knocked one more time and opened the door. His eyes had to adjust to the darkness as all the curtains had been drawn with the minimal light of dusk barely seeping into the room.

Lucy came around the side of Edwards and they both looked around the office, which seemed completely deserted. Lucy's heart did a double turn as she scanned the floor, her worst fear being to find the prone body of Dr. John Thackery sprawled beneath his desk. She hurried over to his chair and pulled it back, looking beneath it. Edwards walked over to the leather chaise longe and scanned the bookshelves, shrugging his shoulders.

"He isn't here, obviously. Do you have any idea where he could be? Did he go home maybe?"

"I don't think he's been home since he came back from the Cromartie hospital."

Edwards gave Lucy a quizzical look.

"How do you know?"

Lucy bite her lip worriedly, "I just know. I think he's mostly been sleeping here or at Mrs. Alford's townhome."

Algernon sighed, discouraged, "We'd better find him. This is not a night he should be spending alone."

Lucy mused sadly, "It sure isn't."

**********

Most of the orderlies and nurses had gone home for the evening. Word had spread like wildfire around the hospital about Dr. Thackery's personal tragedy. The syphilitic women with the patched nose and the beautiful hair who had wanted to look better for her renewed sweetheart, Dr. Thackery himself. The irony of this thoughtless vanity had been death. And at the very hands of the man she was wanting to please the most.

The hallways were deserted by 8pm and Dr. Thackery edged with staggering steps along the corridor wall, having consumed alcohol in his office for several hours before sneaking out and hiding in various empty rooms and hallways until he knew he get about without being seen. His head was pounding and his heart was broken. The entire day now seemed like a distant nightmare which couldn't really have happened.

The panic in the surgery room, the sudden shock of Abigail's dead stillness, the tubes to try to revive her breathe, the hopelessness of a lost cause. Fittingly, the two people to witness his failure were the two he had disappointed the most in their short careers at the Knick. He felt like some sort of King Lear losing control of his kingdom. It was as if his surrogate son, Bertie, had dealt the unwitting deathblow to his Queen while his surrogate daughter, Lucy, had stood by as a helpless witness to the death of her rival. Lucy certainly thought of him as some sort of father figure. However he looked at it, this strange trio has made something of an Oedipal deathtrap out of their intertwining destinies.

"'Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination'," Thackery heard himself mutter.

Shuddering in his mind, Thackery started to feel the tears coming again. He wanted to see her one last time so he made his way to the morgue. That cold, gray, hideous room of failure which so many patients ended up in when all the doctors and nurses' efforts – those heroic efforts! – went sideways.

Switching on the light of the morgue room, Thackery stood for a while, his arms limply at his sides. Which one of these dreadful boxes which lined the wall should he open first? It seemed a pointless and dreary choice. On his shaky knees, Thackery moved forward to weakly opened the first one. He heaved it open with a long motion of his arm.

He instantly stepped back with a gasp. He was staring down at the face of a girl dressed in white who looked alive. It was Sonia, the young anemic girl who had died at his hands a few months prior during a blood transfusion gone terribly wrong. But she was dead and buried with a new gravestone, surely? Why was she still here, haunting him? Hadn't he made amends?

Thackery slammed the morgue box back in place with an angry snarl, briefly holding his aching head in his hands. After a long moment he tried another box. He saw the very same body in it. Sonia, asleep and in the pink of her health. Not dead. Not buried.

Determined to banish this drunken hallucinations, Thackery continued to open the heavy, metal morgue boxes along the wall, and each time the same result. Abigail was not here! Sonia was in her place. He could not look at Abigail's sweet but scarred face one last time. All he kept seeing was this girl he thought he had put to rest finally. It wasn't even someone he knew very well at all. It was a haunting vision of failure and madness and presumption of skill. It was his own arrogance mocking him.

Finally discouraged and lost in remorse, Thackery stumbled out of the morgue.

