Having a baby together won’t save Shaun and Lea’s relationship.
I’ve never been a fan of this couple, and The Good Doctor Season 4 Episode 13 reminded me of why.
They are totally mismatched, and this back-and-forth about baby vs. fetus was painful to watch.
Shaun’s feelings of disconnection from the baby were bizarre, considering that on The Good Doctor Season 4 Episode 12, he couldn’t wait to be a father while Lea wasn’t sure this was the right time for them to have a child.
I guess that the reality of Lea’s morning sickness and his medical knowledge about fetuses and whatever else was going on was different than the abstract idea of being a father, but this was never adequately explained.
It came off as the writers deciding this would be a good conflict and pushing forward with a story that completely contradicted what they had written previously. When writers do that, it makes it look like they’ve forgotten what came before, and the contradiction is distracting.
In this case, it was so easily fixable, too.
When Lea told Shaun that she couldn’t deal with his “selfishness” and whatever else, she could have easily thrown in something about how she had been ready to have an abortion, but Shaun talked her out of it.
That could have led to a conversation about what was actually going on.
Instead, even Lea, who had every right to be angry that Shaun insisted he wanted this baby and now was acting like it meant nothing to him, didn’t mention any of that. It was as if it never happened.
Lea: I don’t need you to do any of this, Shaun.
Shaun: What do you need me to do?
Lea: Just be the dad. Not the doctor.
That made no sense and heightened my sense that someone just thought this story would be a good idea and didn’t think about what came before.
Shaun’s reasons for feeling disconnected were all over the place, too.
He didn’t like the idea of calling the fetus a baby when it wasn’t developed enough to be a baby yet.
He didn’t like not having sex with Lea because of her morning sickness.
And, according to Glassman, Shaun feared change and was hiding from Lea so that he wouldn’t have to face the possibility of being a poor father.
It wasn’t clear what was really happening, and it wasn’t explored adequately. Viewers were just supposed to go along for the ride no matter what the “reason of the moment” was for Shaun’s behavior.
It would have been much better to stick with one motivation.
It seemed that the most pressing problem for Shaun was that Lea was distancing herself because of her morning sickness and her own fears.
Shaun didn’t know how to connect with pregnant Lea because she was different than non-pregnant Lea. If The Good Doctor had focused on that instead of adding in all these extra things, this could have been a moving story instead of a mess.
Lea and Shaun weren’t on the same page about what was going on, either.
Shaun didn’t ever say he wouldn’t or couldn’t love their baby. Lea was convinced that him saying the baby was a fetus right now meant that’s how he would feel forever.
Shaun wasn’t excited about this part of Lea’s pregnancy, and it sucked that she depended on him to be supportive during it.
But they never really talked about any of the problems they were having with each other or the pregnancy. Lea just became determined to make Shaun feel something for the baby right now because in her mind, if he didn’t, that meant he wouldn’t for all nine months.
These two needed a competent counselor to help them communicate. Lea was jumping to conclusions about what Shaun was saying, and Shaun was blocked by fear that Lea was distancing herself from him.
Jordan: I urge you to reconsider the surgery.
Miles: I’m not afraid of dying. Where’s my daughter? Why isn’t she here telling me any of this.
Meanwhile, Claire had drama of her own when her father showed back up only to collapse when she rejected him.
I thought it was awfully convenient that her father became so sick he needed to be hospitalized the second he showed up on her doorstep.
Of course, that was purposeful since he had terminal cancer and wanted to make things right with her before he died.
I could understand Claire’s anger at him, but her claim that her mother was there was bizarre.
By her own admission, her mother was always drunk and out of it — that wasn’t being there in any meaningful sense. Claire really grew up with no parents because her mom wasn’t able to take care of her and her dad disappeared.
THAT’S what she should have said. It would have been a more powerful story if she had.
I’m glad that Claire reconnected with her father before it was too late, but I wish she’d struggled with it in therapy instead of changing her mind after talking to Shaun.
Claire’s rocky relationship with her mother landed her in therapy, yet that was all forgotten when her father showed up because she was so mad at him. Her therapist would have been the best one to help her navigate that.
A good deal of time was also taken up wasted with Morgan and Park’s nonsense.
Their banter and Morgan’s insistence they shouldn’t be nice to each other was not amusing. It was irritating and made me tempted to hit the fast-forward button.
Who, exactly, thought this was something viewers wanted?
Finally, the medical storyline was compelling, but I wanted to slap Asher for telling Leo to go against Mia’s wishes.
She made it clear that she wanted her leg saved at all costs, and it was not Asher’s place to tell Leo that as her proxy, he should go against her wishes if he really loved her.
Patients make their wishes known for a reason.
What SHOULD have happened is that when she elected to have surgery that could kill her, the doctors should have discussed with her what her wishes were if a life-threatening complication arose on the operating table that could be alleviated by amputating her leg instead.
Since they didn’t do that, they had to ask her proxy.
And Leo was all set to honor Mia’s wishes until Asher made that speech about how she only wanted the surgery because she was in love with Leo (which she never said) and guilted him into doing what Asher thought was right.
That’s wrong. I don’t like when doctors impose their own desires on patients regardless of their wishes, and that’s exactly what happened here.
And after all that, Mia chose to kick Leo out after losing her leg because she decided he didn’t love her enough. So choosing to amputate because he truly loved her accomplished nothing.
What do you think, The Good Doctor fanatics?
Am I too hard on Asher, or did he do the wrong thing? And did Shaun’s 180 about his feelings for the baby make more sense to anyone than they did to me?
Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know your thoughts.
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The Good Doctor continues to air on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST/PST. The next new episode airs on April 19, 2021.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.