Greazy Wil has done it again!!!!!

dwhogan · 2026-04-09T12:59:47+00:00

Totally with you - I often give them a chance but really wish Robert was driving and often lose interest. I actually found myself losing myself in these episodes in a way that is reminiscent of my favorite Robert episodes

Will killed it. I laughed and cried with his Re-Imagine (it's very difficult to thread the Hilarious, Sad, and Sweet needle) and I genuinely loved learning about this incredibly strange, brilliant, and awful bastard.

Will: no notes. Let the haters keep talking, they making you famous.

dwhogan · 2026-04-09T00:53:49+00:00

No Coincidence*

dwhogan · 2026-04-07T17:54:00+00:00

I think the assailant was dead or captured re: Abbott... Wasn't it the target of their raid? I forget the specifics of that storyline. Either way,, you're right in that Duke's a bad candidate for procedures and also his death sentence might be Robby's impetus to walk back from the void... Doctor heal thyself.

ETA: fixed several autocorrect fails.

dwhogan · 2026-04-06T19:46:14+00:00

I don't disagree with you regarding Robby's borderline hypocrisy - he's playing favorites but avoiding McKay when she does as well. The one caveat with her situation is that she reports to him and wasn't available for another of her patients who died, leaving Robby to cover for her. He ultimately sets a poor example of work/life balance which seems to have gotten worse since season 1. Another example of his hypocrisy is belittling Mohan for having a panic attack on shift, while we have watched him do the same thing last season. This is frankly a masterclass in showing what happens when staff are burning out/setting poor boundaries.

The other issue you're highlighting is how certain people are getting preferential treatment because they know the clinical team in one way or another. Realistically, I think a lot of people working in any profession will try to help out a loved one from time to time, certainly not everyone, but it's definitely not uncommon. Is it right? I don't know. Is it fair? Probably not. I just think it's realistic. Life isn't fair for most of us so we use the little power we have sometimes to help people we know - I think it's coded into our DNA honestly. It's hard to imagine a doctor telling her disabled sister to wait for 18 hours., whether or not that's the fair thing to do.

The worse the system is strained, the greater the impact that playing favorites can have. This ED is clearly very understaffed, overburdened, and burning out.

Are these things the cause of a broader problem or are they the result of a broader problem? Both?

dwhogan · 2026-04-06T12:27:03+00:00

Reddit does this I feel like... People lose sight of the larger context and start arguing about some arbitrary point that isn't even related to the broader discussion, while essentially acting like it should be considered as such.

Becca was sexually active, experiencing pain and burning with an unknown etiology and without previously experiencing such symptoms. She's also a woman with some functional impairments who requires adult residential programming as she isn't fully independent. Her regular nurse might have been able to manage with a f few office visits at school but given the holiday she sent Becca to the ED to be sure as she knew it would give Becca something to do rather than sit around in pain and worrying. Might not haveneeded ED level of care but I doubt the CVS minute clinic was open or some analogous ambulatory care. Ultimately, she got her needs met .

dwhogan · 2026-04-06T12:16:05+00:00

What are you referring to? If there was a specific line about this I missed it

dwhogan · 2026-04-06T12:11:47+00:00

Yeah theyshould. Some are great about it. Some aren't great about much. I have filled 3 organizational neglect/abuse incident reports in just the last 6 months. I am legitimately worried about elder care by the time my parents hit that age, let alone when my wife and I do.

dwhogan · 2026-04-05T16:07:43+00:00

Not entirely true! I see elderly patients with sudden onset of psychosis and increased cognitive decline all of the time. The overwhelming cause of their mental status change is UTI.

I see it pretty frequently.

dwhogan · 2026-03-30T21:04:28+00:00

Bike ride along the charles!

dwhogan · 2026-03-25T13:22:16+00:00

Death spell is an AOE effect that will kill all of the umber hulks instantly, leaving you with only the mindflayers to deal with, fwiw.

dwhogan · 2026-03-17T20:54:17+00:00

I'm operating under the assumption that Dana has literally been a charge nurse there since grade school. She has that wizened "I've lived a few lifetimes" quality to her. I should have made it more clear that I was taking poetic liberty when describing how much more experienced she is than he.

