TV Show Review

TV Review: THE KNICK: Season 1, Episode 9: The Golden Lotus [Cinemax]

Clive Owen The Knick The Golden Lotus

Cinemax’s The Knick The Golden Lotus TV Show Review. The Knick: Season 1, Episode 9: The Golden Lotus found our good Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen) breaking into a Greenwich Village pharmacy, desperately scrounging for cocaine and shooting up just before being caught by the cops. This, the wretched downward spiral that is drug addiction. The shiny, charming, gifted doctor was now but a shadow of his former self. He has become a monster.

How far Thack has fallen was illustrated perfectly in a scene where he paid a visit to the man who approached him earlier in the season to endorse a bogus “health” elixir. The contrast between the man who turned this sham down and the one that was now practically begging the charlatan to give him a shot was a marked one. [Clive Owen continues to bring beautifully crafted, well composed, restrained performances to each and every scene. He expertly depicts the degradation and depravation of drug addiction, without ever falling into caricature. He is ever truthful…a joy to watch.]

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Nurse Elkins (Eve Hewson) was addicted as well. Like any good co-dependent, she was willing to lie, steal…and by episode’s end, prostitute herself (an act referred to in the title of the episode) for the love and affection of the great doctor. It is a sad matter that she will never get in return what she is hoping for. [Eve Hewson is perfect in this role.]

Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance) told Dr. Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) that she had missed her period, and thus was expecting a child…his. Algernon could not have been more elated, there was not question that the love shared between them was his only consideration at the news. Cornelia had already had time to think things through, and insisted she could not keep it. He disagreed, but she/they were in a bind that very few people would be able to weather at this time. Algernon’s agony at her refusal to have it is apparent.

In one of the most disturbing and saddest turns of the season, Dr. Everett Gallinger (Eric Johnson)’s wife, Eleanor (Maya Kazan) unraveled completely. Having showed up at the hospital with the dead baby that had been entrusted to them to care for, Everett had to choose to commit her to a mental institution…a chilling decision. There was no dialogue, just music, completely sobering.

Brilliant work once again Steven Soderbergh.

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