*****************

"He isn't here either," Lucy said, climbing back into the passenger side of Henry Robertson's electric automobile. Across the street was the darkened windows of Mrs. Abigail Alford's home.

"So, am I missing something here? I have a fondness for Thack too – he's an amazing if temperamental genius. But how on earth do you know all of these places he goes?" Henry asked, a little exasperated. He had spent the last couple hours touring some of the more interesting places of Manhattan with Lucy Elkins in search of the missing doctor.

"I don't think that's really any of your business, Henry, " Lucy answered curtly, folding her dainty hands calming in her lap and turning her face away ,"I know more about him than you could possibly imagine."

Henry sighed, shaking his head. He was thoroughly charmed by this daring and sensual young nurse, so he felt himself willing to continue on this ridiculous hunt.

"Where to next?"

Lucy furrowed her brow, her eyes darkening, "We need to go to Chinatown next."

Henry nearly fell out of the car he jerked upright so quickly, "Where? Did you say Chinatown?"

"Yes. I did," Lucy answered quickly, "Do you know how to get there?"

Henry's mouth hung open with disbelief, "I think I can find my way there."

"Then hurry, please, we don't have time to lose," Lucy answered sternly.

Henry rolled his eyes and started up the electric car which took off into the cool evening, following the mixture of electric and gas lights on Broadway and turned south.

****************

Opal Edwards had waited impatiently for Algernon to come home and took a hansom cab to The Knick when her patience ran out. Algie was late often enough, but tonight Opal felt like getting out in the fresh air and dressing up in one of her favorite burgundy dresses. She matched this with one of her most flattering veiled hats and pair of velvet gloves. With a dash of tuberose perfume on her throat she was ready to head out into the night. And why not surprise her husband at his infamous place of work? She was still furious about the Robertson's treatment of her husband. They had simply shuffled him off to the side with the intention of not fulfilling their promises for a position at the new Knick! Hypocritical cowards, she thought to herself bitterly. Algernon would have to forge a new path himself somewhere new – somehow.

When Opal arrived at the Knick, she was thankful that the main door was still unlocked despite the sparseness of the staff. One lone nurse was at the front desk and glared at her with hostile surprise. To see a smartly dressed black woman at this time of night must have surprised her, Opal thought, giving the woman a wide smile.

"I'm here to see my husband, Dr. Algernon Edwards, " Opal stated proudly, locking eyes with the nurse.

"His office is that way," the woman indicated the hallway to her left coldly.

"Thank you," Opal answered in her most haughty London accent and marched down the empty corridor with a swish of her skirts, her arm laced elegantly around the strap of her purse.

Her footsteps echoed smartly as she continued down the lonely hall. She could hear the electric buzz of the lights around her. Her steps slowed as the silence continued to grow. Did that woman send her in the wrong direction? Opal sniffed and smelled something unpleasant, something chemical mixed with a stench of sickness and decay. Suddenly the shadows of these rooms filled her with foreboding. So many grisly things happened in these rooms. She stopped and listened. She heard the shuffle of feet.

Around the corner a crumpled lanky figure appeared in a dark suit, his jet-black hair falling across his forehead. He braced the wall shakily and looked up at her with eyes full of misery and pain, his hand clutching at his gut.

"Hello, Doctor Thackery, " Opal spoke first, taken aback.

Thackery's face was startled, "What are you doing here?"

"Maybe you don't recognize me," Opal said curtly, “I know we all look the same to you.”

"Opal, like the fields in Australia," Thackery answered with warm recognition.

Softening, Opal took a step towards him now, noticing his pained stance, "What happened here today?"

Thackery couldn't answer her as he fell into a swoon of agony, clutching at her shoulders for support. Opal quickly braced Thackery around the waist. Beneath her gloved hands she could feel his ribs.

"Help me!" Opal looked around desperately for another soul to assist. Her voice carried down the corridor and reached no ears. They were completely alone here.

Struggling, Opal let Thackery lean on her closely as she hoisted him upright.

