cornerofmadness

And I think it might come in waves. But more on that in a bit.

Today was the dean of nursing's retirement party. She's been with my uni for 40 years and has been my friend. I've taught three of her daughters (ironically one of them is working at Grant, the trauma hospital I was treated in after my injury). The party was a bit of a sticky point. My uni won't pay for them (Honestly 40 years and you won't fucking spring for a shitty dinner?) so we paid 25$ for horrible food from our cafeteria's catering services. Food aside it was a nice send off and I'm glad I went.

Back to my initial statement, without being too political, I do feel like this comes and goes in waves, getting a little better each time before stagger back some. (Witness the freedom of the 1920s vs the overweening religiousness of politics in the 50s). So I'm rewatching Emergency! 1972-1979. I mentioned this before but I came into the rewatch around S3. (S7 sucked it don't bother).

So I AM wondering if the first two episodes were ever aired as the first two episodes because a) it's a frame story with Randolph Mantooth with WAY longer hair than he had until S3 b) it was frankly boring AF. BUT it did set up some of the politics of the time. Many younger people on the list have had 911 all their lives. I remember when it came to be. Paramedics as we see them today didn't start until the time period between me and my brother's births (late 60s early 70s). In fact emergency medicine we know today came about around the same time. THe first two were literal political battles in getting the program set up.

So we have a mirror to the politics of the time and it does do that a lot (Star Trek did too of course just a few years earlier and a lot has been said about that, books have been written). We see discourse on the drug culture of the 60s, women coming into the police/paramedic fields (which is one of the more misogynistic things I saw from the show), it did multiple episodes on child abuse and getting help to stop abusing etc.

But that's not necessarily what I wanted to say about the wokeness. Let's look at the first three seasons of Emergency! (because it takes until S2 to get the stable cast we have up to but sadly not including the last season).

( cut because it got long )