The Knick - You're No Rose - Review: "An Unwanted Return"

This show is something that continues to impress, with another consistent episode that dealt with Thackery's unwanted return to the Knick following his attempt at getting clean from a drug addiction in the previous episode where he was spent at sea. Naturally, the board aren't too happy about this situation given his humiliation last season, so will only accept him back at a price. The episode itself allowed for several single-take shots, and it's really interesting to see how Sodebergh is handling the directors chair, continuing to create a tense and fantastic atmosphere for the show. I'm fairly certain that I'm going to be praising the direction of this show at least once per week, because it's just utterly superb. It helps give the show that uniqueness that I talked about last week, and it has something that few other shows on TV can match nowadays, the quality of an A-List director directing every single episode. In fact, I'm struggling to think of a single other show currently airing that follows this approach, and it makes a great change from the multiple directors that other shows follow. The singular vision of Soderbergh's directing has helped make this show as great as it is.

Jacob Speight (David Fierro) was killed off this week and we opened with his corpse in the Hudson River. And of course whilst we know this character's fate - the dock manager being the most likely culprit or one of his underlings, the others don't, creating a mystery that makes things interesting and adopts a different approach, again from the majority of other TV shows out there. It's not quite a unique method as it has been tried before, but rarely as effectively as in The Knick. It was always going to happen when the Health Inspector found out what someone didn't want him to uncover, and you can understand why people wanted to keep the fact that a ship was most likely carrying contagious diseases on board quiet, and not risk the attention of someone like the Health Inspector. This of course kick-started an investigation from Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance), after the police seem to be only listening to the stories that suggest he was drowned whilst drunk. The fact that the investigation lead to both Dr. Algernon and Tom Cleary kept things interesting even if obviously it wasn't the main focus of events, with the situation of course centred on Thackery's return.

It was great seeing how the rest of the cast reacted to Thackery's return this week and as expected, they weren't too pleased to have him back. A standout scene came when Thackery confronted Bertie about his outdated view of virginity when he was upset about how well Thackery was getting along with Lucy. Of course, this then created a situation that was even worse when Bertie found out that Thackery was actually doing more with Lucy than he first believed, creating a fairly awkward situation. But Bertie is the least of Thackery's problems, because in order to get back into the board's good books, he had to convince them not only has he recovered from his addiction, but also that he wants to devote his time exclusivley to researching addiction, which was something that he discussed last episode. This looks like it's going to be the A plot for the rest of the season, and it'll be interesting to see what direction the show chooses to go in, especially in regards to how the characters change overtime, because they've already developed a fair bit so far.

E.D. Elkins, Lucy's father, arrived in New York this week after learning that Lucy wasn't writing letters to him anymore due to spending too much time with her new friends and activities. This allowed for a standout scene that blended the one long shot with the soundtrack, Cliff Martinez' stunning score, incredibly well, creating a fantastic blend that almost makes it feel like straight out of a horror scene. On a side note, ever since I discovered the first season soundtrack on Spotify I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop, because it's been that good, and really is one of the highlights of the show. If you want to check out Martinez' work elsewhere then he provides the score for the awesome movie Drive, as well as Far Cry 4, but I think that his work on The Knick might be his best to date.

The episode also ended on an interesting note as well, setting the teaser for possibly more drama to come as Thackery may not be quite free of the drugs problem just yet. With the scene spent with Kate, he looked at the inviting prospect of a combination of heroin and cocaine, speedball, and that he might not in fact meet his end from the use of both of them. So it's a strong taste of what's in store further down the line, and I'm sure that the show will have plenty of more excitement in store in next week's episode.

What did you think of You're No Rose? Did you enjoy Thackery's return? Will you miss Jacob Speight? Let me know in the comments section below.

Overall Episode Verdict: A
Positives:
+Soderbergh's direction again. Especially that tracking shot!
+Soundtrack!
+Thackery shooting down Bertie.


The Knick continues at 10pm Next Friday on Cinemax.

About the Author - Milo MJ

Milo is an Arsenal FC supporter and loves TV shows like Battlestar Galactica, Justified, The 100, The Americans and Person of Interest. He reviews Black Sails, Childhoods End, Da Vinci's Demons, Hell on Wheels, The Knick, Manhattan, Murder in the First, Narcos and Veep for Spoiler TV as well as books, films and games for his own blog The Fictional Hangout and contributes to comic reviews on a weekly basis for All-Comic.

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