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The Good Doctor episode 6 recap: Dr. Shaun Murphy only wants 4 pancakes, not 5.

By Callum Gunn

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Photo Credit: The Good Doctor/ABC, Eike Schroter Image Acquired from Disney ABC Media

What can only be best described as one of the most intense episodes ever aired on TV, The Good Doctor went all out on Episode 6, “Not Fake.”

Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore), Dr. Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas) and Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu) are on the graveyard shift and it’s a quiet night for our surgical residents. For exactly one and half minute.

Patients are incoming as a bus crash has occurred bringing in two dozen injured patients. It’s all hands on deck as makeshift beds are made to deal with the large influx. Supplies are stocked and all the staff begin suiting up, well put on their gloves and overalls.

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In come the patients and each of our surgeons take on their own individual case. Jared has a patient with severe burns. Claire’s patient has a foreign object lodged in her neck which makes her hesitate at first and Shaun has a man whose leg has been crushed and almost cut off.

Shaun’s patient is in dire straights as he is bleeding heavily and everyone is struggling to stop it. His femoral artery has been cut and if the bleeding is not stopped soon he will die. Shaun improvises and performs a MacGyver type moment and creates a reboa. He inserts his new homemade device into the patient’s leg and is able to stop the bleeding. It’s a temporary fix for now.

Meanwhile, Jared is struggling with his own patient. She is severely burned and is struggling to breathe. An almost fatal mistake by Jared is only prevented when Dr. Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper) steps in and corrects him. Andrews then instructs Jared to take his patient to the burn unit and start treating his patient properly.

Claire is tending to her patient when Dr. Melendez (Nicolas Gonzalez) starts asking her what was going on when she hesitated. She explains that she was thinking of a game plan and was not hesitant. Melendez isn’t buying it and tells her that it is normal to panic on your first trauma but just get over it quick. Melendez then surprisingly tells her to start acting more like Shaun. Not exactly like him but a bit like him anyway.

The Initial Panic Is Over

As the night unfold things begin to calm down. Everyone still has their own patient but it is no longer as chaotic as it was in the beginning.

Jared, however, is struggling to cope with his patient. She is horrendously burned by the accident and is looking at being scarred for life and he does not know what to say to her.

He steps out to get some air and try to clear his thoughts.

Melendez is now with Shaun as he helps him deal with his patient’s leg. Scans are back and they are not good. They need to amputate the leg as the bone is completely crushed. They inform the parents and his fiancé who are visibly upset at the news.

As they began to prepare, Shaun tries to find a computer to look at his patient’s scans. While he is trying to do this his colleagues around him are talking about marriage. They then ask Shaun if he is looking for love which he bluntly states that he does not want any. He then goes off to find a computer elsewhere. He runs into Claire and voices his opinion that he has no choice and must cut off his leg. Claire however out thinks Shaun and comes up with the ingenious idea to replace the bone with 3D printed one made from titanium. They relay this to Melendez who is certainly impressed with the idea but is also cautious as something like this has never been done before. He and Shaun return to the parents and fiancé to give this alternative option. This sparks an argument between them as the parents don’t want to risk their son’s life and wish to amputate the leg but the fiancé is adamant that her future husband would want to try everything possible to save his leg. Melendez puts an end to the argument quickly as he points out that the parents are the one to make the decision. As the marriage has not taken place and no proxy has been given to the fiancé to make the choice the decision lies with his parents. They opt for amputation and Melendez and Shaun leave to prepare.

That’s not the end of it though. Just as Shaun and Melendez are scrubbing in and getting ready to begin Jessica Preston (Beau Garrett) shows up and informs they must stop immediately. She has filed an emergency injunction on behalf of the fiancé to potentially overturn the decision to amputate. A judge is heading down who will hear both sides of the argument and will make the final decision.

Claire’s patient is recovering well and is awake after her ordeal.  She asks where her wife is and Claire tells her she is not on the list which is a good thing as it means she must be in the waiting room. Unfortunately, it was not going to be anything as simple as that. As Claire searched for her patient’s wife she soon learned that she was not in the waiting area and that could only mean one thing, she was still at the crash site undiscovered. She gathers two paramedics and they head out to the site to find her.

At the crash site, they fan out and search high and low for the missing patient. Claire shouts that she could be anywhere within a 40-foot radius if she had been thrown from the vehicle. Eventually, it is Claire who discovers her in the middle of a forest and she quickly assesses the patient. Her pupil is blown indicating a brain bleed that desperately needs treatment there and then, there is no time to get back to the hospital. Claire intubates and bags the patient so that she will be able to breathe and the turns her attention to the brain bleed. She gets her hands on a drill and to the paramedic’s disbelief, she tells them she is going to drill a borehole in her patient’s skull right here in order to relieve the pressure building up in her skull. A tense silence follows as everyone watches Claire successfully perform the very risky manoeuvre. They then finish up and get her back to the hospital.

Photo Credit: The Good Doctor/ABC, Eike Schroter Image Acquired from Disney ABC Media

Jared is still struggling to help his patient. He is still unsure on how to relate to her and communicate with her as he painfully cleans up all of the burnt flesh from her body. She, of course, is venting at him which is understandable but this is only making things worse for Jared. He pushes through and keeps trying to help but it is just no good.