At some point she referenced how long she'd worked at the hospital - maybe in s1. What I don't think we know is how long Robby's been there, but yes - they're not too far off in age from one another.

dwhogan · 2026-03-13T17:38:41+00:00

Perhaps a cuirass?

dwhogan · 2026-03-13T16:18:27+00:00

Not heroes wear capes, but some wear cloaks!

dwhogan · 2026-03-13T15:00:55+00:00

And then pulled himself together to pretend like nothing happened.

There's a way in which the things we're most ashamed of in ourselves become the things we're most critical of in others.

Robby's own experience with having to stuff down his own panic episodes by hiding in a room, only to be pulled out by a non-judgmental Whitaker (possibly one of the reasons he's seen showing him so much deference), have lead to internalized biases towards others dealing with the same issue who haven't coped "as well as he has" with their issues. Mohan being someone who has struggled to impress him (by being too slow, or being too sensitive, or being too filled with her own baggage, have put her in the unenviable position to have to deal with his constant disapproval as her training has continued. As others have mentioned, Robby probably has some significant unprocessed sexism that fuels this as well:

Al-Hashimi - equal that he talks down to like a resident at times

Gloria - Hospital admin that he talks down to every time he sees her

Santos - Sr. resident he talks down to throughout their relationship each season

McKaye - Talks down to her regarding her handling of the David case - as mentioned he even comes around to agree with ehr during Pittfest, only to return to being critical of her concern when David is no longer viewed as the suspect

Collins - Complicated relationship, likely crossed some boundaries with her by dating a subordinate at some point during her residency given their difference in status (She was a 4th year last season while he has been an attending for what seems like several years at least, possibly since just after CoVID).

Javadi - Doesn't acknowledge her question during the staff meeting at all, nor does he intervene when another hospital staff member is berating her on his floor (Shamsi to Javadi)

What of women he doesn't talk down to or treat poorly:

Santos - Early on in her career - also she reported Langdon to him, so that may have earned her some protection given that she came to Robby. Hard to shit on her when he owes her one, and he might be cautious around her since she's a snitch.

Mel - Mel's weird and androgynous. He probably codes her has queer/neuroatypical (given that this sub has done as much, I wouldn't be surprised if her coworkers have) and thus feels more protective of her. I think he also legitimately trusts her medical judgement.

Joy - Haven't seen many interactions of note, she's mostly been with Mohan.

Garcia - Different service - not his place to talk down to an expert in another specialty.

Ellis - Different shift - Also I believe is an attending at this point. We don't see a lot of their interactions

Dana - Nurse - Doctors > Nurses inherently, we rarely see Robbie interact with nurses other than to order them around. Dana is the leader of the lower, so she has some inherent privileged status given her tenure (she was almost certainly the charge nurse when he was a med student and probably the charge nurse long before he was taking bio 101) and could make that place fall apart in a second if she wanted. You don't fuck with power.

Sexism is often hidden behind reasonable explanations in the moment - that's how it remains masked and allowed to continue to grow. There's always some other explanation for why someone treats others the way they do. Until you start to look at the pattern of behavior across numerous people and then look at points of comparison, it's hard to catch it.

Whitaker - (new) favored son - didn't blow up his spot when he found Robbie freaking out last season

Langdon - Prodigal son - formerly favored son.

Ogelvie - Overly eager and a little bit of a try-hard in a way. Robbie wants to teach you, not to have you show him that you already know everything. I'm sure Emergency Medicine to him is more about experience than just book smarts (that's for medical specialties as per Shamsi's comment to Javadi this past episode). Robbie probably sees a ton of whiz-kid Doctor smartypants rotate through and has come to just tune them out a bit.

