Sad News Closes Emotional First Season of ‘The Good Doctor’

Alci Rengifo

“The Good Doctor” is ABC’s attempt at contributing to the expanding line of tear-jerker television, where characters have the best intentions and most humble of backgrounds, but they are constantly reminded that life itself can be unforgiving. Starring Freddie Highmore as the autistic Dr. Shaun Murphy, this drama gives us a unique character completely likeable in his goodness, but with enough flaws to make him relatable. The first season is Murphy’s journey as he follows his mentor to work as a surgeon at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital in San Jose, California. As this sort of show requires, Murphy soon finds himself within a close-knit group of fellow surgeons who experience the trials and tribulations of their work together, along with the drama of their personal lives. But “The Good Doctor” is never melodrama or comedy. It is straight-faced with feel good melancholy. This show wants to make you cry and in its season finale it pulls the ultimate crisis card.

The finale gets right down to business. Murphy’s close mentor, Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff), has been diagnosed with an incurable form of cancer. Murphy is of course thrown into despair and refuses to believe the diagnosis is accurate. He attempts to convince Glassman not to think in completely fatal terms. He tries to get the hospital’s in-house attorney, Jessica Preston (Beau Garrett) to make Glassman listen. Meanwhile the surgical team led by Dr. Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez), tackle a delicate case in which a college kid is brought in after participating in a pretty idiotic hazing ritual. Murphy is so distracted by Glassman’s diagnosis that he makes a mistake while operating on the patient that could prove fatal. This is incredibly dangerous for both Murphy and Glassman. Due to Murphy’s Savant syndrome, Glassman made specific promises to the hospital about Murphy’s performance.

The heart of “The Good Doctor” is Highmore, who plays Murphy with an endearing quality that never over-emphasizes the condition of his character. The show successfully presents an autistic character not as a sympathy tool or caricature, but as an individual within the wider, intense world of surgery. Of course drama requires a hero to have certain traits, and in the pilot we see Murphy save a boy hit by a falling airport sign by being able to visualize the interior of a patient’s body. It is the running theme in the show that Murphy stands out because he is indeed special in terms of his skills. In classic hospital show fashion, each episode presents a unique case for Murphy to treat as personal lives endure their own dramas. Sometimes the medical details are quite refined and graphic. We get overhead shots of pulsating organs, open torsos and other delights for med students. In one episode a patient discovers she must endure a treatment which will result in the loss of sensation in her genitals. Like other T.V. predecessors, when “The Good Doctor” gets into the nitty gritty of its world you leave inspired to change your diet and exercise routine. But the point of it all is that we get to see Murphy in action with his goodwill and soft demeanor. It’s not too gloomy or graphic and the show does always manage to throw in some humor, feel good drama and cheer into nearly every episode. The supporting cast often find themselves in quirky moments or do or die decisions when it comes to medical procedures. Will Yun Lee provides an interesting counter-balance as Dr. Alex Park, who sometimes calls out Murphy on a mistake when everyone else wants to play nice.

It is as tear-jerker that the show truly finds its heart and soul. The season finale is one big stretch of tension as Murphy grapples with the very real possibility that Glassman may be dying. The main plotline of the injured college student is intercut with scenes where Murphy and Glassman discuss life, memories and the frustration of trying to have hope amid such a threatening development. In one particularly powerful scene Glassman loses himself in a memory of dancing with his daughter when she was a child. The episode reaches a great dramatic height in one moment where Glassman can’t take Murphy’s insistence that all is not lost, he loses his temper and Schiff plays the moment with wounded authenticity.

But like all good tear-jerkers, “The Good Doctor” always finds a way to pull away from total despair. Viewers who believed in the second to last episode that all was lost will get a small ray of hope in the finale, even if Glassman is not completely out of the woods. The episode closes in a way where you’re not left completely broken as you wait for season two. This is the kind of show where there is heartbreak but always some light at the end of the tunnel.

“The Good Doctor” Season 1 finale aired March 26 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.