The Knick Sneak Preview Review 1.10: Fallibility

Continuing with my sneak preview reviews The Knick  - courtesy of an advance screener provided by Cinemax and Starpulse -  herewith a brief review of episode 1.10, certified specific-spoiler free.  As with all preview reviews, I'll discuss generalities, to give you an idea of the episode.  If you prefer not getting even an inkling of the story ahead, you probably should not read any further.

The final episode of this first season is chocked full of surprises for just about every major character including -

• a very surprising abortionist
• a treatment for a mental ailment that's like pulling teeth - literally
• Thackery is dead wrong about a major treatment - and misses the true treatment, in the words of another character, "by a mile"
• there's a flat out and satisfying murder for hire
• a major character gets a brutal beat down
• there's a new medication - a cure - which is worse than the illness

As you might surmise from the above, the theme of this last episode of the season is fallibility - of both the major characters and the state of medical knowledge at the time.  This is the flip side of the coin in which we're amazed and pleased by how accurate the medical treatments - certainly many of Thackery's - were in the age of The Knick.  But it was a medical age vastly more primitive than ours, and it's good to be reminded of that.

Don't know if I'll have any advance screeners of this fine series next season, but I'll back here with reviews in any case.  Enjoy the winter!

See also The Knick: Paean to Scientific Method ... The Knick Sneak Preview Review 1.8: Good Loving, the Fix, and Typhoid Mary ... The Knick Sneak Preview Review 1.9: Sacrifice

 
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