How typical. Tonight’s episode “Fallback” of NBC’s Chicago Med took a shot at capitalism, showing a greedy business owner calling another character "Bernie Sanders" for wanting to help people.
As is explained in this episode, Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) went outside the family business – an upscale department store – to pursue a medical career. His sister, Claire, (Christina Brucato) is introduced as the child who stayed to run the family business.
A long-time employee is severely injured when a glass sculpture falls from the ceiling and the glass shards are impaled into his chest. Mr. Rhodes, bitter that his son is a doctor, doubts that a family friend should be operated on by Connor. As Connor explains the procedure to find the extent of the damage, he mentions that recovery will require a long hospital stay. Claire immediately volunteers that the costs will be covered by the company but Mr. Rhodes objects and refers to her as “Bernie Sanders.”
Connor: Dad.
Rhodes: Doctor. How's our patient doing?
Connor: Russel's stabilized for now. I have found something that could help us with the surgery. It's an imaging system called Surgical Theatre snap.
Claire: Okay.
Connor: It's FDA approved, so insurance is gonna cover it, but Russel is going to be looking at a lengthy hospital stay afterwards, and I just want to make sure that--
Rhodes: That somebody covers the co-pay?
Claire: We will.
Rhodes: Hang on there, Bernie Sanders. Now, I love Russel as much as you do, but we have to be responsible to the company. Are you prepared to do this for every one of our employees?
Connor: We are talking about Russel here. God, he's worked for us since he was 14 years old. He's family.
Rhodes: Us? When did it become "Us"?
Mr. Rhodes is concerned about the bottom line, as any responsible business owner would be, but in the minds of Hollywood writers, he must be portrayed as a heartless bastard who cares more about money at the expense of people.
It’s interesting that NBC writers chose to use the name of Sanders instead of Hillary, though. Is that a bit of favoritism in play? Or maybe even an acknowledgement that Sanders' policies have unintended consequences?
