'Heartbeat': The Most Insane Show You're Not Watching

NBC’s Heartbeat aired its third episode Wednesday night and, good news for those who were sucked into last week’s double dose, it remained absolutely nuts.

There’s been some debate around Yahoo TV HQ about whether this new medical dramedy is a guilty pleasure or just flat-out bad. Those in the latter camp think it should be renamed Lady Doctor, because the premiere seemed to think viewers would be shocked — shocked! — to learn renowned cardiothoracic surgeon Alex Panttiere (The Slap’s Melissa George) is both a beautiful woman AND a brilliant, rule-breaking doctor.

Related: Heartbeat Review: New Medical Drama With a Weak Pulse

Those of us who’ve embraced the show, on the other hand, choose to believe the producers are in on the joke and purposely cram as many crazy moments into each hour as possible. Here are five from this week’s, for instance.

1. It opened with Dr. Panttiere getting turned on while watching her boyfriend/colleague Dr. Pierce Harrison (Dave Annable) perform a difficult operation. She described “the intimacy” between a good surgeon’s thoughts and hands in a string of double entendres to her interns. Afterward, she actually said this to Pierce: “Do you have any idea how hot you were covered in bile and blood?”

2. Naturally, they had to have sex immediately and got busted by their boss (Shelley Conn), who knew the worst punishment for Alex wouldn’t be to fine her again but to force her to sit with the hospital’s therapist (D.L. Hughley) for an hour of couple’s therapy. Because no smart professional on TV ever willingly goes to therapy.

3. The main issue is that Pierce wants to move their relationship forward by moving in with Alex and her kids (their father is Alex’s gay rock star ex-husband, Joshua Leonard’s Max, whom everyone adores). Alex, however, first needs closure with Dr. Jesse Shane (Don Hany), who was her mentor and lover 10 years ago and has just returned to her hospital. You can see why she’s torn, because both men like to leave the men’s shower/restroom before putting on their shirt. Let’s do that every week, please.

This is where I admit that the real reason I first tuned in to Heartbeat was because of Hany, who played a pediatrician in Offspring — a truly great Ally McBeal-esque Aussie TV dramedy centered on a thirtysomething obstetrician (Asher Keddie) — which I recently binged on Hulu. But at this point, I assume most viewers (including me) are firmly Team Pierce, because in addition to being an apparent sex god (Alex has mentioned it once or twice), he’s emotionally available.

Hany’s Jesse, meanwhile, had seemed less forthcoming with his feelings 10 years ago — until this episode. Alex’s worst fear was confirmed: that thing Jesse whispered in her ear at his goodbye party — that thing he doesn’t know she couldn’t hear over the noise — was how he really felt about her. And yet, once he mentioned that, she STILL didn’t ask him to repeat it, though she’d been wondering what he said for a decade… That’s the right move, of course, if you really don’t want to open that door again. But how do you stop yourself from blurting out the question in the moment?

4. Notice we haven’t even discussed this week’s case yet. It was one to remind Alex how special finding someone who understands you is. A young man named Sam, who’d suffered permanent brain damage in a car accident when he was toddler, has only ever been able to speak sentences backwards. No one understands him, except his grandmother, when he speaks slowly, and Alex, of course, because her sons conveniently spoke that way for a while when they didn’t want her to know what they were saying. Sam, played movingly by guest star Nick Thurston, feels so isolated he’d be okay with dying, which makes him the perfect candidate for some experimental stem cell surgery that could repair his brain or, you know, kill him. To perform said surgery, the guest specialists have to remove all the blood from Sam, put him on ice, and have his brain and heart flatline. Then they have around 42 minutes to complete their work before they need to revive him. Here’s when the episode reached peak crazy: THERE WAS AN EARTHQUAKE THAT CRACKED THE TUBE HOLDING HIS BLOOD.

Luckily, the hospital staff was able to organize a blood drive, with minute to spare. But like, you’re in Los Angeles, maybe make sure all of your equipment can handle an earthquake that wasn’t big enough to rattle anyone but Jamie Kennedy’s Dr. Callahan.

I was wondering if producers would be brave enough to let Alex fail. They sort of were: the surgery’s results were only temporary. But Alex did manage to finally find a young woman who suffered from the same condition as Sam, so the hospital can launch a study to help them both, and, in the meantime, Sam is no longer alone.

5. Speaking of Kennedy’s Dr. Callahan, he thinks he’s at his most capable when he smells and he gets women to sleep with him by telling them that he invented Google, but for some reason, Nurse Ji-Sung (Maya Erskine) is finding herself warming to him. Much to Ji-Sung’s relief, resident perfusionist Forester (JLouis Mills) vowed to kill Callahan before he’ll let her go out with him. And like, he seemed to mean it.

Bonus: Why would this doctor ever think it was okay to swing a club and strike a ball in a room filled with this many screens?

Heartbeat airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC.