The Good Doctor (5×01) New Beginnings Review

For our review of the last episode of The Good Doctor, click here.

Synopsis: Shaun and Lea’s upcoming engagement party has everyone in a festive mood after their return from Guatemala. Meanwhile, a young single mother learns her son may have contracted his cancer from a surprising source, and Mateo finds out if his previous issues in America will be resolved. (IMDb)

The title of New Beginnings for the fifth season premiere of The Good Doctor is an apt one as it really was new beginnings for the doctors of San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. With Murphy and Lea’s wedding on the horizon, tensions were high as this premiere saw the doctors in different places since we last saw them. While the season looks to find its footing once again, one twist threatens to alter the dynamics we have become accustomed to through the series’ first four seasons and it will be certainly interesting to see where it all goes from there.

Shaun and Lea’s wedding was certainly on the mind of the latter as the episode began with what appeared to be their outdoor wedding for which they had planned for extensively until the weather got out of their control but thankfully it was all a dream. In her mind, Lea was left to do all the planning and coordinating herself and she wanted to make sure it was perfect, obsessing about every detail and stressing herself out. Taking the spontaneous approach did not go well for her last wedding so she was not going to make the same mistake twice. Suffice it to say that she would need to mellow out while her plight did not go unnoticed with Murphy noticing the strain it had put on her therefore he decided that they should go into it together and help Lea out.

In terms of some the love lives of the doctors, Lim who was already doing some stressing out of her own while getting ready for her latest presentation to the board, was surprised by the arrival of Osma to San Jose and it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to us that Lim offered him a job at the hospital. Andrews, who had since broken up with his wife and did not want to talk about it, was sleeping around and those ways caught with him hilariously during Shaun and Lea’s engagement party. The biggest takeaway from the party, however, was Glassman’s drunken toast fueled by his recent breakup with Debbie.

There were patients of course including a single mother who somehow transmitted cancer to her son and a woman named Salen Morrison (Rachel Bay Jones) who would become an irritating presence over the course of the episode. The former brought some drama as their situation became a complicated one as the mother, who had the more dire prognosis of the two, was refusing treatment for herself as the recovery time would take her away from her children who would have no one to tend to them. Treating her son proved to be more complicated until Park’s mending of the relationship between the mother and her brother was the answer. There was an uncle in the picture but trust issues made that relationship complicated. Off her meds and wandering around the hospital, Morrison thwarted the doctors’ attempts to treat her at nearly every turn. Meanwhile, the competitive relationship between Wolke and Allen may have caught up with them.

Andrews eventually caught on to Morrison’s antics. It was all an act to test the doctors as she knew more about her condition than she was letting on. The twist was that she was intending on buying the hospital which will inevitably mean a lot of her in the episodes to come.

Not having the wedding right away was a good call if only to let the drama linger if not for a little while longer though it will probably come by the midseason finale. Lim and Osma is going to be a tough relationship to manage if they indeed work together. And a few odds and end are sure to linger. What will Morrison do with the hospital and will she be lucid while doing it?

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Keith Noakes

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.