"You know why all the history books are written by men?" Nurse DiDi Ortley asks, as the third and final season of Getting On
begins. "Because women were too busy getting all of the work done." Who
does the work, and who simply takes credit for it, is a tension at the
heart of HBO’s smart workplace comedy, where doctors, nurses, and
administrators all jockey for position in a hospital extended care unit
where the only contented people seem to be the newly dead.
Based on a British series with the same name, the American version of Getting On retains its predecessor’s bleak premise but roots itself firmly in America’s demented health care system. It is one of the smallest
shows on HBO, both in size (each season consists of just six 30-minute
episodes) and in popular reception (it has stayed stubbornly under the
radar). Despite a well-deserved Emmy nomination for Niecy Nash, who
plays DiDi, Getting On is the sort of show you stumble on while browsing HBO Go and then wonder why you’ve never heard of it before.
That’s how I found it, anyway, and over the course of two seasons it
became one of my favorite things on TV. The dire, claustrophobic
hospital offers occasions for both wild farce and genuine pathos, almost
always in the same episode. And it’s a rare premium cable show starring
mostly women that’s as much about their work as it is about their love
lives. These are people with careers, and dreams of a better life for
themselves — and while men sometimes fit into that, they are rarely the
focus. A rare show about women that's as much about work as it is about love
As the second season of Getting On came to a close, Dr.
Jenna James (Laurie Metcalf) and her staff had become the target of a
fraud investigation by Medicaid. (James took kickbacks in exchange for
enrolling non-terminal patients in a hospice program; James used the
money to finance her study on female fecal incontinence.) At the start
of the third and final season, which begins airing Tuesday, the staff
has somehow escaped with their jobs intact. But eight months after the
events of the second season finale, a new doctor has been ordered to
work with them and serve as a kind of ethics monitor, and the air at the
hospital is thick with talk of impending layoffs.
Lacey Terrell (HBO)
More than ever, Metcalf looks to be having the time of her life
playing Dr. James, a manic geriatric researcher with delusions of
grandeur who is forever attempting to enroll her patients in clinical
trials — consequences be damned. (James’ research always tends toward
the fecal, the sexual, and the elderly, which the show exploits for the
rich body horror they provide.) James is alternately aided and thwarted
by her head nurse, Dawn Forchette, played with winsome naïveté by Alex
Borstein. And Dawn’s insane on-and-off sexual relationship with a (gay
male) fellow nurse, Patsy De La Serda, accounts for some of the show’s
funniest moments — while also earning its keep on HBO (there’s
apparently a surprising amount of banging that goes on in a hospital
ward).
HBO made the first four episodes available for review, and each one offers a rich, cascading series of disasters to behold. Getting On
has never been a densely plotted show, and while it’s never quite
dragged, there have been moments where I’ve wondered whether it had a
master plan. But as it moves toward its finale, the series has found a
new momentum, with each episode feeling like it’s building toward a
climax. More than ever, Getting On has embraced its setting’s
most slapstick (and gross-out) possibilities. Vaginal cream plays a
starring role in season three, as does a dubious invention of Dr. James’
known as "the anal horn." The device lies on an operating table like
Chekhov’s gun in the early part of the season; when it is eventually put
into action — which is to say into a patient — the results had me
screaming. A dubious invention known as "the anal horn."
More seriously, Getting On serves to document how our
personal lives intersect with work in the most inconvenient of ways. In
season two, DiDi — the moral center of the show, and typically the only
character seen doing any real work in an episode — had to deal with a
temporary assignment working with her difficult half-sister. This
season, her stepmother arrives at the hospital after an accident, and a
battalion of quarreling family members come along with her,
second-guessing DiDi’s every decision.
The subplot is often played for laughs — DiDi and her family are
black, and her stepmother is white, leading to constant
misunderstandings with other staff members. But it also highlights the
very real decisions families have to make around end-of-life care —
decisions we prefer to put off for as long as possible. (The stepmother,
who has had a stroke, cannot speak for herself.) And for DiDi, it’s all
happening inside her workplace, constantly distracting her as she
attempts to do her real job. On Getting On everything is personal, and because of that, there’s no real escaping it.
DiDi aside, there are no real heroes on the show: only characters who
occasionally achieve dignity in the face of total disaster. (That anal
horn will really do a number on you.) My favorite moment so far in
season three comes when the smarmy Dr. James finds herself at the
bedside of a terminally ill patient who suddenly blurts out: "I love you
for all that you do for me." Are her words sincere, and meant for Dr.
James? Or are they the random neural firings of an addled mind?
Dr. James, for once, is silent, and looks on with a mix of shock,
sadness, and appreciation. The patient will be dead by the episode’s
end, and no resolution ever comes. What sticks with you is the odd
sweetness that keeps creeping into this sour old hospital and the people
who run it. As it shuffles toward its own end, Getting On has
become a tribute to the last people we’ll ever meet. Flawed though they
are, the doctors and nurses at the Billy Barnes Extended Care Unit
usually do come through for their patients in the end, serving them with
tenderness and mercy. Whatever calamities befall them along the way,
the patients go in peace. For the hospital staff, there’s nothing to be
done but pay their respects, and get on with it.
Who
does the work, and who simply takes credit for it, is a tension at the
heart of HBO's smart workplace comedy, where doctors, nurses, and
administrators all jockey for position in a hospital extended care unit
where the only contented people seem to ...
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