There is a conflict between Watters and Geiger over which patient deserves to receive his heart transplant first. Geiger wants to give the recently-arrived donor heart to Mr. Strauss, a multi-millionaire who has just agreed to donate $8 million to the hospital to create a Cardiac Care Pavilion. Watters, on the other hand, thinks that the heart should go to Stanley, who has run a concession stand at the hospital for years. Because both men have equal physical needs for the heart, the choice comes down to a coin toss, which Geiger wins. However, shortly after Dr. Alberghetti performs the transplant, Mr. Strauss suffers from a stroke, and despite Aaron's efforts to save him, is pronounced brain dead. Because Geiger is already feeling guilty about wanting the heart to go to the richer man, and because he doesn't want to waste the heart, he orders that it should be removed from Mr. Strauss and then transplanted into Stanley. However, just as he orders this, Watters arrives to inform him that Stanley has died.
In the meantime, Geiger is trying to get Alicia into Wayland, an elite school which is mostly for rich children. However, after the deaths of Strauss and Stanley, when he goes for his interview with the school, he becomes angry with both himself and the school for favoring the rich over the poor and for making distinctions between people due to their financial status. He has an angry outburst in the interview and no longer wishes Alicia to be admitted to the school (or so we think).
The only other main plot was with Aaron, who apparently has a crush on his new colleague, Gina Simon. When he plans to throw a party for the new doctors, Dr. Alberghetti asks why and later infers that he is really throwing the party to get closer to Dr. Simon. She tells Aaron to "walk like a man" and as her out, and finally, at the end of the episode, he does.
Ah, yes, there was one other party in which Keith is treating a woman who has had a rollerblading accident and wants both a neuro and a orthopedic consult to make sure that she is healthy despite Keith's attempts at reassuring her. Keith gets Gina and Jack to come in for consults because it turns out that the patient's husband is helping Keith with a loan that he is taking out for a house that he is apparently buying.
Okay, so time for my review. At about the middle of the episode, I had the feeling that we've seen all of this stuff before. The whole "who should get the transplant" thing has been done, probably more than once (the example I can think of was in "Liver, hold the mushrooms", dealing with a liver and slightly different circumstances). The need for a neuro consult on someone with a "bonk on the head" happened in "Brain Salad Surgery", and it was even Keith's patient back then too. And Geiger's efforts to get Alicia into Wayland remind me of Kate's strong desire to get Sarah into Wayborough; even the names of the schools are almost the same.
However, at the end of the episode, I found myself thinking that I still love this show. So I guess I really liked the emotion-wrought Geiger scenes (he's always great at those), and I find myself thoroughly enjoying the witty humour of Dr. Alberghetti. It was also nice to see Watters actually interacting with Stanley; he doesn't usually have much contact with patients.
Also, I thought the "walk like a man" thing was a great reference to "Brain Salad Surgery", in which that song was sung. I don't know if the reference was intentional or coincidental, but nevertheless I loved it.
One other thing worth noting was the depiction of the patient who would be the heart donor arriving at the other Chicago hospital. The scene was very ER-esque and I suppose that's what it was supposed to look like, the heart arriving at ER's "County General Hospital".
I must say that I don't like the idea of Simon with Aaron, but we'll see what happens, perhaps nothing will come of it.
