Difference between revisions of "Nick Riviera"

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"Hi, everybody!"

―Dr. Nick Riviera's catchphrase

Nicholas Riviera

Character Information Gender: Male ♂ Status: Alive Hair: Black Occupation: Doctor First appearance: "Bart Gets Hit by a Car" Voiced by: Hank Azaria v • d • e • h

Dr. Nicholas "Nick" Riviera is a quack physician (although he claims to be "just as good as Dr. Hibbert"), who studied at dubious medical schools.

Biography

Riviera is of Hispanic descent (and in the European Spanish dub he is specifically given an Argentinian accent) and has a medical degree from Hollywood Upstairs Medical College (where he apparently spent much of his time using his ability to acquire prescription drugs to impress a succession of attractive women back in the 1970s), and a great deal of luck. Thus far, none of the patients he has swindled, maimed, or given useless or dangerous medical advice seems to have sued him (although a few have come after him in person. For example, a large angry man once grabbed him, and Nick says "Well if it isn't my old friend Mr. McGregg — with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg"; the man literally has an arm where a leg should be and a leg where an arm should be ^[1]). Dr. Nick is a stereotypical shady, immoral doctor who perform medical procedures for money with little or no regard for medical ethics, or their patients' well-being. He was once is seen digging up corpses in the graveyard for body parts, presumably to use in operations on patients.^[2] He is seen taking a citizenship test, implying he is not a citizen of the United States.^[3] Some of his exclamations hint that he may be Argentinian, though there is no direct evidence of this. He watches a video on how to perform open-heart surgery and is disgusted by all the blood, implying that he may be hemophobic.

His degrees read "Mayo Clinic Correspondence School", "Club Med School", "Female Body Inspector" and "I went to medical school for four years and all I got was this lousy diploma".^[4] He frequently appears on infomercials, pitching all sorts of bizarre medical offers, and has often turned his operations into TV spectacles. He is also shown as an inventor/huckster (in the style of Ron Popeil) on the television show I Can't Believe They Invented It! His "Walk-In Clinic" is based at 44 Bow Street. Its phone number is 555-NICK. He can also be called at 1-600-DOCTORB ("The B is for 'Bargain'")

He has operated on the Simpson family a couple of times (when they cannot afford Doctor Hibbert) notably when Homer needed a heart bypass. Lisa Simpson attended the live audience for the operation and saved the day by guiding the obviously clueless Dr. Riviera through the operation. He also worked with Doctor Hibbert as anesthesiologist during Bart's appendectomy but was of little help as he first failed to anesthetize Bart and subsequently passed out from the leaking gas.

During Trappuccino in The Simpsons Movie, Nick was impaled by a large shard of glass and says, in his normal voice, "Bye everybody!" and then passes out, making him one of the few casualties of the Trappuccino incident, however, he has been seen alive even after the incident ^[5] playing golf with Dr. Hibbert. This could mean he actually survived the impaling somehow.

In "Judge Me Tender", he was getting judged by Moe on an operation game show.

Non-canon

The contents of this article or section are considered to be non-canon and therefore may not have actually happened or existed.

Video games

In The Simpsons Road Rage, he says "Send me to the hospital, I pretend I work there".

A mission in The Simpsons: Hit & Run involves Bart having to find Dr. Nick's monkeys after Dr. Nick tortures them horribly and they run away. He also says a number of weird things if the player runs him over, such as "Hey! You drive as well as I practice medicine!" and "Don't come crying to me if you need a sex change!" He also appears in the bonus mission for level three, where Lisa comes to get Principal Skinner's 'personal items', Dr. Nick says, "Hello, little girl. Here is the principal's anti-fungal cream"!

Behind the Laughter

The character design of Dr. Nick is based somewhat on Gábor Csupó, of Klasky Csupo studios, who was originally from Hungary – the animators mistakenly believed Hank Azaria was impersonating Gabor, when in fact the voice was actually a bad imitation of Ricky Ricardo from I Love Lucy.^[6]

He also has a sign in the new HD opening theme that says "If you die, you don't pay".

Catchphrase

Dr. Nick is notable for his exclamation upon entering a room of “Hi, everybody!”, which is immediately followed by a response of “Hi, Dr. Nick!” from the other characters present with varying degrees of enthusiasm. There was an Austrian version of Dr. Riviera in the episode "Margical History Tour", where he portrays the doctor of the ailing Mozart, played by Bart, and his exclamation is "Guten Tag, everybody!" Another variation is an episode where Mel Gibson says, "Hi, everybody!" and Dr. Nick responds with "Hi, Mr. Gibson". Another episode featured a Jewish version of Dr. Nick during Homer's flashback to the first Christmas. Dr. Nick says: "Shalom, everybody!" In Lisa the Simpson Dr. Nick greets a refrigerated Jasper Beardley with "Hi frozen body!" when entering the Kwik-E-Mart.

Cultural influence

In a tongue-in-cheek analysis the Canadian Medical Association Journal compared the services of Dr. Hibbert and Dr. Nick.^[7] It concludes that Dr. Nick is a better role model for physicians; Dr. Hibbert is a paternalistic and wasteful physician, unlike Dr. Nick, who strives to cut costs and does his best to avoid the coroner, proving Marge's claim wrong that he isn't a doctor at all.

Appearances

References

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