The episode of The Good Doctor kicks off on a shocking note when a motorcyclist checking out a girl pulls out right in front of a car. Next thing you know, a liver is available for a patient at the St. Bonaventure San Jose Hospital. Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highemore) and his fellow residents are alerted about the liver. Dr. Melendez ((Nicholas Gonzalez) sends Shaun and Dr. Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas) via helicopter to the neighboring hospital with the liver, while Dr. Jared Kalu (Chukuma “Chuku” Modu) preps the patient for surgery. While Claire is furious that she wasn’t chosen for the surgery, she and Shaun make their way on the helicopter, with a strict countdown — a liver can only be good out of the body for 7 hours.
Upon their arrival to the hospital, the surgeon informs Claire and Shaun that the liver has been out of the body for three hours already, shortening their time to get it into their patient immensely. As luck would have it, and as Shaun already knew, their helicopter had been grounded due to bad weather and Shaun, Claire and the liver are stuck. While Shaun patiently sits, Claire figures out how to get them back to St. Bonaventure. With a police escort, Claire and Shaun prepare to head back, but the flashing lights take Shaun back to his childhood, when he was returned to his abusive parents by a police escort and has a major panic attack.
Back at the hospital, both Dr. Melendez and Dr. Jared Unger struggle with patients who may be lying before two life-saving surgeries. While the liver recipient swears he hasn’t had alcohol, Dr. Kalu finds it in his blood results. Similarly, a patient who just had a tumor removed from his cheek, promised Dr. Unger that he hasn’t smoked since the surgery — it’s evident he is lying through his teeth. At the same time, Dr. Melendez has been recommended to get in on Unger’s reconstructive surgery on the man’s face because he is a donor of the hospital. Unger has his reservations about letting the younger, hotshot doctor in his surgery and shockingly seeks out Dr. Aaron Glassman’s advice.
Meanwhile, Dr. Kalu gets Chuck to admit he had alcohol in the last six months, but it’s absolutely devastating. “Three days ago. My daughters graduation. No one in my family had ever gone to college. Just that day, I wanted to be normal, so I had a glass of champagne,” Chuck admitted through tears. Kalu raced to Dr. Melendez who, through extraordinary math skills (med school, ya’ll), figured out that Chuck was telling the truth about only having one drink and prepared to fight to keep the liver for Chuck. However, before they could get into surgery, Chuck’s condition began to deteriorate as he was telling Dr. Kalu he had a son from his first marriage who he hasn’t seen in three years. Melendez and Kalu realized that if Chuck doesn’t receive the liver, he’ll only have three months to live.
At the same time, Shaun has a realization. He was staring at the scan of the liver throughout the episode for no reason, and if you were paying any attention, it’s clear he’s uneasy about the organ. Finally, he comes to the conclusion that the organ is dying because of a blood clot that occurred after death. Claire and Shaun have to immediately stop the car and perform surgery on the liver to remove the clot and bring it back to life. On the hood of the cop car, they did just that with Shaun leading the way!
However, the board voted against giving Chuck the liver due to his drinking, and as Claire and Shaun excitedly arrived to the hospital, they learned that a neighboring hospital was coming to collect the liver to use. “It was a good day. We saved a life. Just not Chuck’s,” Shaun said to Claire.
In the end, we got a deeper look into Dr. Glassman’s relationship with Shaun. A flashback to young Shaun and Dr. Glassman sitting in a diner eating pancakes after Shaun refused to return to his parents. Shaun rocked back and forth in the booth staring at his pancakes while Glassman eats. Finally, Glassman pushed the pancakes aside and put a huge medical textbook in front of Shaun, opened to a random page and told shaun he’d stay with him. Flash-foward to present day, Glassman douses Shaun’s chocolate chip pancakes with syrup and puts droplet on his own before digging in at their standing lunch date. I love learning more and more about how far these two go back. They definitely have such a special relationship!
HollywoodLifers, what did you think about tonight’s episode? Did you get emotional like I did?! Let me know!