Publish date: 2023-12-09

The new, highly-anticipated episode of The Good Doctor begins with Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) coming in to see if Lea (Paige Spara) ate the donut he gave her. She tells hm she’ll be out of his apartment in 48 hours and he tells her she should move into her old apartment, since Kenny got arrested. “I don’t think being neighbors is such a great idea,” she tells Shaun. “We had a fight,” Lea says. “I bought you a donut,” Shaun replies, matter-of-factly. Through her teeth, Lea seethes, “A really big fight about some really been issues that aren’t going to go away because you got me a donut,” and then storms out.

In the hospital, Dr. Glassman (Richard Schiff) is smiling and laughing talking with his dead daughter, Maddy, who is clearly here in the form of a hallucination. “I miss you daddy,” she says as a nurse comes in to ask who he is talking to. It’s then, he realizes he’s been having hallucinations from sleep deprivation, and the nurse offers him Ambien to go to sleep. “If you sleep, I go away,” his daughter interrupts, and he refuses the meds.

Dr. Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez), Dr. Park (Will Yun Lee), and Shaun’s patient is a young boy named Mac with a genetic disorder, who hurt himself while hopping over a fence. With a wooden piece of the fence lodged in his shoulder, Mac needs to go into surgery, but is clearly irritable and anxious due to his disorder, which Shaun starts to relate to. He flashes back to playing with his toy scalpel before going into a new foster home, as Mac fiddles with his toy zebra.

Dr. Claire Brown (Antonia Thomas), Dr. Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Dr. Lim (Christina Chang) have a patient named Kitty, was helicoptered in suffering from multiple broken bones, internal bleeding and more after free soloing a summit.

Shaun asks his fellow male doctors for advice on how to fix things with Lea. Park tells him to dazzle her, Melendez tells him to leave her alone if she doesn’t come through, and the female nurse steps in to tell Shaun to just “be nice to her.”

Back in Glassman’s room, he’s enjoying his time with Maddy and it’s incredibly emotional. “You’re looking awfully sleepy, we need to get to the good stuff. You know, the real reason I’m here,” his daughter says. Yikes.

As the doctors inform Mac’s mother that the surgery was a success and they removed the splinters, his mom seemed relieved yet somewhat disappointed. “This is all good news,” Melendez explains. “I know, I just kind of wanted one night with out him…” the mother replies.

In Kitty’s emergency room, her parents arrive and Reznick and Browne explain that she has suffered cervical fractures, she broke her neck and needs a spinal fusion. Kitty just wants to know if she could climb again, and the doctors say no. However, Reznick jumps in to offer another surgery, that’s more risky, but would allow her to climb free solo again. Kitty is enthusiastic while her mother says no, telling the docs if they performed that surgery, they’d be killing her.

Melendez and the doctors try talking to Mac’s mom, Nicole, about help and support she can get to raise her son. She reminisces on how normal he was as a baby, but then he starting to regress and they knew something was wrong with him. Then, his father left when he was 9 years old because he “couldn’t take it.” Dr. Park suggests putting Mac in a group home, but Nicole says that she’s all he has and couldn’t just send him away. Melendez says it would be “devastating.” Shaun flashes back to his time with “Bill,” whose real name is Sibel, a foster mom he had when he was young. “Yes, it would be,” he jumps in. “But then, he’d get used to it.”

In Kitty’s room, her father is going through her long list of injuries with the docs, from concussions to shattered femurs to comas. Kitty tries to tell her parents that summiting is “What she lives for,” and since she’s 18, she can make her own decision. Despite her parents, and Claire’s, advice, she goes with Reznick’s surgical suggestion.

Shaun showed up in Glassman’s room as he’s talking to his daughter. He tries to brush it off, so Shaun starts telling him about his issues with Lea, but Maddy keeps interrupting saying, “I thought this was daddy, daughter time.” As Glassman tries to get Shaun to leave by telling him he wasn’t in the mood to give advice, Shaun says he’ll go tell the nurse Glassman is experiencing psychosis, and he lashes out and yells his daughter’s name. Shaun turns around with his eyes wide, and Glassman reveals through tears that he’s having visions of his daughter. They keep things between the two of them, for now. “We need to talk about why you’re talking to a ghost,” Maddy says to her dad. “Go ahead and take your pill. This has got to happen, you know it.” Does Glassman have to tell his daughter how she died?

