Emily Owens: Gina Names her Research Assistant

by Amy K. Bredemeyer

The title was a little off for me... I know that Emily brought up the teapot two or three times, but it didn't really play a major role and I'm not sure if I'd remember what the episode was about by reading the title in the future. It was just last episode that Emily started being whiny over her infatuation with Will again, so I'm glad that she has declared herself over him. Plus, her reasoning is pretty solid: she wants to be someone's FIRST choice. I couldn't tell how far Micah was going to go when he started to talk to her after that announcement, but I have a striking suspicion that we'll be left in the dark about how things would go between them anyway, seeing as only two episodes of the medical drama remain. And DRAMA it is! I couldn't believe the way Cassandra acted when Gina shared that she was selecting Emily as her research assistant! It only got worse after Gina stepped aside and Cassandra pretended the grapes were sour by saying that she lucked out in not having to do babysitting grunt work anyway.

Emily Owens, M.D. "Emily and... the Teapot" (S01E11): The finalists for the research assistantship are Emily, Cassandra, and Will, because they scored the highest on the in-service exam. Will talks up his engineering background, Cassandra brags about her past clinical testing experience, and Emily mentions that she's detail-oriented. Later, the candidates have to talk about why the others don't deserve to be Gina's assistant. [interesting technique.] Will says Cassandra is too ambitious and not a team-player but Emily gets too personally involved with patients and sometimes lacks confidence. Emily echoes Will's sentiments about Cassandra and adds that Will can be impatient. Cassandra reiterates Will's thoughts on Emily, then says Will is not self-reliant. This knocks out Will from the competition, and by the end of the night, Emily gets the position because she gets patients talking and writes down things that they wouldn't otherwise have mentioned. [so, the same reason Cameron succeeded on House? also, I felt that the fundraiser was an awkward time for Gina to announce her choice, didn't you?] Cassandra is rude about it, and when Will decides to talk to comfort Cassandra instead of congratulate Emily, she decides that she's done with him, though she had earlier decided that it wouldn't be long before he chose her over Cassandra.

Liane Hentscher/ The CW

Earlier in the day, Cassandra once again tried to throw off Emily by not passing on a message that residents should say a few words about Gina on camera for the fundraiser, so Emily spends the day worrying about what to say, only to finally give a short message that gets cut from the final video. [meh. and on a similar note, why did the doctor with whom Gina had an affair hit on her in plain sight of her husband?] Oh, and Micah misses the fundraiser because his mother winds up needing emergency surgery. Emily missed the first part of it because she was comforting him. Afterwards, they celebrate his mother's health and her position with some champagne.

Patient 1: Guy has a detached retina, fatigue, and leg numbness. He doesn't keep in touch with his family because they don't accept that he's gay, so he's unsure about his family history. [kinda sucks.] After he has some heart palpitations, Cassandra diagnoses a rare disease in his connective tissue, but she leaves Emily to explain to the adrenaline junkie that he can no longer do strenuous exercise. [boo.]

Patient 2: A teen soccer player with some rib pain and shortness of breath. An x-ray reveals a bullet in his lung, but there are no wounds or scars. Perhaps he inhaled it as a child on a playground, but it turns out that the mother was shot while pregnant but there was no bleeding so she thought she was only grazed. [I'm kinda surprised that the bullet made it into the offspring's lungs!!] The patient's father was in a gang and she didn't want him to know, though she finally tells him the truth before he needs surgery to remove the bullet. And, Emily helps the patient to understand that his mother lied because she cares. [of course. but did you notice how we know next to nothing about Emily's own parents at this point??]