"Dr. Thackery, where do you want me to take you?" Opal asked.

Thackery, blurry-eyed with pain, depression and alcohol, raised his arm and started to guide them both, "Down here to my office."

[clive-owen-and-the-knick]

Restitution

Dr. Everett Gallinger marched determinedly through the long, carpeted hall of Cromartie hospital, looking for the sandy-haired male orderly who had just brought him in to visit Dr. John Thackery. The pulse in his temples was pounding. He had to fix this situation.

“Hello – hello!” he shouted as he saw the man turning a corner from the main atrium, “You!”

The man stopped, noncommittally.

“Yes?”

“Where is your kitchen?”

The man blinked, “Why?”

“How much?” Everett snarled, digging in his pants pockets for his wallet, “How much for your discretion and to let me have half an hour for you to pay no attention to the kitchen area?”

The man remained silent.

Everett snapped a fifty-dollar bill at him, “Will this be sufficient?”

The man snatched the bill.

“Down the staircase to the lower level, then follow the hallway to the end on your right.”

Everett sighed, “Thank you.”

Hastily, Everett Gallinger made his way back out of Cromartie hospital to the waiting carriage which has paused faithfully outside for his return. In the carriage he rummaged for his doctor’s bag and took out a small bottle of chloroform and a rag he had brought for this purpose, if it should come to this.

The driver was watching patiently, “Sir, do you need me to send another – “

“No, please, just wait another few minutes. I promise I will make this worth your while.”

“Very well, sir, “ the driver answered, sniffing the chilly air.

Gallinger stuffed the chloroform and rag in his coat pocket and headed back up the steps into Cromartie, nodding to the admitting nurse. She coolly ignored him.

Slightly disoriented from where he came in, Everett followed some hallways this way and that, finally using his nose to find the rest of this way. He could smell breakfast and a pleasant scent of bacon and coffee.  

Cautiously, Gallinger approached, his eyes scanning the other doorways for activity. It was quiet. Near the kitchen he could see the harsh winter daylight illuminating the hallway. Gallinger passed the kitchen entry and investigated. At the very end of the hall was a door which led outside. Daylight was pouring in from the window. But surely this door much be locked?

Gallinger pondered his next move, gazing gloomily at this obstacle, when suddenly he felt a cold grasp clutch at his shoulder and a whiff of alcohol-laced breath.

It was Thack.

“Did you get it?”

Gallinger gave a start, “Yes, it’s here in my pocket.”

Thackery’s wild eyes studied Everett closely, “It was nice of you to come all this way to visit me. Do you know you’re the only person who’s been here?”

Everett twisted around to look Thackery closely in the face. His bloodshot eyes were mostly shaded by a long strand of jet-black hair which fell haphazardly over his brow.

“No one else came?” Gallinger asked, somewhat surprised, “Did anyone write to you? Mr. Barrow, Bertie…?”

Thackery scoffed, ”No, only Lucy did.”

“Who, Nurse Elkins?” “She’s kept me apprised of everything for the most part. But I didn’t feel like writing her back. She’s…impressionable, to say the least. And I owed her too much for what I did.”

Everett realized quickly that this was a perfect way to maneuver Thackery into a good position in which to apply his remedy to this situation. Thackery was almost as tall as he was and he was strapping, even in his drug-addled condition. Gallinger needed to be able to hug him closely in order to apply the chloroform. Otherwise Thackery might indeed fight him off and this entire planned operation would be a disaster.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

“Well, I’d tell you Everett, but you have to promise to keep it to yourself. Bertie already knows and he hates me for it I’m afraid.”

Gallinger quietly slide is arm up Thackery’s back, gently caressing him, their heads almost touching.

“It’s ok, you can confide in my, Thack. Then I can give you the drugs I stole and we’ll see you back upstairs, ok?”

Even Gallinger was not convinced of the sincerity of his own words, but Thackery didn’t seem to notice. He was so hyper he was almost in tears.

