The Good Doctor S2 EP 16 – Recap

Roo Black

5 years ago

The Good Doctor Season 2 Episode 16

It’s Shaun vs. Dr. Han, and Dr. Han is still winning, this week on The Good Doctor.

Detectives vs. Beat Cops (An Analogy)

Dr. Han is still being mean. That is all.

Shaun has officially started his new job in pathology. He’s working with Carly (who I just love) and she’s showing him the ropes. Among other lessons, she explains to Shaun that pathologists are the real detectives, and surgeons are just beat cops. But Shaun doesn’t want to be a Detective (pathologist), he wants to be a Beat Cop (surgeon). That is his passion, and you can’t take that away from him.

Dr. Lim and Claire both go to Dr. Han to fight for Shaun, but he dismisses them.

Dr. Park pays Shaun a visit in pathology, he needs Shaun to run some test for him on his and Lim’s patient this week, a woman (played by Nicholas Gonzalez’s wife, Kelsey Crane) who they have diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. While he’s there, he asks Shaun if he’s happy, and tells him that if he’s not happy, he needs to stand up for himself, he needs to express this to Dr. Han. Later, Dr. Glassman tells him the same thing, after Lea calls him over because Shaun has been alphabetizing the canned foods for two hours straight.

After running the tests, Shaun suspects that Lim’s patient has been wrongly diagnosed and that, instead of a tumor, she has a worm from something she ate at a restaurant. He wants to go tell the team, but Carly explains to him that in pathology, they just flag the reports, and then they have to move on to the next one, that’s where their job ends. Shaun can’t accept this, and he goes off to investigate and to speak to Dr. Lim.

His suspicions turn out to be right, and the patient is of course thrilled, as well as everyone else. You would think this would be enough to convince Dr. Han to change his decision, but nope, it just makes him even more sure that he did the right thing moving Shaun to pathology.

I gotta be honest, this episode was really hard for me to watch. I didn’t even want to watch. I just think this whole thing is a mistake with the writers. It doesn’t even make sense to end someone’s career as a surgeon because they don’t have a good bedside manner. I’ve met several doctors in my lifetime who had zero bedside manner, and yet nobody took their career away from them for it. And it’s not just me, I’ve heard from a lot of fans who are not happy with this at all. But then again, I guess it’s a testament to the writers that so many of the fans are going to bat for a fictional character.

Faith vs. Science

Melendez, Reznick, and Claire take care of a Pastor who feels that God is punishing him because he failed to save a suicidal man. I wasn’t real thrilled with this storyline either—religion is not my thing, and it just felt too preachy (pun intended).

Pastor Clarence has a tumor against his spinal cord and they need to fuse the spine before they do the surgery. He doesn’t want them to do this, though, because he feels the pain is his punishment. They attempt surgery once, but have to stop because they can’t get to the tumor. Still, he wants them to try again, without the fusion. So they go back in and discover that the tumor has somehow shrunk. A miracle? Claire, who has lost her faith, thinks not. After some religious debates between Claire, Reznick, and Clarence, Claire convinces Clarence that basically he’s not important enough for God to waste time punishing him. Haha, way to go, Claire.

Glassman vs. Deborah

Glassman, who has finished his chemo, pays Deborah a visit. He wants to pick up where they left off. At first she says she’s seeing someone else, but later she comes by his house and admits that was a lie. The truth of it is that he hurt her when he pushed her away before, and she’s not willing to make herself vulnerable like that again. Deborah leaves and Glassman is baffled, as if he doesn’t have a clue what she meant. Come on, Glassy, you don’t get to just push someone away and then expect them to be there waiting for you when you change your mind.

The episode ends with a very sad Shaun holding his plastic scalpel that his brother gave him, looking down over the the surgical team in the O.R. Could there be any sadder image?

The Good Doctor returns for what looks like an off the hook episode March 4th, 10/9 C, on ABC. You DO NOT want to miss this!

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