Tough love in action: Green's counselor, McDade's Gratitude List, the menthol lecture

timeline_event

texture · 9-11 Nov YDAU

When: the 9-11 Nov YDAU stretch (scene datelines: 097 = ?/9 Nov 1800h; 116 and 118 = 11 Nov)
What: Three same-week beats fix Thrust's working style as a counselor. He is Bruce Green's assigned counselor, "the extremely tough-loving Calvin T.," who complains that listening to the shut-down Green "is like listening to a faucet with a very slow drip" and "tries weekly to draw Green out by pissing him off." McDade tells everybody he's constructing a Gratitude List "at Calvin T.'s tough-love suggestion" — and promptly uses it for a cruel joke, which is McDade's register, not Thrust's. And in Gately's smoking rumination, it's "Calvin T." who says menthols "are even worse for you because they got little bits of asbestosy shit in the filter and whatnot" — the counselor as ambient source of House health-wisdom. Together with events 3-4: the method is provocation, bluntness, and zero shit, aimed at residents who are shut down or glib.