This week’s episode of Good Sam saw the war between Sam and Griff get even more heated, while Isan dealt with losing a patient and Lex dealt with trying to get past everyone knowing about her and Griff. Keep reading to find out what happened in “Butt of the Joke.”
You Schmooze, You Lose
There’s a donor event in the lobby of the hospital and both Sam and her father are trying to schmooze the best of the best to prove that they have what it takes to be the better chief. As Sam tries to get on Byron Kingsley’s good side by telling him her ideas, as pushed by Malcolm, Griff swoops in and starts bringing up golf jokes. The two walk away, joking and laughing, Sam is left feeling useless and defeated, but far from giving up.
This Puts a Crack in Things
Griff is adamant that his daughter pull out of the competition and he will fight her if he has to. But Sam is not backing down. That soon proves to be a bad move…
Dozens of prosthetic butts are delivered to the department, though the jokes are horrendous. Finding the packing slip, it’s revealed that they are medical teaching tools for prostate exams, and delivered to none other than Dr. Sam Griffith. Of course, Griff was behind it and he is amused, offering to make some calls for his daughter. Sam doesn’t give in.
Malcolm finds Sam to tell her that Griff still has signing authority on the Lakeshore account. Nobody ever revoked it. Sam asks Malcolm if he can do it, but Malcolm doesn’t want to get in the middle of things so Sam goes to her mother. Though she is already on it since she was in charge of doing everything for Griff when he was chief. Now Sam has balance sheets full of butts and if she says her dad did it, it looks like she can’t control her personnel. If she says she didn’t know, it looks like she’s clueless about her own department’s finances. Griff is brilliant. Vivian looks up the contract and the two see that the butts were $2 million total.
Sam and Vivian are trying to find loopholes to see if they can get a $2 million refund but still no luck. Vivian meets with Griff to persuade him to get the $2 million back and after some pushing, he gives in and gives her the customer service rep number. Sam calls the number but she has no luck in getting a refund, no matter how demanding she is.
Thanks to something Rhonda had said, Sam figures out exactly how to get the refund. She tells Malcolm that the contract specifically says that the devices represent a “typical human body,” but they are all the same. They represent one body type, a standard that a patient nearly killed herself trying to live up to. Which nobody wants to argue in the court of public opinion, Malcolm says. So in theory, the company will let Sam return all of those butts for a full refund.
An Appy Gone Wrong
A routine appendectomy starts to go wrong when the patient starts hemorrhaging. The patient bleeds out as the surrounding surgeons try to find the problem and the tissue falls apart. It’s too late. Dr. Anders tells Isan to call it, indicating that the patient is dead.
Isan promises his patient’s family that he is going to find the reason why he died in a routine procedure. But as he tries to figure it out, he can’t come to a probable conclusion, so he asks for an autopsy.
Isan conducts the autopsy without waiting for pathology, along with Caleb, and all Isan wants is to prove that he’s good enough to be a surgeon. Caleb discovers a nicked iliac. That’s why the patient bled out. “I killed him.”
Caleb tries to reassure Isan by telling him he got sober a couple of months ago. He made a lot of mistakes and now he’s just trying to do better one day at a time. Caleb thinks if Isan accepts that he did all he could for his patient, it’ll be best for the patients who still need him. The pathologist comes in after conducting the autopsy and tells them that the patient had a malignant mass. It’s advanced appendiceal cancer. It’s why the sutures wouldn’t hold. And if the guy hadn’t had cancer, Isan could have fixed the iliac in time.
All may have finally seemed well for Isan, but he’s approached in the parking garage with a wrongful death lawsuit. He’s been served.
The War Lives On
Rhonda offers to share some dirt on Griff with Sam since she wants him out of the picture, but Sam denies it at first since it’s all about who can lead the CT department best.
Sam is successful in getting a refund from the company for the full $2 million but after getting the confirmation email, Sam notices something very wrong. The company name. The $2 million refund is coming from The Waxman Corporation. Waxman as in Gerald Waxman. It was never about the devices, she walked right into his trap.
Vivian and Sam look up Gerald Waxman and he is a philanthropist, multimillionaire, entrepreneur. He’s given a ton of donations to Lakeshore. Waxman pledged to give Lakeshore a new donation of $12 million. As if on cue, Griff comes in to tell them that Waxman called him to tell him the news. When Sam canceled the contract, he canceled the donation. It’s a good lesson for her. Griff tells Sam they can renegotiate her surrender over a drink, but Sam goes to Rhonda instead to get some dirt on her father. She will do whatever it takes.
Repairing a Friendship
Lex asks for Sam’s permission to work on a Whipple and study for it. Sam is all for it, but she’s still not at the “sit down for a glass of wine” stage. She wants things to get better.
Sam and Lex overhear some residents talking about Lex doing the Whipple and how she “assists” Griff so Sam steps in to stand up for her, rightfully shutting up the residents. Sam sees Lex who just nods and smiles.
Lex sees Sam after the Whipple and thanks her for earlier. Sam was just thinking about her friend. She suggests that one of these nights they sit down for wine, and Lex happily obliges. This could be the start of something new.
Case of the Week
The case of the week goes to a 40-year-old, Tracy, with chest pains and a headache, though she insists it’s not a heart attack. Perhaps one of her implants ruptured. As indicated on the EKG, she’s had a heart attack before and she wasn’t diagnosed correctly.
After running the echo, it’s found out that Tracy didn’t have just one heart attack, but many. What Tracy brushed off as panic attacks were actually cardiac events, as the symptoms were mild enough. Tracy doesn’t like the diagnosis and begins to leave, not believing she had heart attacks, but she collapses.
Not having found the cause during the cath lab, Sam, Griff, and Joey all come together to figure it out. Chief of Plastics Dr. Rhonda Glass is called in, who did all of Tracy’s previous surgeries. When Rhonda tells them some personal information about Tracy, including losing her virginity and smoking her first cigarette, it’s revealed that she lied about her age. So Sam suggests they run a new battery of tests.
Tracy once again has a heart attack and when Sam goes to put a tube in her mouth, she notices lesions. Rhonda later goes through the cosmetic procedures Tracy had done and when she gets to varicose vein removals, Griff and Sam look at each other. They realize it’s a disease, she was trying to smooth out her skin but it wasn’t age spots. Arthritis, headaches, oral lesions, superficial venous thrombosis. Tracy has Behcet’s syndrome. Blood vessel inflammation exacerbated by the estrogen supplements.
Tracy is doing much better, but all she wants is to have someone by her side.
The next episode of Good Sam will premiere on CBS on Wednesday, January 26 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. Stay tuned for our continued coverage of the series, including episodic recaps and more!
