The Knick · Season 1 · Episode 1 · 8 August 2014
S1E1 Method and Madness
THE MOMENT Thackery's cocaine injection before the next case - the moment the show makes its antihero's functioning addiction explicit without apology.
The premiere opens with a surgical procedure that fails - blood everywhere, doctor defeated, patient dead - and in doing so establishes immediately that The Knick will not romanticise medicine, history, or its protagonist. Soderbergh's camera work and the Cliff Martinez score announce a visual-aural grammar unlike anything else in prestige drama.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
The Knick Season 1 Episode 1 'Method and Madness' aired August 8, 2014 on Cinemax as the premiere of the ten-episode first season. Rotten Tomatoes holds Season 1 at 87 percent; Metacritic scored it 75. Variety noted the series has 'what tamer period dramas lack: a spark of life and sense of danger.' The premiere opens with a surgical procedure that fails - blood everywhere, doctor defeated, patient dead - establishing immediately that the show will not romanticise medicine, history, or its protagonist. Clive Owen's Dr. Thackery performs in a world where surgical mortality is the baseline. Soderbergh's cinematography and the anachronistic Cliff Martinez score create a visual-aural grammar unlike any other prestige drama of 2014. Andre Holland's arrival as the Harvard-trained Black surgeon forced into the basement introduces the season's moral counterweight from the first episode.