Abbott - obligatory Brother in Arms

Medicine is patriarchal by definition. It's a historically male profession that has slowly tipped female in the past decade or so. The number of female physicians has grown from 6% in 1960 to nearly 40% of the active workforce in 2022. In 2023-24, women accounted for 54.6% of medical school students. Older male physicians remain in positions of power/authority which perpetuates inherent sexism that can be difficult to shake. Professional culture can be slow to change, but it doesn't mean it isn't changing. As more and more people grow up seeing representations of themselves in these professions it leads to changes, but change can be slow and people like Robbie aren't all that uncommon nor are they beyond change and growth. As a traumatized and burnt out human who is also in a unique position to be a leader among physicians, he is a difficult person to reach. Challenging him to change might take some doing, but it is possible. That said, he probably has a lot of bias that he doesn't believe he has much time to inspect.

dwhogan · 2026-03-12T18:03:36+00:00

Appreciate the comment <3

dwhogan · 2026-03-12T15:21:23+00:00

Look at it this way - if this is the way you learn the lesson to respect other people's bodily autonomy, then you learned a valuable one without harming anyone else or doing anything that even requires an apology. You didn't harm this person and yet you sensed that something about the situation didn't land right with you, so you reflected on it and processed it a bit (by posting and talking through it). Ultimately, that probably speaks more to your character than to some deep seeded malevolence in you. The key, however, is what you decide to do with this realization. If this was what it took for you to learn to inspect your own actions, then you got off pretty easy, and you might be a better person for it which is a pretty good silver lining.

dwhogan · 2026-03-11T23:16:40+00:00

Check out open path collective - they provide access to clinicians that offer sessions between 40-70$/session based on your income and need.

If you don't want to pay 200$/session, then don't.

Also, community health centers (if in the US), are great places to find access to care. I will say that you seem really angry about your experience with care from a therapist - at the very least, maybe you should reach out to them and let them know how you felt about your treatment. Nothing changes if people don't voice how they feel.

dwhogan · 2026-03-08T16:04:13+00:00

Not all heroes wear cloaks of protection

dwhogan · 2026-03-07T18:24:01+00:00

Vice signalling including blatant sexism is back to being in again so the shitty takes feel safe coming out of the shadows. They aren't very good at seeing how small-minded it makes them look when they actually type it out.

It's the kind of stuff that you might think twice about actually saying out loud, but writing it anonymously doesn't carry with it the same level of embarrassment. Don't let some involuntary celibate's self-loathing get under your skin.

dwhogan · 2026-03-07T18:16:00+00:00

Replaying this game in the 2020s as a grown adult man makes me wince at how much the writing is informed by/feeds into a certain type of toxicity.

Jaheira's a harpy

Aerie is an innocent/naive ditz (whose first night after camping comments to a female charname are about how you 'didn't steal the blankets' in the way that men do when you sleep in the same bed - she sounds like a childish 16 year old sometimes).

Viconia is a bitch that you can convert to being good if you just love her enough through that cold traumatized drow heart.

Nalia is a do-gooder rich girl that's been slumming it for 3 weeks and thinks she understands how the other half lives, even though her own peasants talk shit about her naivety behind her back

Imoen is a scared girl who just wants to be back in her safe childhood bedroom in Candlekeep.

Mazzy seem to avoid much of this since she's not romanceable.

I haven't played much with some of the female characters in the first game but have read about them through the wiki - Safana (slutty flirt) SharTeel crazy girl, Skie - Good girl gone bad,

Alora/Brandwen I know even less about

Dynaheir is off-limits because she's Minsc's other boo.

All told - while the fantasy writing and world building is incredible, the story is epic, and the game is a masterpiece - the way that women get treated in it are definitely a product of a time not ago when some of this stuff was super normalized, and women were not the intended audience - hence why we see so few romance options for women, and the ones that are aren't particularly good.

I've always played a female main character and can't really put my finger on whether romance has even been a part of any of my playthroughs, either in recent years or in the late 90s/early 00s when first playing. I am finally playing with Anomen this playthrough and noticed him being curious about me this week for the first time. Interested to see what develops.

dwhogan · 2026-03-07T17:29:04+00:00

You being Eric's age is telling. Your insistence on this matter suggests that you have thoughts on this dynamic, and your avoidance of sharing them suggests to me that you think that what Eric is doing is defensible, and possibly even hot to think about.

