Wow. 100 episodes.
In case you missed it, the 100th birthday party on The Good Doctor Season 6 Episode 6 was a tribute to this milestone. That’s why they focused on the cake as the ending credits rolled.
The stories were typical The Good Doctor fare, especially Shaun’s attitude toward Powell.
Shaun had every right to be angry that Powell convinced Lim not to have the surgery.
Powell thinks she’s being a good disability advocate by encouraging Lim to accept her paralysis and live a full life despite it. She’s not entirely wrong, but she isn’t considering the entire picture.
The decision Lim had to make about the surgery was a huge one, and as Powell pointed out, there were a ton of factors to consider — not just whether she can live a high-quality life if she never walks again.
Lim should be thinking about all the potential benefits and risks.
Both Powell and Shaun are too narrowly focused: Shaun thinks Lim should only consider the possibility she could reverse the paralysis, while Powell thinks the only consideration is whether she’s rushing into surgery because she’s upset about being paralyzed.
Shaun was right that there are other health issues related to Lim’s paralysis to consider, such as the way Lim reacts to extreme weather conditions.
Thankfully, Shaun and Powell didn’t spend the entire hour relitigating Lim’s decision. Shaun’s refusal to listen to any of Powell’s suggestions about anything was obnoxious enough!
Shaun has some nerve complaining about Powell contradicting him when he overrode Glassman’s orders and did Lim’s surgery his way!
Shaun: Stop contradicting me! I have more surgical experience than you do.
Powell: Yes, and it’s your job to teach me.
Shaun: Then why do you keep acting like you know more than I do?
His anger was probably more about Powell contradicting him about Lim than about this patient. He rejected every one of her suggestions out of hand, often interrupting to tell her she was wrong before the words were out of her mouth.
I’m glad she finally stood up to him. That behavior was uncalled for.
It was also incredibly unprofessional, especially when Shaun contradicted Powell in front of the patient.
I wouldn’t want medical care from a team that argued in front of me about the best approach. Fortunately, the patient was a business owner who respected Powell for challenging Shaun, but that doesn’t make any of this okay.
Shaun didn’t seem able to grasp the patient’s point about having someone challenge him. The patient wanted to ensure that Shaun was making the best decisions for his medical care and knew that arguing with Powell would help ensure that he’d seen all the angles.
For that to happen, Shaun would have had to listen to Powell instead of being annoyed by every word she uttered, but the principle was still sound, and Shaun wasn’t getting it.
Once Powell stood up to Shaun and he realized that they did have being outsiders with different ideas in common, things went more smoothly, and they even discovered a special interest in common: surgical history.
I’m fine with you not liking me, but that doesn’t mean you get to disregard my ideas. And I thought you would understand what it’s like to be treated like the ‘other.’ You want to find common ground? That’s our common ground.
Powell
Hopefully, that’ll be the end of Shaun’s animosity toward Powell. It wasn’t a good look.
Park’s reluctance to operate on Edna was easily the most compelling of all the other stories.
At 90, Edna was still full of life. She’d attributed her shortness of breath to old age and didn’t allow it to interfere with her happiness. She enjoyed simple pleasures and had an active, alert mind.
No wonder she wasn’t ready to let cancer take its course and go into hospice.
Her heart had stopped and then restarted on its own. That felt like a cruel trick; she recovered from momentary heart failure only to learn she had a potentially terminal disease.
But even with the heart condition, she was a better candidate for surgery than most 90-year-olds. There was no reason to think she was not competent to understand the risks and decide she wanted the surgery anyway.
Park: We cracked some ribs, which allowed us to do a CT scan… which showed a tumor running from your belly to your lungs.
Edna: Can you remove it?
Park: We can, but at your age I’m not sure your body can take such a big surgery. I recommend you leave it. You’ll have a pretty good six months, maybe eight.
Edna: You saved my life once today. You can do it again.
Park: Edna, I’m just not comfortable doing the surgery.
Edna: I want some more butterscotch pudding. And a second opinion.
Park’s difficulty with this came more from his feelings about his grandfather’s surgery than anything else. It seemed like that was a very different situation, though, and he wasn’t being objective.
Thankfully, Edna turned out to be okay. Park would never have gotten over it if she hadn’t survived the surgery.
Asher and Morgan’s story was a low point of what was otherwise a fine episode.
There was an opportunity for a story about how elderly patients are often treated, especially those with dementia. Nursing homes are often filled with patients who rarely get visitors, and family members sometimes can’t bear to see their loved ones this way and avoid coming to the home.
Instead of a moving story about this, we got a silly story about Asher and Morgan picking up the wrong old man on the street.
Asher and Jerome both said that this was a kidnapping, which was ridiculous. They thought Sam was their missing dementia patient, and he could not tell them who he was; the hospital did its best to identify him and locate his family.
There was never any chance Asher and Morgan were going to jail over this. The “twist” of Kyle thanking them for rescuing his father instead of pressing charges was predictable.
Jordan’s solution for Mae’s dying wish to see Paris was a far more sensitive and compassionate story. I’d have preferred more of that and less of this silliness.
What about you, The Good Doctor fanatics? Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and share your thoughts. And don’t forget you can watch The Good Doctor online.
The Good Doctor airs on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST / PST.
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.