“I took that one thing from her which she can’t ever claim back,” Thackery confessed. He watched Gallinger’s expression closely.

Gallinger blinked, quietly astonished, “No wonder Bertie hates you.”

Thack pawed at Everett now, himself leaning in for an embrace, “And that little girl I operated on before, you know, the blood transfusion? I killed her, Everett. She trusted me and I betrayed that trust. My Hippocratic oath was obliterated. I keep seeing her face when I’m awake. So, please give me the drugs now.”

“You promise not to fight me?”

Thack looked up, “Fight?”

Everett had quickly doused the rag he had in his coat pocket with chloroform and in a flash he pressed it strongly into Thackery’s face, holding onto his back for pressure and clamped him up tightly against the wall. Thackery did fight him, his arm coming up strongly against Everett wrist, almost jolting the sleep-inducing drug away. But Gallinger had a better position and he pressed his body fully up against his mentor now, the two of them in a silent wrestling match.

Gallinger’s face was grim with resolve as he started to feel Thackery’s body give way and become less resistant. Thack was slagging, he was fainting.  

Gallinger took the rag away. Thack fell like a rag doll against the younger doctor’s chest.

Everett hoisted Thack over his shoulder in a Herculean moment of determination and moved towards the door he had seen, praying that it would open and he could carry Thack quickly down to the waiting carriage and get the hell away from Cromartie and back to the Knick, to start his life and his career over again.

The cool winter air greeted him like a heavenly embrace. His restitution had begun.

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The Best With the Best to Get the Best

The Knick: Season 2, Episode 3

Lucy and her Dad fixation comment: Interestingly, the scene with Lucy and her dad is filmed in the same room and with the same lamp in the background as her first seduction with Thack. In fact they are standing in my the same position as when she’s undressing Thackery. In instead of her slipping out of her shirt, she’s hiking it up for a spanking. I love the unsettling similarities here! 

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one of the best Thack/Lucy moments from The Knick!

"....happily watch you asphyxiate."

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The Bard and Dr. Thackery

Shakespeare Quotes used in Season 1 of The Knick.

Season 1, Episode 1: “Method and Madness” 

“And many strokes, though with a little axe, Hew down and fell the hardest-timber’d oak.” - William Shakespeare - Henry VI, Part 3 Act 2, Scene 1

Thack to Christensen concerning their failed placenta previa case, just preceding Christensen’s suicide.

“Though this be madness, yet there is method in ’t.”  William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2 Scene 2

Thack to Algernon during the septicemia surgery where Thack uses cocaine in the patient’s spinal canal.

Season 1, Episode 2: “Mr. Paris Shoes”

“But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger”  William Shakespeare, Henry V Act 3 Scene 1

Thack to Christensen (in a flashback scene) responding to Christensen’s caution about the painstaking work at The Knick. Christensen’s reply to Thack’s Shakespeare quip? “Never read him.”

Season 1, Episode 3: “The Busy Flea”

“No medicine in the world can do thee good.” William Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 5 Scene 2

Thack lets his emotions show to Lucy as he bemoans the dismal future of Abigail, his former sweetheart, who just underwent a grueling grafting surgery on her damaged nasal cavity caused by syphilis.

Season 1, Episode 6 - ‘Start Calling Me Dad’

“Believe then, if you please, that I can do strange things.” Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act 5 Scene 2

Thack to Bertie, while high on cocaine in the lab but energized about his new experiments concerning a surgical treatment for placenta previa cases.

“Away you moldy rogue. Away.” Shakespeare, Henry IV Part 2, Act 2 Scene 4

Thack tells a quack to get lost.     

Season 1, Episode 9: The Golden Lotus

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies But in battalions.”   Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 4 Scene 5

Thack is paranoid and in a cocaine whirlwind. He accuses Lucy of spying on him or being followed. He also can’t sleep and thinks bed bugs have invaded his bed, which leads to our next quote...

