'Miracle Workers: Dark Ages' Episode 2 sees Al become a doctor while Chauncley hovers on the edge of empathy
Spoilers ahead for 'Miracle Workers: Dark Ages' Episode 2 'Help Wanted'
Poor Alexandra Shitshoveler (Geraldine Viswanathan) aka Al. Episode 2 kicks off with her father Eddie (Steve Buscemi) praising her for designing a brake handle for their shit cart. Then he laments about what a pity it was that no one would know about her invention. Al frowns at the reminder that her ambitions far exceed what her town, and the times she lives in, offers.
In a world where eclipses are explained by the "devil getting horny and having sex with the sun", Al's more rational brain goes unacknowledged. So when a bonafide doctor seems to see her worth and gives her a job at his clinic, she is ecstatic.
She sees it as a way to finally prove herself in front of her peers, who think she is not worthy and bully her. But just a short time spent with the doctor makes her realize that he is a complete and utter fraud.
The doctor confesses as much, telling her that at first medicine seemed like a great concept and he thought he would "fake it till he made it" but even after so many years, he had made very little headway to coming up with curative solutions.
So he hands out cures like getting a man to eat his own penis to tackle the flu and the surgical removal of balls for a headache. It is a sly dig at some allopathic 'scorched earth' procedures whose side-effects seem to have more dire consequences than curative properties.
When Al's brother, Mikey (Jon Bass), comes to the clinic to be treated, Al finally tells her father that the doctor is a fraud. But then Eddie asks what she wanted to do about all the other patients waiting in line after them.
Despite the glory of being featured on the "Time 100" scroll and apologies from her former bullies, Al comes clean through the medieval version of the media -- a man on a stage with one sole musician providing cues to the "program" being watched by the townsfolk gathered around the stage.
And just like that, she falls into disrepute and is called a "young psychopath" who was pretending to be a doctor when she was in fact "dumb". Even the medieval equivalent of Google, an old man who is the Oracle, calls her a b***h.
The only one who sticks by her is her friend, Maggie (Lolly Adefope) who like all good friends takes her to the pub for a round of beer to drown her sorrows and leave the "shitty week" behind her.
Meanwhile, Prince Chauncley throws a hissy fit when he realizes that his pet duck Henry (one among the hundreds of ducks he owns) has gone missing. Mikey Shitshoveler, who is none too bright, happens to find the duck and he refuses to sell "Bucket", the renamed duck, to Prince Chauncley.
Lord Vexler (Karan Soni), the reluctant royal handler of the prince, on Chauncley's command fools Mikey most cruelly, to get back the duck. Mikey is left in the woods, naked in the cold, sitting on a rock (which he thinks is an egg that will hatch and give him four ducks).
Something about fooling a man that dumb, stirs Prince Chauncley's guilt. Of course, he doesn't know it is guilt until Lord Vexler tries to explain what he has done wrong. "You took away a duck from a man who has nothing when you have hundreds!", he tells Chauncley.
After a restless night, Prince Chauncley returns Bucket the Duck to Mikey. But he obviously still has some work to do about recognizing his privilege and tapping into his empathy. When Mikey tells him he can't lift his arms because he is too cold to have any feeling in them, Prince Chauncley, who is wearing two coats, comments he is feeling quite warm actually.
He takes off one coat and you think he is going to give it to Mikey, but instead, he says he never realized he could be more comfortable if he just carried one of his coats around instead of wearing both of them. Cue the facepalm for viewers.
Hopefully, Al can get him to behave better in the next episode just like she got him to pardon her father in episode 1.
'Miracle Worker: Dark Ages' airs on Tuesdays at 9:30c on TBS.