Welcome back, Chicago Med!
After a long hiatus, Chicago Med Season 6 Episode 3 did not disappoint, although some people’s behavior was less than stellar.
Yes, I’m looking at you, Will. Just because this time it worked out doesn’t mean anything. He proved he still hasn’t learned his lesson about respecting patients’ wishes.
During the first part of the hour, I was with Maggie: Will seemed overly eager to get the patient enrolled in his clinical trial.
Will: Sir, it says you’ve been here before for heart failure.
Patient: I have?
Will: Yes. And it looks like it’s gotten a bit worse. Are you taking your medication?
Patient: Blue ones, white ones.
Will: Good. But they may not be working well enough. Here’s the thing. I’m actually involved in testing a brand new heart failure drug, and from what I’m seeing, you may be an excellent candidate.
Patient: More pills?
Will: Just one. And it would help your heart pump better. Now, it is is experimental and we don’t have a ton of data, but what I’m seeing does look extremely promising.
Patient: Will it make me better?
Will: I can’t make any promises, but from what I’m seeing, in this trial three out of every four patients get the medication and as long as you’re one of them, we should get results pretty quickly.
Will: It may not be working.
Although technically, he went over the risks, he pretty much glossed over inconvenient facts and followed up his declaration that he couldn’t make promises with more or less promising that the guy would benefit from the trial.
I didn’t think Rueben was mentally incompetent, but I wasn’t sure that he understood the risks. He seemed more concerned about how many meds he was on and was willing to do whatever the doctor said.
When Maria showed up, I wondered if she had the legal authority to stop the treatment. Being Rueben’s caretaker didn’t necessarily give her the right to make medical decisions on his behalf as long as he was conscious and cognizant.
But since this was never addressed, I’ll go with it. Will had no right not to call the cardiologist right away nor to try to continue the trial. And since Maggie later said cardiology was backed up, and it’d be a while, there was no reason not to make the call.
Will could have done it and then asked to look at Rueben’s stats while they were waiting. Then at least, he wouldn’t be attempting to undermine Maria’s authority to make medical decisions on her father’s behalf.
That said, I wasn’t convinced that Maria trying to move Rueben didn’t contribute to his condition. Nevertheless, she was right to be furious with Will after her dad went into cardiac arrest.
I was glad for her sake that the procedure Will and Maggie insisted on saved Rueben’s life, but at the same time, it was disappointing that she completely changed her attitude afterward and was sorry she distrusted Will.
This is far from the first time Will has ignored a patient’s wishes to do what he thought was right, and usually, there are consequences for it. This time he was vindicated, and even though we’ve had the opposite story several times already, I didn’t like it. It just made his misbehavior seem justified.
In any case, I don’t think Will should continue to participate in searching for participants. He was over-eager and threw ethics out the window to get his patient enrolled.
Meanwhile, Choi irritated me by taking the moral high ground during the first half of the episode despite the sheer number of times he has also disregarded patients’ wishes to do what he thought was best.
His telling April that it was unethical to take Lisa’s photo without her permission smacked of more than a little hypocrisy. Thankfully, a comment from Charles set him straight because I was prepared for yet another rant about how annoying Choi is.
Charles: She doesn’t get out much. She could be a victim of abduction.
Choi: If she wants to leave, you have to let her. You’re talking about getting PD down here to interview her. We don’t have the beds.
April: So let’s take a picture.
Choi: That’s not ethical.
April: So I’ll figure it out. If taking a photo could save that woman’s life, I’m gonna do what I need to do.
Choi in charge of the ED that April works in was never a great idea, and this whole incident proved it. April took his directives personally, even telling Charles that Ethan took away her sense of purpose by not allowing her to work endlessly in the COVID ward.
Choi was trying to staff his ED adequately without spending extra money on hiring additional nurses when the hospital was in bad financial shape due to the influx of COVID patients. Nothing more.
April’s refusal to see it that way was her problem. Thank goodness she and Ethan no longer live together, so we were spared them bringing this argument home!
I was glad that she found her new sense of purpose by the end of the hour, even though this kidnapping story’s resolution seemed contrived and too easy.
Mrs. Bassette’s response to the suggestion that her daughter may be in the hospital was so emotional, and I loved the fact that they were finally reunited.
Yet I couldn’t help thinking that after all these years of captivity, Lisa/Kelly would have emotional problems and not be so quick to remember who she was or easily accept her birth mom.
Also, I wanted to know more about why she was kidnapped, who had done it, and where her kidnapper was now. Presumably, the police were going to arrest the perp, but there was no mention of that or of whether Lisa/Kelly was safe now.
Elsewhere, there was a bit of movement on Marcel and Nat’s potential pairing. I found it disappointing that the spoiler about Marcel coming face-to-face with his past was just a random woman who had moved on from him so that he could stand around looking sad, though.
It wasn’t like this was the love of his life whose heart he had broken or someone having to do with his child’s death. It was just some woman who Marcel clearly had more feelings for than he admitted.
Nat: Tell me something. Why do you do it? The one-night stands? They all end up the same.
Marcel: How’s that?
Nat: With you alone. Or maybe that’s the point.
Nat had a point about how all the one-night stands were a way of avoiding intimacy, but her own patient was far more interesting than Marcel’s attempt to treat Megan without surgery.
(Side note: would a real doctor even be allowed to treat an acquaintance who knew him by name and teased him about how he was the one who got away?)
I didn’t catch on until a minute before Nat did that her patient was faking symptoms because she was lonely. But this was an effective, emotional story arc that hit me profoundly.
When I used to work on a crisis line meant for young people, sometimes lonely senior citizens would call because they had no one to talk to. This storyline, just like that experience, drove home the point that seniors often fall through the cracks and need more support than they get.
Your turn, Chicago Med fanatics! Did Chicago Med Season 6 Episode 3 live up to your expectations after the long hiatus? Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know!
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Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8 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.