Ok, I haven’t written in a while but a classmate of mine just sent our class an email to boycott Desperate Housewives. The cause of the uproar is the short scene above: Teri Hatcher’s character, mistrusting her gynecologist (played by Firefly’s Nathan Fillion), that she better check his diplomas if they’re “from some med school in the Philippines.” I don’t know what to feel about that comment. I’m sure a lot of my colleagues will feel insulted, but most will shrug it off. But it does send the message that Philippine med school graduates are quacks. (I’m not a quack. Doc Emer isn’t a quack.)
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Bam added these pithy words on Oct 03 07 at 11:41 amSheesh. Is this really worth getting worked up over? It may have been in poor taste, but the joke wasn’t going to work without denigrating some population or another, and we just drew the short straw.
From a dialogue point of view, calling attention to the diploma leads right into Susan reading Mal’s graduation date and realizing that yes, she IS old enough to be hitting menopause. (It’s not in the clip you linked, but it’s in the full scene, which I just happened to be watching; we don’t typically watch DH, but I saw Nathan earlier in the ep and decided to watch a little more as a result. Man, I miss Firefly.)
For what it’s worth, I can think of a few things in popular American culture that connect Philippine medical practice to quackery. Take Andy Kaufman going to a faith healer to get his cancer cured. Debunkings of faith healers and psychic surgeons are also typical documentary fare. For all we know, that may be what weighted the selection of the Philippines as a third world quack preserve.