Claire has a hard time with Kitty’s decision to get the surgery, and Dr. Lim tells her it isn’t her job to worry about that stuff. Lim says that if Kitty is “mentally competent” to make her own decisions, she can. That gives Claire the idea to tell Kitty’s parents that because of her prior injuries, she may actually not be mentally competent. It’s revealed by Kitty’s parents that she once tried to OD on sleeping pills, and they believe she is really climbing to try to kill herself.

In Glassman’s room, Maddy is going off on him about not being present during life, specifically her birthdays. He replies that when he was home, she ignored him and has no interest in anything he said. As they start to argue, the doctor walks in with Shaun. Glassman and Maddy feel betrayed, but Shaun is proud he kept the “secret” for thirty minutes. The nurse makes him take his pill, but after they leave he spits it back out, ready to continue his convo with Maddy.

Nicole returns to the hospital with a huge gash in her hand and torn ligaments, which the doctors need to operate on. She claims that it happened on broken glass, but as she’s wheeled away, we see Mac burst into a fit of rage and punch Shaun, while he’s taken down by security and sedated. After he’s calm, and Shaun has a bruise under his eye, Mac apologizes for hitting him. He asks if Mac has something to calm him when he gets mad, and he says he thinks of his zebra. Shaun flashes back to Bill’s, when he told her that he wasn’t going to school that day. She tells him, “Tough titmouse, get dressed.” Shaun replies to Mac that when he needs something to calm him, he thinks of “Tough Titmouse.”

The therapist in Kitty’s case chooses to air on the side of caution, and grants his parents the right to make a decision for her. Kitty is heartbroken as the doctors watch. In Glassman’s room, Maddy asks why he’s there for Shaun and wasn’t for her. They continue to fight over their treatment of each other, and Maddy tells him that if he were there for her more, then she wouldn’t be dead. Clearly this hallucination shows that Glassman blames himself for his daughter’s death. “I hate you, and I died hating you,” Maddy says to Glassman as he cries. He takes the pill but another keeps appearing in the bottle. “The night, let’s talk about that.”

Lea comes home to see Shaun recreate their karaoke evening. She admits that Hershey was the biggest chance of her life, and it just went away, and when she came back she thought she’d have Shaun’s support. We realize that Shaun never even asked Lea what happened in Hershey and why she came back.

When Nicole comes out of surgery, Park tells her that they know Mac hurt her. He tells her that she needs to get help, but Melendez says it’s not his call. Nicole replies that Mac would hate her, which prompts Shaun to have another flashback to Bill’s. She watches him eat pancakes and tells him he needs to leave. She is sick, and tells him that it’s not okay for him to stay, and he tells her “Tough Titmouse.” “He won’t hate you. He’ll just be very scared,” Shaun says to Nicole.

We find out that Glassman locked his daughter out of the house after finding her high for the umpteenth time, and that was the night she died. “I died that night,” The doctors run in as he starts screaming, “I don’t get it!” This is so heartbreaking. Glassman reveals his wife wanted to send her to rehab, but he always thought he could fix her. He apologizes before he goes under, and Maddy comes and holds his hand and says, “I know you loved me daddy, I loved you, too.” And, he goes to sleep with Shaun watching over him.

Melendez speaks to Nicole about sending Mac to a group home, revealing that he didn’t understand when his parents did that to his sister. He tells her that by doing it, she will be showing how much she loves him. Kitty also wakes up after her surgery, after she told Dr. Brown to send her parents away. Brown tells Kitty they did it because they love her, and she says she knows.

The doctors watch as Nicole fights with Mac as she explains that she has to send him away, and he starts to lash out at her, before they hug. Shaun flashes back to Bill’s, as he takes his stuff out. “I’m scared,” he admits. “Tough titmouse,” she says, and bursts in to tears as he leaves.

Shaun is sitting ready for Dr. Glassman as he wakes up after his 13 hours sleep. “Was seeing Maddy therapeutic?” Shaun asks. “She said she loved,” he says. “Or maybe it was just me telling myself that.” Shaun tells him he always tells the truth.

Melendez goes to visit his sister, Gabby, in a group home. She asks if Mom and Dad are coming for her today. He explains that they love her so much, but she has way more fun here.

Shaun returns to Lea packing and she says she’s going to stay in an Air BnB. He asks her what happens in Hershey, explaining that he’s done everything and doesn’t want to walk away. “I don’t care what happened in Hershey, but I care that you care,” Shaun tells Lea. She asks him if he wants to try to sing his karaoke song again and they sing. However, Shaun changes the lyrics to say he rented the two-bedroom apartment Lea liked for them to share, and then he continues to sing as she stands there shocked.

OMG. Okay, that was A LOT. Tune in next week for The Good Doctor at 10 PM on Mondays!

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