Brilliant Minds season 1, episode 10 recap and review: "The First Responder"

When a first responder crashes in the hospital, Wolf and his interns get to work in Brilliant Minds season 1, episode 10. This is an important story about chronic pain and treatments.

Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Brilliant Minds season 1, episode 10.

One thing that Brilliant Minds continues to do well is give us people-driven storylines. This is more than just a diagnosis. To Wolf, his patients are people, and he looks past the symptoms to figure out the treatments. His interns are learning well from him, figuring out ways to help patients at the same time.

Wolf understands chronic pain in Brilliant Minds

While Wolf isn’t struggling with a physical issue, he does understand chronic pain. He’s dealt with chronic emotional pain for decades. No, this isn’t the same as physical pain. I’ve been through both, and I can say that physical pain that doesn’t seem to have a reason for it is debilitating and can drive you to madness.

Too many times, we treat the symptom. Katie, the first responder who happens to have meningitis and listeria, shared the story of how she ended up with chronic pain in the first place. She was shot in the shoulder on a call. While the physical wound healed, the pain remained. It could be that she didn’t take enough time off, but it’s also possible that there was nerve damage that has led to the pain.

Katie has just been treating the symptoms. She’s been pushing through the pain with the use of steroids, which led to her becoming immunocompromised. If she isn’t careful, she could die from a simple infection. One thing she hasn’t had is support. Without people in her corner, she’s not been able to open up about her health issues and the pain.

Wolf gave her that support she needed. Dana and Jacob also helped. We have this team of people who are becoming like a family, and they are welcoming other people in. Wolf cared enough about Katie to figure out what was actually wrong with her—and not just the pain.

I’m looking forward to seeing more of Katie, as I suspect we will. There was a spark between Katie and Dana, and Dana opening up just a little to Katie already is a sign that she wants someone like Katie in her life. Jacob is a cute matchmaker, seeing the way Dana and Katie were looking at each other.

Speaking of Jacob, I do feel for him by the end of the episode. Just as he gets the courage to speak to Ericka and share some of his feelings, he realizes that she’s with someone else. She’s with Van. I can see this having a huge knock-on effect between Jacob and Van for a while, especially with Jacob knowing Van’s secret about his son.

Van and Ericka help a patient who can’t feel pain

The ability to not be able to feel pain sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Brilliant Minds had such an interesting connection between the two cases this week. We have a patient who is self-medicating because of pain, and another one who can’t feel anything at all. In a way, they would both like to switch places. Well, the dad of the boy who couldn’t feel pain would likely want his son to switch places with Katie.

There’s a small percentage of people who are unable to feel pain. Brilliant Minds isn’t the first TV shows to cover this. Grey’s Anatomy stands out with Abigail Breslin’s character telling Alex Karev to punch her because she couldn’t feel any pain. Criminal Minds had a serial killer unable to feel physical pain. These shows all focus on why pain is important to be able to feel. In fact, I think of Snowpiercer’s final season and how Boki told Josie that feeling pain was important to know that something was wrong.

Van and Ericka don’t just try to help the dad understand what the condition is. They want to find a way to help the father and son. It’s going to take consistent treatment, but there is some sort of hope.

I do find it interesting about how observant Ericka is. She notices that Van didn’t flinch at all when treating the boy. Usually, he would feel the physical pain as well. Because this boy couldn’t feel it, there was nothing for Van’s mirror-touch synesthesia to feel. It meant the boy wasn’t faking anything, and it also showed some limitations to Van’s “super power.”

I’m just now waiting for the fallout when Ericka finds out that Van has a son. I get that bringing up children can be difficult, and it’s not like Van and Ericka were originally getting into a relationship. It was supposed to be casual, so there was no need for Van to disclose that he had a son. However, they are getting more and more serious. He needs to tell her the truth at some point, because if he doesn’t, Jacob will.

Pierce shows us what happens with gaslighting in Brilliant Minds

Morris has spent so long gaslighting and lying to Pierce, that she’s struggled to put a lot together at first. She’s also struggled to break away from Alison and her treatment plan because she wants answers. She needs to get out of dodge for her own safety, though. Now that Morris has finally told her the truth about what she knows, she can walk away. Is she going to get complete closure, no, but from someone who has been in that position, just knowing that you were right can help work through the anger of being gaslit.

Pierce is in a dangerous position, though. Alison has zero remorse for what she did. Pierce couldn’t have ever proven that Alison was the one who vandalized her car. Most normal people wouldn’t admit to doing it, either. And yet, Alison proudly shared what she did to Pierce, and it wasn’t exactly in a quiet way.

This is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better. Alison knows that Pierce acted unethically, and that could get her license revoked. She’ll use it against Pierce if she has to. This woman is not predictable, but Pierce needs to find a way to stop it before her daughter is harmed.

I hope Brilliant Minds doesn’t use Alison as a way for Morris and Pierce to find some common ground and get back together. People who have affairs show that they don’t care about the people around them. They have to compartmentalize all their feelings and secrets, and not just to the spouse that they’re cheating on. They’re hurting their whole family and support system selfishly for their own gain. Of course, they’re more interested in blaming the spouse for their reaction to that pain instead of taking accountability for their action.

Even when they take accountability, it’s not because they think they did anything wrong. If Morris really wanted to move forward from the affair, he would have told Pierce everything. He wouldn’t have continued to lie to her and gaslight her. He just doesn’t want to lose the perception of being a good man, because deep down he’s really not.

Pierce shared how much she gave up for his career. She can’t go back to him after all this. She needs to walk away, because it’s going to be so much better than the alternative. Of course, she needs to get Alison out of her life first, but Brilliant Minds needs to show the realities of affairs and the way that the majority of them end. Stop gaslight us into thinking that there is hope after an affair and that all the pain and manipulation can just be forgotten about.

Brilliant Minds airs Mondays at 10/9c on NBC. Catch up the following day on Peacock.

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