1/29 was a repeat, with Pratt in charge of the graveyard 12 hour shift.
I didn’t notice it the first time around, but they showed a woman’s bare breasts in this episode. Granted, it was an elderly dying woman and it wasn’t gratuitous (the little girl was yelling she was a DNR, but she thought that meant Grandma didn’t want to be undressed), but I didn’t notice her breasts were exposed until they covered her back up again.
Is that how they got away with it? It was that subtle?
Nudity in and of itself does not automatically violate broadcast standards. In a non-sexual, non-prurient context it’s permissible. Even in a more sexual context it can be done. Look at “NYPD Blue.” It’s featured nudity literally since day 1.
Back in February of 1997, NBC broadcast Schindler’s List commercial free and completely unedited. Not only is there nudity – and sexual nudity at that – but there’s some pretty graphic simulated sex, as well. I’m not sure how they got around the FCC’s regulations about those kinds of things.
Chicago Hope has an episode in which a woman wanted both her perfectly healthy breasts removed because every woman in her family had died of breast cancer, despite regular check ups and regular tests. It was so inherent in her family, that she didn’t care if her tests were negative (for now).
The final shot were her two bare breasts completely filling the TV screen as a scalpel reached across.
It was such a good episode, I didn’t even realized that there were two fully exposed breasts on my screen in prime time, until my GF said “Hm. Interesting that they were able to do that.”
It was extrememly clinical though. The surgery blanket (you know the green sheet that has a square hole cut through it) removed any human context from the scene as well. So it was like the breasts didn’t even belong to a human - which actually added to the poignancy of the scene,
I saw another Chicago Hope episode that featured a woman’s breasts (at least, I think it was Chicago Hope. Maybe it was ER). In that storyline, a really young girl (17 or so) was diagnosed with breast cancer in one of her breasts. So she had a mastectomy and then they gave her an implant so it would match her other breast. There was a shot near the end of her after surgery (right, like she wouldn’t have been bruised or anything) where they compare the two breasts and they both look the same.
Maybe Granny was wearing nipple shields . . .