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The X-Games suck. Nobody, but nobody cares about skateboard jumps or bikes-on-railings until someone fractures a tailbone. ESPN found the two weeks during which nothing in the sports world is happening---save a bit of pugilistic ear-removal---and decided to invent. After all, Extreme Games open up the possibility of a plethora of new sponsors. Tongue piercers. Scab acids. Life insurance. |
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However, a note to all X-competitors: If you've ever got even a slight case of the sniffles, don't visit Chicago Hope, the hospital that is clearly built either beside a nuclear reactor or atop sacred Indian burial grounds. Man, the freak-to-patient ratio in this place twirls off the scale. They've got Siamese twins in every other episode. They're always sewing missing limbs onto classical flautists who've had their fingers bitten off or missing legs onto football kickers. Or some guy prances through the emergency room with a metal spike through his head. Or Mandy Patinkin sings. Chicago Hope makes ER look like The 700 Club. |
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Injured trapeze artists. Wounded mob bosses. Surgical techniques which include use of maggots. Babies born without skulls. Deadly viruses forcing quarantine after quarantine. Maverick surgeons duel with scalpels. This place is to hospitals as L.A. Law was to corporate defense attorneys. Don't you expect Arnie Becker to jump out of a linen closet? Listen to a couple of plot summaries: "Camille has an attack of conscience over her divorce after an accident in the Operating Room gives her reason to believe she may have killed the rabbi who married her." Or: "An unlucky patient can't get it down while Dr. Shutt can't get it up." Charming. |
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Patinkin left the show last season, replaced by Mark Harmon in still another hospital drama. Last night Harmon spent much of the evening lecturing a gambling-addicted jockey; glad to see he's fitting right in. And Ron Silver as the sniveling hospital lawyer? Didn't he get nominated for an Academy Award? We kept expecting Jean-Claude Van Damme to materialize and shoot Silver with a Career Annihilation gun. |
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Say, think this hospital has any spare ears lying around? |
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