If you would like to read my review of the last episode, click here.
Synopsis: Dr. Neil Melendez and the team have to wade through legal waters when a husband and wife have to make a life-changing decision about their unborn child. Meanwhile, Dr. Shaun Murphy struggles to adjust to his new environment at home and makes a huge step forward with his colleagues. (IMDB)
Writer: Thomas L. Moran
Director: Steven DePaul
Rating: TV-14
Running Time: 41mins
This episode was a departure for the series so far as it featured a second case of the week but with Murphy there always seems to be something more going on.
The episode started with Murphy having an existential crisis. He was rummaging through his appartment, looking for his lucky screwdriver in the middle of the night. Glassman showed up to help. This screwdriver was important to him because it had sentimental value. Glassman urged him to calm down as he was under a lot of stress and that he should get some sleep. He then found Murphy’s screwdriver and told him that he should talk to the building superintendent if he needed anything fixed in his apartment instead of trying to do it himself.
Murphy was late for work the next day again and looked to not have gotten much sleep. Melendez called him out but Browne tried to defend him. Their patient was a pregnant woman whose fetus had a tumor that was half its size and monopolizing the woman’s blood supply. Melendez recommended that she and her husband terminate the pregnancy because the surgery could’ve been potentially dangerous for her but she wanted to save the baby. Her husband did not agree.
During the consult, Murphy spoke out of turn and Melendez confronted him outside in front of the others about contradicting him in front of the patient. Murphy’s idea was a good and one and Browne offered another but were rewarded with grunt work which consisted of lancing another woman’s boil for Andrews. It wasn’t just any boil as it happened to be on the woman’s genital region. She was 18 and did not want to involve her parents because she was a porn star.
Melendez spoke with Andrews about the surgery and the precautions he was taking but Andrews was still concerned. Andrews confronted Melendez about his motive in performing the surgery as any failure could jeopardize the department and the hospital. The husband later had second thoughts and chose to not do the surgery to protect the fetus. This raised a few moral and ethical questions about the husband and the wife’s rights when it came to the wife’s health and that of the fetus’.
Murphy and Browne’s patient’s profession came up in conversation with Kalu which revealed a surprising fact about Murphy. Her boil was more than a boil and was an abscess pressing against one of her nerves and that they would be assisting Andrews in removing it the following morning. Since the pregnant patient’s surgery was put on hold, Melendez sent everyone home. Melendez spoke to the board and after some careful deliberation, they approved the surgery.
While taking the bus home, Murphy starred on some provocative ads and then there was a flashback of when his brother showed him a dirty magazine. In the confusion, he missed his stop, forcing him to get off further away. While wandering, he ran into his neighbor Leah and she drove them home. They appeared to have bonded during the car ride. Back at the appartment building, Murphy woke up a cranky superintendent in the middle of the night with his list of repairs. Glassman regretted his earlier advice and recommended that Murphy get a support worker for which he vehemently opposed.
While Murphy and Browne assisted Andrews during his surgery, he was a little more complimentary than Melendez and asked Murphy a few questions out of curiosity. When asked if he had a girlfriend, Murphy revealed that he almost kissed a girl once. They removed the abscess but found that it had engulfed the entire nerve which meant that there was still more work to be done. After the surgery, they visited the patient to tell her what happened and in order to remove the tumor around the nerve, they would have to sever it which would make her unable to have feeling in her genitals.
While Melendez performed the surgery on the pregnant patient, she had a heart attack which prompted them to stop. This meant that their only viable option was to terminate the pregnancy but the woman wanted to continue and now so did her husband. The board argued once again, however, Kalu suggested that they stop her heart so she wouldn’t have a heart attack if they were to perform the surgery again.
When Murphy returned home, he noticed that the superintendent fixed more than what Murphy had wrote on his list which led him to wake him up in the middle of the night once again. The sink had been fixed without his consent since he preferred that it drip so Murphy vowed to fix it again. This was Murphy’s final warning.
Back at the hospital, Murphy discovered that they could reconnected the severed nerve with another in her thigh which meant that she would lose feeling there instead and it worked. Andrews offered him and Browne congratulations and assistance if needed. The patient now wanted her parents. Meanwhile, the other surgery was a success (there was something about seeing them work on the fetus outside the womb). Glassman was also looking for a support worker for Murphy.
To celebrate, Browne and Kulu wanted to go drinking and told Murphy that he should come along. He eventually did and seemed to have an okay time. When he looked at another woman in the bar, there was a flashback to the time that he almost kissed a girl which turned out to just be a prank.
Overall, this was another great episode that managed to work in two cases as well as a compelling crisis with Murphy. Because it crammed so much, it kind of rushed through the moral and ethical issues involving the pregnant patient. It was nice to see a different side of surgeries with Andrews and it was fun to see Murphy grow closer to his colleagues. There’s still plenty of work to do in that regard so it will be interesting to see how it goes.
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.
