The episode begins with a 42 year-old pregnant woman who is hemorrhaging and eventually miscarries her child. Her husband, who obviously is very upset about the miscarriage, collapses in the waiting room from a heart attack and cannot be resuscitated. Of course, the woman then suffers the double-loss of both her husband and the child that she wanted very badly. She searches for a way to deal with the fact that her husband is dead and that she will never have the child of her dreams and Dr. Chang (this is someone new, according to my sister he has a role on the drama "Oz"), a fertility specialist, suggests that he remove sperm from her dead husband for use in impregnating her. Although this is very radical and has never been done before as far as anyone knows (what else is new on Chicago Hope), Dr. Alberghetti also becomes interested and the woman agrees. However, the parents of the woman's husband disagree as they have never agreed with the marriage in the first place, and they order that the sperm be transported elsewhere to prevent the doctors at CH from impregnating the woman. Meanwhile, a mysterious and rather unusual man who types up charts in the hospital basement encourages another worker to sabotage the hospital by releasing all the details of this particular case to the press. The man does so, and the next day, the story appears on the front cover of a prominent tabloid, thus posing a huge legal problem for the hospital.
More problems arise when the sperm cannot be located and Philip finds out that Alberghetti and Chang have used it to perform and in vitro fertilization of one of the woman's eggs. Philip is extremely angry but shortly thereafter Drs. Alberghetti and Chang are able to impregnate the woman and her husbands parents drop the charges that they had filed against the hospital, supposedly because they realized that they were going to be grandparents. The news also appears on the cover of the tabloid again, and Philip, although disgusted with the whole incident, is able to breathe a sigh of relief.
There is one other entirely different plotline, dealing with Dr. Simon and a small child. Simon is asked for a consult on a six-year-old boy who is having severe headaches. The mother of the boy suggests that they are migraines, but Simon says that six-year-olds don't get migraines, and she reveals to the mother that her son actually has a brain tumor. Simon operates immediately and is very hopeful, considering that the boy is alert and seemingly in perfect health after the operation. She relates the news to Aaron and is thrilled and cheery, but awhile later she returns and the boy's tumor has caused blood in his brain. She decides to take him for a CAT scan before operating again, but on the way to the CAT scan, he goes into cardiac arrest. Despite her efforts to revive him, he dies. At the end of the episode, Aaron finds out what happened and he consoles her in her office.
I didn't particularly enjoy this episode, and this is for several reasons. First of all, as I've mentioned in many of my previous articles, Chicago Hope has a major problem with plot recycling. Previously, Chicago Hope had a story in which a woman was impregnated with her husbands sperm when he was in a coma - not very different from this week's plot. Also, Chicago Hope has another plot problem, which is that because they run out of ideas, they tend to use totally radical stories and they sort of make up procedures that have never been done before, like harvesting sperm from a dead man. Since I'm not a doctor, I don't know how feasible this really is, but I do know that this is not the first time this season that someone has suggested a procedure, Philip has asked if it's ever been done before, and the doctor in favor of it says no.
I also received a message from a woman who was displeased with Simon's immediate dismissal of the possibility of a six-year-old having migraines. She informed me that small children can indeed suffer from migraines and that Chicago Hope is wrongly informing its audience. This kind of ties into the "radical new procedures" issue as well, because by using radical procedures, Chicago Hope is also misleading its viewers. All I can do is to remind everyone not to take the medical situation on television very seriously because not all of what goes on on t.v. actually occurs in real hospitals.
As for the acting in this episode, I really thought that the pain of the woman and man who lost their child at the very beginning of the episode was great; we felt their agony. After that, though, the acting went downhill. I know that I pick on Carla Gugino a lot, but I really don't like her character. I'm not necessarily saying that it is Gugino's fault, at least not entirely, but her character is too whiny and doesn't seem to be a very realistic surgeon. Also, we are seeing a lot more of Stu (the hospital's lawyer) this season; partly, I think, because The Practice and other law shows have done so well, that David Kelley decided viewership might be increased for Chicago Hope by incorporating more law into the episodes.
Anyway, that's all for this week. As I said, this wasn't the best episode of the season. Oh, and for the record, there was no mention of Cacaci this week. He has fallen in the plot hole, like many other stories, and I find it very disappointing.
