'The Knick' Recap: Count the Addiction Cliches — artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

John Thackery, the cocaine-addled chief surgeon of the Knickerbocker Hospital, took even greater leave of his senses in “The Golden Lotus,” Friday’s episode of “The Knick.” So did the show, for long stretches. Its swing away from medical and social history, which it does very well, and toward addiction and romantic melodrama, which it doesn’t, was just about complete. It began with Thackery (Clive Owen) committing a clumsy late-night break-in at a Greenwich Village pharmacy, where he was arrested, partly because he stopped to shoot up before leaving the scene of the crime. Captain Robertson (Grainger Hines, always good) dispensed some bribes to keep him out of jail, telling Thackery, “So I think this makes us even.” (Someday we’ll find out what happened between them in Nicaragua. Maybe in Season 2.)

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