“that is the Question:” Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 3 Scene 1

Have you slept? Obviously not! Thack can’t sleep and he seems to be spouting endless Hamlet lines to Lucy. I love it!

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THE KNICK: haunting quality of a fever dream from which you didn’t want to wake

Typhoid Mary and the birth of ‘contact tracing’ – as seen in The Knick Want to know why ‘tracing asymptomatic carriers’ works? Then watch Steven Soderbergh's brilliant, gory historical drama

“ But Thack laid on his back was the perfect fade to grey. The Knick had finished as it started: with the haunting quality of a fever dream from which you didn’t want to wake. “

New York has been paralysed by a wave of deaths, caused by a fast-acting and unrelenting infection. It strikes indiscriminately, targeting the wealthy as ruthlessly as the downtrodden. Scariest of all, this is a hidden killer. By the time you discover you’re sick, it’s often too late. Survival is a roll of the dice.

Such is life as apprehensively lived in Manhattan today, indeed in the rest of the world. Which may explain why we’re all glued to movies such as Contagion and Outbreak, and Netflix’s documentary Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak. But it was also a key plot point from a little-watched television drama that ran in 2014 and 2015. A storyline that was, in turn, based on the real-life case of a lethal outbreak in New York at the turn of the century.

Steven Soderbergh’s The Knick was the prestige-TV equivalent of one of your five-a-day. And it came just three years after he directed Contagion, about a Covid-19-style outbreak. More importantly, it was about the birth of modern medicine: the painful and gory gestation of practices we take for granted now.

Yet the Knick (now available on demand through Sky) explores advances in brain surgery, anaesthetics, infant mortality rates and, most significantly from a 2020 perspective, the battle against infectious diseases such as typhoid and tuberculosis, which we see claim a baby in its cot.

The setting is a baroque New York hospital, The Knickerbocker (based on a real hospital in Harlem which finally closed in 1979). The year was 1900: a time when moustaches were huge, syringes even bigger, and surgery had more to do with lopped-off limbs than hip replacements.

The Knick was a period caper with a very modern pulse. Soderbergh used it as a vehicle to address such eternal themes as addiction, racism and the struggle between head and heart (not to mention the importance of a perfectly maintained ’tache).

It starred Clive Owen, one of the go-to-actors for tortured intensity, as a maverick surgeon with the fantastically old-fashioned name of Dr John “Thack” Thackery. We see him forge ahead in areas such as skin grafting (he grafts skin from a patient’s arm to her nose), placenta previa surgery and hernia repair. He was a pioneer working in a time of unprecedented medical advancement.

As was the real-life surgeon upon whom he was loosely based. William Halsted was the house physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he introduced such innovations as patient charts, and invented the painful-sounding Halsted mosquito forceps – “a ratcheted haemostat to secure and clamp bleeding vessels”. And he married the first nurse ever to wear gloves during an operation. He was, in addition, addicted to cocaine and morphine (then legally available), requiring a minimum cocaine intake of three-grammes daily.

With the cocaine and the clamps and the great facial hair, you can see why he was irresistible to Soderbergh and The Knick’s creators, Jack Amiel and Michael Begler. Their fictional version of Halsted was a classic flawed anti-hero. In a just world, Thack would have joined the ranks of the small screen’s great “difficult men”, alongside Tony Soprano, Walter White and Don Draper.

Thack was portrayed by Owen as charismatic, enigmatic, permanently dishevelled and moderately racist (there are tensions early on over the hiring of African-American doctor Dr. Algernon C. Edwards). He also romped with prostitutes – as was the fashion at the time –  and began the day with enough cocaine to floor a camel.

With coronavirus bringing humanity to a stand-still, Thackery is ideal company for an extended binge-watch. The killer infection plot surfaces midway through the first of its two seasons. It doesn’t directly involve Thack. He is otherwise occupied taking drugs and cavorting with nurse Lucy (Eve Hewson, daughter of Bono).

