Calico Rudasil is a feature columnist for Sssh.com, the award-winning porn site for women & couples. With over 18 years’ experience under her belt, writing about and for the adult entertainment industry, Calico qualifies as something of a Web Porn Dinosaur; similar to a tyrannosaurus, only with far more attractive arms and a less pronounced overbite.
When I go into a show knowing it’s about a surgical savant, I’m not expecting realism.
Frankly, all I’m really expecting is a poor imitation of Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man performance, a recycling of themes and scenarios from other doctor shows, and maybe, if I’m lucky, a bunch of medical jargon which will remind me of hanging around my older sister (a real-life doctor, although not an autistic genius one).
Still, even with these low expectations, I decided to give an episode of The Good Doctor a try. I did this not because I really wanted to, but because I happened to stumble across a headline which read “This Week on The Good Doctor: Freddie Highmore Saves a Porn Star.”
OK ABC, you got me; time to fire up my cable provider’s on-demand menu and see what all the fuss is about.
Oh Look, An Airborne CGI Anatomy Chart
To be fair, I haven’t watched any other episodes of the show, so I may not be summarizing it properly in the following description. From what I can tell, though, the show basically breaks down like this: All the good guys like the young doctor despite his personality quirks, while the bad guys hate not just their autistic peer, but all of humanity and life itself.
Whenever he’s presented with a medical quandary, Dr. Shaun Murphy (played by a 25-year old who looks about half that age) excitedly utters a theory, typically one his far-dumber colleagues initially reject, before having to admit Murphy is right and then standing aside to let him save the day.
Sometimes these theories are accompanied by a CGI vision, a helpful visual aid which makes Murphy better at his job than the other surgeons, most of whom suffer from a personality disorder known as Hopelessly Arrogant Prick Syndrome. (This much of the show is reasonably faithful to real life, I must admit).
At any rate, it seems like everybody on the show except Dr. Murphy likes to talk about work while lying in bed with a coworker, which leads to arguments about heavy issues, like whether they want children, whether sex workers are all the same, and other unsurprisingly episode-relevant stuff.
In addition to his helpful visions, Dr. Murphy has flashbacks which aren’t so helpful. In this episode, for example, he has a flashback to the first time he looked at a porn magazine which causes him to miss his bus stop.
Irritated yet? Don’t worry; it gets worse.
Here’s A Shock; The Porn Star Patient Is A Deeply Conflicted Cliché
In my sadly vast experience with terrible TV dramas, characters who hail from the porn industry come in two basic categories: Pathetic (but largely innocent) female victims and their horrible, no good, sinister, soulless, callous, dastardly, male producers/bosses/agents.
In the relevant episode of The Good Doctor, the porn performer who shows up with a tumor in her vagina fits into the first category. Heck, one of the not-so-bad (but also not-as-good as the good doctor) surgeons even says she doesn’t seem like the type of girl who would do porn – you know, because she’s a nice, good girl.
The only person who doesn’t seem to be either judging the porn star patient, or lustfully wondering aloud what movies she has performed in, is the Good Doctor himself, whose autism apparently renders him unable to do anything other than come up with brilliant surgical ideas while spouting every line of dialogue like he’s Raymond Babbitt counting down to the next broadcast of The People’s Court.
At any rate, when she’s told removing the tumor will require severing a nerve which will remove all feeling in her genitals, the porn star looks wistful – and then goes full TV-drama-cliché.
“I knew it,” she says. “God is punishing me.”
She doesn’t want the doctors to call her parents, the porn star patient says, because she can’t bear the idea of looking her father in the eye.
“That’s what parents are for,” says the not-so-bad female doctor, suggesting they could provide the patient moral support in her time of need.
“Could you tell your father you’re a whore?” the God-forsaken porn star patient asks.
Excuse me while I go wash the taste of barf from my mouth.
Don’t Worry, The Good Doctor Saves The Day – And God Saves The Porn Star
Belated spoiler alert: The Good Doctor figures out how to make sure the porn star patient still has feeling in her genitals, although his solution winds up leaving her with no feeling in her thigh.
As you might guess, he comes up with this solution after having another CGI-vision, this one inspired by the pipes beneath his kitchen sink. (Very subtle metaphor, no?)
After the surgery, the porn star patient even wants the not-so-bad doctor to call her parents for her, because – lo and behold – in addition to being relieved of her tumor, she’s also been relieved of her feeling-like-a-whoredom!
One more flashback to the doctor’s even more awkward childhood (where group of evil neighborhood kids scar his sexuality for life with a mean bullying stunt) and everybody lives happily ever after… until next week, when presumably the Good Doctor will save someone from a rare condition which would stump any doctor who doesn’t experience helpful CGI visions.
Well, there’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back. Is there a surgery available to remove memories of bad TV from the human brain?
Calico Rudasil is a Sssh.com (@ssshforwomen) columnist and Sssh will be on Peeperz for fun times again in the near future, meanwhile why not check us out:
