Episode 8 - My Manhood
29 March 2012
Synopsis: Turk loses a testicle but doesn’t tell JD. He overcompensates by wrestling people for the remote control. Dr Cox taunts JD for being a bad male role model for Sam. JD fights Turk and accidentally wins. He hides from Turk who wants revenge. Meanwhile Elliot overhears Dr Kelso saying he will be forced to retire. She also has a male patient with breast cancer who is embarrassed and doesn’t want anyone to know. Through that experience she realises that Dr Kelso really wants her help. The Janitor starts a newspaper called The Janitorial and when Dr Cox calls him stupid he prints a fake interview to irritate him.
The Good: The revelations about Dr Kelso’s job and Turk’s testicle are both handled in a surprising manner which catches you off guard. The twist that Kelso was crying for help is hardly earth shattering but it plays out nicely. Similarly Turk’s testes comes out of nowhere but adds to the Kelso plot and leads to one good joke (see Comic Highlight). Carla is consistent with her curiosity about Elliot’s secret.
Dr Cox is also consistent both with his manly jibes at JD and his reactions to the Janitor’s article about him. Cox getting Sam out of day care is completely implausible but his line about wearing dress and pretending to be JD is funny. Hearing a squashed JD’s voice doing the linking voiceover is somewhat clever (as Turk is sitting on him at the time).
The Bad: The whole Janitorial plot is there to carry the humour of this episode. A task which it singularly fails at. Ted being almost invisible to people is a joke taken too far, so that it is no longer plausible and therefore not funny. Ted has been the poster boy for insignificant for a long time. We have sat through people being rude and mean to him since the first episode. Now we are expected to believe people don’t even realise he is sitting next to them. It doesn’t fit with reality and so isn’t funny. Similarly the Todd’s high fiving gets to make it round the entire Coffee house which is again an exaggeration of a well worn joke.
The other plots are filled with poor humour as well. There is the very flippant remarks about people hanging themselves from Elliot. JD mocking two ill girls and then claiming that he won a fight when the other guy beat his face in and hurt his hand. And the very bizarre growing a new Turk scene.
Turk losing a testicle should be a much bigger deal than this. They made several stories surrounding his diabetes so it’s strange that this is treated so lightly. Carla blurting it out is a particularly flippant way of telling us about it. If something like that happened in real life you wouldn’t use it as an example to remind Elliot of anything. I think she would remember that.
Elliot being blamed for Kelso’s retirement is still a silly idea (705). What kind of board doesn’t keep a record of its employee’s ages?
Comic Highlight: JD running away from Turk. He comments that Turk is pretty fast without that testicle weighing him down. He wonders if Olympic athletes have ever thought of that. Cut to a sprinter asking a doctor to take them both off so he can win the gold. “Hell if it makes a difference you can even take off my…” It cuts back to JD lying on the floor having crashed into some medical supplies. “Damn it never fantasise while running, you know that.”
Diagnosis: Lame exaggerations and shock value comments litter this episode. The overall plot moves forward a little but this is not very interesting at all.
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