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Synopsis: Dr. Shaun Murphy’s attention to detail complicates his first day; Dr. Claire Browne learns a valuable lesson about honesty when confronted with a difficult diagnosis for her patient. (TV Guide)
Writer: David Shore
Director: Mike Listo
Rating: TV-14
Running Time: 41mins
Last week, we got to meet Dr. Shaun Murphy and now we get to see him on his first full day at the hospital. This day proved to be a real test for his social skills which were different from normal people because of his condition but surprisingly, he wasn’t the only to learn a lesson here.
Even in a new location, Murphy still lives the same regimented life. His first day on the job was not without incident. He started off late to work which gave Melendez something easy to hold over him. He already thought less of Murphy due to his condition anyway. During his first few consultations, he spoke a little too bluntly with the patients, scaring them and rubbing the other doctors the wrong way.
Perhaps because of this, Murphy was relegated to scout work while the other doctors prepped for surgery on a woman named Stephanie (Nancy Stone) who suffered from a malignant tumour between her aorta and left kidney. Despite other hospital members’ objections, Melendez didn’t see anything wrong with how he was treating Murphy and believed that he was not being prejudicial.
The other lesson of the episode was for Dr. Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas). When speaking with Stephanie, she made a series of promises to her, saying that she would be okay after the surgery. This practice was frowned upon by the hospital’s legal department and added unneeded pressure on her and clouded her judgement. Her promises came under scrutiny when they later learned that they would have to remove her left kidney in other to get access to the tumour. Once Browne was forced to tell her what they did, Stephanie didn’t give her the chance since she didn’t care what they did since she could still go to her son’s wedding.
Murphy took the scout work very seriously, more than he probably had to, in diagnosing other patients. He wanted to be thorough so he decided to perform a series of unnecessary tests on them just to be sure. These tests caught the attention of Melendez’s boss, Dr. Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper), leading him to put an end to his tests and give him a babysitter in a disgruntled nurse. His most notable patient was a young girl named Martine (Britt Loder) with what appeared to be some stomach discomfort. Melendez dismissed it as a simple tummy ache but Murphy thought it was a different condition that could potentially be fatal.
After doing some more tests, Murphy found out that she did have that fatal condition and decided to go to the parents’ house to tell them. They did not take him seriously at first because of Murphy’s strange personality and the fact that they had discharged her already but Murphy did not take no for an answer. This was quite the improvement for him as he was much different in a series of flashbacks of his time with his older brother showed.
When they checked up on Martine, we saw that Murphy was right and they took her back to the hospital. Another reason why this had significance to him was how they juxtaposed this with a scene where Glassman drove him and his older brother to the hospital after his accident. Now back at the hospital, Murphy got Martine into surgery without Melendez’s approval and was about to perform the surgery until Melendez showed up and took over until Andrews demanded that he stay as Melendez’s assistant but we later learned that he had a different motive in doing so. By empowering Murphy and having him fail would also get rid of Glassman and make him hospital president.
Overall, it was a great episode that improved on the premiere as the episode focused more on Murphy and his forray into the world on his first day at work. Murphy, again thanks to Highmore’s great performance, was fun to watch as he tried to learn how to deal with people and pick up social cues like lying and sarcasm but he still cared as his drive to save people also showed here. Seeing him work his way up and prove himself will be compelling to watch.
Score: 9/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.