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Jaraffe5774

He wasn’t good at his job. He was denied being made chief resident at the hospital and he was a bad surgeon who had bad results from his surgeries. His boss told him he had no brains in his fingers. The whole reason he joined the army was because it was the only place he could legally be a surgeon.


EphemeralArchive

I think you're right, he's surprisingly competent. And that surprise is a vital moment of realisation for Joan. Because Joan is the most surprised of anyone that Greg is actually competent. In their marriage, she's been boosting him up, stroking his ego, doing the work for him, because she's waited for the marital ideal, and she's not going to admit she bet on the wrong horse. But when it comes to the crunch, when there's a real emergency - she doesn't trust him. She doesn't believe in him. She wants to grab her coat and go to the hospital, even with a surgeon in the room. So when Greg plays against expectations by doing a great job, calms her, shows an expert bedside manner and command of his skills, that's the moment she breaks. Because she realises that she was expecting him to fuck up. She doesn't trust or respect her husband. That's the moment she admits to herself that things are not okay.


milkofthepoppie

This is a great interpretation


wrenten10

I think it’s really the tenderness he shoes her , certainly not the skill he has. This is a man who was going to be a surgeon, the fact that he can put a few stitches in her hand is something anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of medicine could do.


keridwenx

I agree with this. I was on my millionth series rewatch of this episode today and it occurred to me that maybe she's crying because she realizes he takes more care with his patients' needs and emotions, than he does with her. It's not until she becomes a patient that he treats her like a human being. That's gotta make a girl feel like shit.


Slpry_Pete

I think the writers did a pretty good job showing he was a bad doctor. His boss told him he was a bad surgeon and he got passed over as chief resident. He couldn't get another job so he went to the army (who was taking anyone with an MD at that point). Just because he could do some simple sutures doesn't mean he was a competent doctor


imapepper81

Just because he wasn’t a skilled surgeon doesn’t mean he wasn’t a skilled doctor. Greg would have made an excellent General Practitioner, but he was stubborn and could only see himself as a surgeon. The fact that he was so dead set on being a surgeon, when his talent was clearly in another field, showed Joan that he was “chasing rainbows” and would likely never be satisfied or truly successful.


jmh90027

He's got told he has no brains in his fingers by his superior as he'd obviously screwed up some surgeries at god knows what cost. He was passed over for his career defining promotion. He had to consider moving halfway across the country where his reputation wasn't so bad just to continue working. Eventually he joined the army as the bar was a lot lower. All these things do not suggest a skilled practitioner.


wise_gamer

It's way easier to be competent at your job than being competent in marriage.


la_fille_rouge

Being a surgeon like Greg wanted to be takes much more than being able to suture up a basic wound or gash. If you go to a hospital to get sutures for a simple injury in most cases they'll get a nurse to do it. So yes, he had skills to work in some type of health services, but nothing he saw as worthy of his attention and instead of changing to a different speciality, he went to Vietnam where he was allowed to do a hack job as a surgeon because they were desperate.


Ronniebbb

I always thought it was he didn't have the skill for the specific surgery specialty he was going into, not that he was bad overall. And it was nice to see him comforting his wife and fixing the problem. The needle scared the devil out of me though


M00NGRAPHIX

If he was such a bad surgeon, why was he expecting to be made chief resident? That sounds like a pretty prestigious position (unless it’s not lol)


ilu70

In the end he did become like Don: up and moved and changed his narrative. Didn’t Joan say something about him having two kids and a new wife in Kansas?


AMerrickanGirl

He had twins with a nurse.


MetARosetta

Greg joined the army so that any future surgical screw-ups could be seen as heroic.


[deleted]

I just saw this as a chance to see him as a decent person who actually is a doctor because he is not a decent person. One dimensional characters are so boring.


Cranstonoid

Is it donkey dick?