Investigating the deaths are two second-string characters, Health Inspector Jacob Speight (David Fierro) and Cornelia Robertson (Julia Rylance), society lady and head of The Knick’s social welfare office. They discover all the households struck down with typhoid , a bacterial fever caused by a pernicious strain of salmonella, have one thing in common: a County Tyrone cook named Mary Mallon worked there.

But how could a cook spread typhoid, which cannot survive the high temperatures associated with preparing food? Eventually they work it out: she’s passing on the fever through her signature room-temperature dish of peach melba. This leads to another question: if she’s knowingly spreading typhoid all over the Upper East Side, why doesn’t she herself show symptoms?

The answer lies in a cutting-edge new theory: that some individuals carry and spread infection whilst themselves not developing symptoms. It’s a condition known as “asymptomatic”. Today, we all know what that entails, but at the time it wasn’t universally accepted within the medical profession.

Certainly, the characters in The Knick struggle to get their heads around it. “She must be a filthy thing and as sick as a cesspool,” Speight says to Robertson as they rush to stop Mary – “Typhoid Mary”, they’ve dubbed her – from serving another dose of lethal peaches.

How did they find her? By tracking down all those who fell ill, and then the people with whom they interacted, and overlaying the data points on a map of Manhattan. In other words, by “contact tracing” – a concept which might have sounded dreary a few months ago, but which today is on everyone’s lips.

In the final confrontation, they head her off at the kitchen, and she’s arrested attempting to flee. (Some might say that the American actress, Melissa McMeekin, should also be in the dock for her dreadful Irish accent, which suggests a heavy viral load of Darby O’Gill and the Little People.) Scientific ignorance, alas, wins the day. Just two episodes later, Typhoid Mary is freed, when the judge refuses to believe that someone could transmit a lethal fever while immune to its symptoms.

These are, more or less, the facts of the real-life case of Typhoid Mary, an immigrant from the Old Country estimated to have fatally spread the fever to more than 50 people (via her delicious ice-cream, however, not peach melba). Yet there was no Hollywood ending for her, despite press baron William Randolph Hearst helping fund her defence at trial. She avoided prison, as she does in The Knick, but the Typhoid Mary name followed her around. And, though she found work under a number of aliases, people continued to die in her vicinity.

Mallon was eventually sent back to North Brother Island in New York’s East River – where we she see her incarcerated in The Knick – and lived out the last 23 years of her life in enforced isolation. After her death from a stroke in 1938 at age 69, an autopsy revealed a gall bladder riddled with typhoid bacteria.

The Knick itself would submit to the inevitable after two seasons and just 20 episodes. And yet despite low ratings, it wasn’t necessarily an obvious candidate for cancellation. The critics loved it, and Soderbergh, one of the most instinctive filmmakers since Spielberg, made it quickly and cheaply for HBO offshoot Cinemax. (Incredibly cheaply, in fact, considering the realism with which he brought to life turn-of-the-century New York.)

He shot each 10-part series in just 73 days – roughly one instalment per week. That’s a decent clip when churning out a 20-minute sitcom. But to produce gorgeous prestige TV in that time-frame was remarkable. The Knick, which was shot on location in New York, looked incredible. While clearly set in the past, there’s something grippingly vivid and urgent about it. It’s the very opposite of starched, stagey period telly such as Downton Abbey and HBO’s own Boardwalk Empire.

That’s because Soderbergh filmed in natural light as far as possible. He was able to do so thanks to cutting-edge RED digital cameras, equipped with new “Dragon” sensors designed to work in low levels of light. Even when it was grim and gloomy outside, he could shoot using natural light. “Every once in a while, an actor would walk onto the set and say, “Are you guys bringing any light in?’” Soderbergh told Fast Company in 2014. “And we’d go, 'No, that’s it'.”This produced the occasional strange side-effect. Looking back over footage, for instance, Soderbergh would suddenly sense something amiss. He’d freeze the frame and zoom in. And there it was: because of the fading light, the actors’ pupils were massively dilated. 

Bravura directing was accompanied by powerhouse acting from Owen. As far back as his break-out 1990s hit Croupier, he was always a coiled spring when on screen. All that repressed tension spewed to the surface in his portrayal of Thackery, a brilliant man wrestling perpetually with demons. “It was very, very challenging and very, very demanding, and Steven [is] really fast and very concentrated,” Owen said in a 2014 interview with Indiewire. “We did the 10 hours in just over 70 days, or seven days an episode. There’s some incredibly difficult technical stuff there. All the operation stuff that’s logistically very difficult… Sometimes we’d shoot up to 13 or 14 pages a day."And yet, Soderbergh was supposed to have retired when he made The Knick. In 2012 the director of Out of Sight and Ocean’s Eleven had publicly stepped away from filmmaking. A few months later, he received a pilot script by comedy writers Amiel and Begler. His ambition at the time was to become a painter – a mission he expected to occupy all his free time over the next several years. “I was aware that the 10,000 hours required to become just good would take years of steady, applied focus,” he said. “I was basically ready to do that. I was taking painting lessons from [naturalistic wildlife artist] Walton Ford and having a great time learning things, talking to him and watching him work.”

When he read the screenplay for The Knick, and was riveted from the opening page. “I was the first person to get ahold of the script for The Knick and I just couldn’t let that pass through my fingers. It’s about everything I’m interested in. Everything. I was the first person to see it. And I thought, 'I have to do this'.”

Amiel and Begler had knocked around the industry writing disposable chuckle-fests such as the 2004 Kate Hudson vehicle Raising Helen. The idea for The Knick came when Begler had a turn of poor health. “I was having medical issues. I was researching alternative medicine, and was also frustrated,” he recalled to Indiewire in 2010. “I was thinking: What were my options 100 years ago? I can go online and find out so much different information now. Too much, even.

“But what do you do in 1900? On a whim, Jack and I just bought a couple of medical textbooks from eBay. We opened them and it was just incredible. And yes, it was a horror show. I couldn’t believe the things I was reading: people drinking turpentine to help a perforated intestine.

“My jaw hit the ground. The further we dove into this world, the more crazy s--- we saw. There was too much good stuff here. Once we saw that it was about medicine, then we started to look at what the world of 1900 was like. The world was changing so fast, with so much to play with.”

That “crazy s---” was searingly translated to the screen. The Knick is striking in that it’s set in a world only a few steps removed from ours. Thackery and his colleagues are recognisably modern doctors, not medieval quacks or shamans. Yet their practices also feel like butchery by another name. As antiseptically filmed by Soderbergh, The Knick often has the unflinching quality of an avant-garde horror film.

Thackery injecting cocaine into his genitals (all his other veins having collapsed) and performing a bowel operation using “a revolutionary clamp of his own design” are, for instance, among the highlights of the pilot. Episode four, meanwhile, sees the good doctor trying to save a woman from a botched self-administered abortion. The three-minute sequence contains more gore than all the Saw movies laid end-to-end.

The Knick finished in bravura fashion, too. As season two came to a conclusion, it was unclear if it would be renewed. So Soderbergh gave Thackery a wonderfully ambivalent send off. He recklessly attempts surgery on himself – without an anaesthetic – only for the experiment to go awry. There are a lot of entrails and lots of blood.

“My peripheral vision seems to be going… body temperature has begun to drop,” he says. “This is it… this is all we are.” And then his life flashes before him. Has the most brilliant surgeon of his era expired on his own operating table?

Soderbergh later revealed the plan was to kill off the character and that a third season of The Knick would have time-jumped to the 1940s (he wanted to film it in black-and-white). But Thack laid on his back was the perfect fade to grey. The Knick had finished as it started: with the haunting quality of a fever dream from which you didn’t want to wake.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/0/typhoid-mary-birth-contact-tracing-seen-knick/