Desperate to help her he suddenly gets an idea on what could help her. He seeks out Dr Andrews and explains about an experimental treatment being performed using fish skin that helps restore skin after being burnt with leaving very minimal scarring on the patient.

Andrews is impressed but the problem is in order to get it approved it will take at least three months and not even he could get that time down. It’s a great idea and he applauds his out of the box thinking but in this case, it’s not an option. Andrews then takes over from Jared as he has finished with the cleaning of the burnt flesh.

The judge has finally arrived and is sitting down with both parents and fiancé hearing from both sides of how well they know the patient. This way she can ascertain who knows him best and therefore who gets to make the decision on his leg. At this point, things start to come out about the past that should have probably remained secret. The parents learned that the couple had met in rehab, they had no idea their son was an addict and the fiancé learns that her future husband had recently cheated on her. Everyone tries to keep the subject on point but it is fast getting out of hand. Shaun is then called in to give his testimony to the success of the surgery.

Claire now arrives with her patient and she informs Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) of the events and the patients status. They rush to surgery to stop the brain bleed.

Jared is not letting it go with the experimental treatment. He interrupts Andrews as he treats the burn patient announcing that he managed to get the fish skins. That another hospital already had approval and as long as they sent over the data for them they could have what they needed. Both Andrews and the patient are in disbelief but thankful and they begin setting up for the procedure.

Shaun is now giving his testimony. He is asked what his thoughts are on the success of the fake bone;

"‘It’s not fake!’"

They start to ask questions regarding it and Shaun doesn’t respond. The room gets very agitated and tempers start to erupt at Shaun and the waste of time. Shaun suddenly demands quiet. He has been staring at his patient’s foot and has not answered anyone because he has noticed the change in color that has been forming.

Time is up, Shaun’s temporary fix is no longer working and they start rushing him to surgery. Melendez demands an answer over what they are doing, right now. There is no more time. The Judge sided with the fiancé and decides on the artificial bone rather than amputation. For their parents knew their son as a child but his finance knows him as a man.

Claire and Glassman have managed to locate the brain bleed and everything is going well. Claire is giving the honour of clipping the bleed and she aces it. A successful surgery and a huge win for Claire, that is until there is no response from the patient. She is showing no signs of brain activity and Claire and Glassman don’t know why. Claire begins listing possible scenarios but Glassman sadly gives her the hard-up truth. Her patient is brain-dead.

Jared’s fish scales have arrived and he and Andrews start to apply them to the patient’s skin.

Melendez and Shaun are making good progress with the artificial bone but time is beginning to run out. They act fast and get it inserted in place. Clamps are released and Shaun checks for blood flow. Shaun spots it in his patient’s toe indicating the surgery was successful.

The final hours and the long road ahead

As the night draws to a close and everyone has been treated the long road to recovery begins. Melendez and Shaun’s patient surgery was a success. He still has his leg and despite the initial fear of him not feeling anything and being unable to move his toes Shaun manages to get some movement by basically tickling him. He needs to rest for know before beginning physical therapy.

Jared has finished applying all of the fish scales to his patient. He comments on how she is now Aquaman which she smiles at. She is thankful she got him as her Doctor and is sorry for judging him so harsh at first. He tells her that no apology is needed and that she judged him correctly. She will need to remain in bed for the next six months until her skin grows back but things are looking good.

Claire needs to inform her initial patient that her wife is brain-dead. She has not woke her up as she doesn’t know what to say. Glassman then appears as he needs to speak to her. He goes through what happened in the events leading up to learning she was brain-dead. Claire goes through her entire procedure and everything looks good. That is until Glassman points out that when they arrived in the hospital it was noticed that the intubation tube inserted to help her breathe was in too deep. It had incorrectly been fitted and she had not been enough oxygen and this was the most likely cause.

Claire is devastated by this. She performed a successful borehole procedure in the field and in the dark but messed up the intubation. Glassman comforts her by explaining that this was a mistake that anyone of them could have made under the circumstances. He shares his own personal story of when he made a mistake that cost a patients life and that she will never forget it. That hopefully it helps her in the future but the most important thing is that she needs to learn how to push past it.

Time to go home

Our doctors then begin to head home. Jared is on his way when he is confronted by Andrews over his fish scale achievement. Over how he contacted the other hospital to thank them for helping them out. Turns out they to were also very thankful for the very generous donation that Jared had given to their burn unit. Andrew warns him not to go do that again. For if you open your wallet to help a patient in need, despite coming from a very wealthy background, the lines can get blurry very quickly.

Shaun is waiting outside on a bench when Glassman shows up. He makes a comment on the night’s event and that he doesn’t remember a night like that. Shaun doesn’t really respond so Glassman then turns to an earlier discussion and asks Shaun why he doesn’t want love. Shaun explains that he loved Steve and his rabbit. That they are dead so he cannot love them. Glassman tries to explain that he loves people who are gone but Shaun is not interested. So Glassman changes the subject and asks if he wants to go for breakfast. Shaun asks if he can have four pancakes rather than three this time. Glassman offers him five. But no, Shaun only wants four.

Next: Grey’s Anatomy fans had a familiar face feature in The Good Doctor

The Good Doctor returns Monday, Nov, 13 at 10/9c on ABC.

What did you think of this weeks episode? What was your favorite moment? Leave a comment below with your thoughts?

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