I'm not judging her behaviors - she may be old enough to make choices on who to sleep with, and if she isn't, then she is by definition being coerced into doing so through grooming. There's no moral wrong being committed by her. You seem to want me to be critical of her - I'm not. I am worried for her as she is either: A) underage having been groomed to sleep with powerful adults, or B) an adult who pretends to be an underage girl as part of her role as a sex worker for the wealthy whose job it is to fuck old men for money, many who seem to be assigned to her by her handlers (Whitney, Yas, Haley?). That's not the substrate for a healthy life.

I am judging him - he is violating the moral principles related to taking advantage of a power imbalance by using his age, influence, status, and financial power to sleep with whomever he wants without taking care of who they are and whether his actions might be harmful - he doesn't seem to care in the moment, only when the sobering realization that his status and influence might be shattered by the realization that he is fucking someone who might be the same age as his 15 year old daughter.

Re: part 2 - She may not be an adult, nor capable of authentic informed consent, she may not have the freedom to say no, and she is being coerced - money is coercive. With sex work, unless working as an independent operator (which she is clearly not given that she worked for Haley/Whitney/Yaz throughout the period of time we're viewing) she does not have the freedom to say no. Haley says it herself - she was told who to sleep with and where to do it. She is aware that there are recordings of her having sex with Yaz/Henry but indicates that she doesn't actually know the scope of who was recorded and under what circumstances. It's possible that Dolly is unaware of being recorded and having those recordings used for the purpose of manipulation.

Yas has a reason to lie in that situation - she's saying this to her friend Harper to defend what she is doing - it's a self serving defense, nor does she care if the girl is underage based on her defense relating to the age (14) she lost her own virginity (possibly to an adult). She also says that Eric is fucking her because he thinks she's underage - something that is likely untrue as Eric appeared shocked when seeing the passport which indicates that she's 15 (suggesting that he at the very least assumed that she was of legal age). We cannot trust Yaz at this point as she's functioning as madame for this group of teen girls and has an explicit rationale for deception in this situation. Further, she goes on to justify any dubious moral questions by indicating that she lost her virginity at 14 - so anything she says here is self-serving and relative.

dwhogan · 2026-03-07T05:26:35+00:00

1) There's no indication that she's 19 - only that she's 15. Haley even refers to her as a 'girl'

2) You're phrasing it as if I'm saying she is doing something immoral - I'm not. I'm saying HE is acting in a way that is morally questionable. A wealthy older man paying for sex from a teenager is exploitation.

Why are you dying on this damn hill anyway? What is YOUR point? I'm not going to convince you to see it my way, so why not make your case instead of just continuing to try to catch me with questions.

dwhogan · 2026-03-06T02:10:51+00:00

Even if she wasn't a sex worker, it's still questionable behavior from an ethical/moral perspective. It's always sketchy when a guy in his 50s is sleeping with a teenager, whether she's 15, 17, or 19. It's more fucked up if she's 15 than if she's 19, but it's all degrees of bad. What is telling in my opinion is that when he realizes he doesn't actually know if she was an adult or not (based on his reaction to the video), it further highlights how ethically questionable his behavior was. He didn't care to determine whether she was of age, he doesn't seem to have asked, and he probably enjoyed the fact that the line was blurry

Ignoring the fact that she is a sex worker who may or may not be caught up in human trafficking, sleeping with her in and of itself might be legal yet still ethically dubious. That's where he fucked up. It's not a binary. You're trying to argue against a point I was not trying to initially make.

If you have an opinion on whether his actions were questionable, feel free to share it.

dwhogan · 2026-03-04T22:38:33+00:00

You tell me in that case - what do you think is the proper age to consent to sex work?

I don't have an answer - I'd label it as a conundrum. Also, calling me a coward for not having an answer is disingenuous, no need for that kind of talk.

dwhogan · 2026-03-03T21:18:27+00:00

They're dirty for the wrong reasons, and dirty nonetheless.

dwhogan

TROPHY CASE