Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 3.The latest episode of Brilliant Minds starts with a jump scare, or a “push” scare may be more accurate. It leads Wolf and his team to a patient who isn’t actually their patient (that will make sense later) and to interact with a handful of delightful guest stars. And while we don’t get a Hudson Oaks facility update, the end of the episode delivers a twist that requires me to recant my statement that the show has lost a primary engine for drama.
First, let’s go back to the beginning. A woman named Gloria stumbles into a hot New York City subway and helps a woman she seems to know pick up dropped groceries before Gloria’s train arrives. She’s already looking woozy in the heat, so she’s in no way prepared for a large man in a hoodie to charge at her and potentially push her onto the train tracks just before the train pulls in.
It’s as okay as you could hope when a woman falls on subway tracks! The train conductor manages to stop the train before it hits Gloria. Max (Jonathan Kim) and Katie (Mishel Prada) arrive on the scene. Katie risks her life by jumping onto the tracks to pull Gloria out from under the train before waiting for the MTA to turn off the electricity on the third rail. The risky move was a big deal for Katie’s girlfriend Dana (Aury Krebs), who wants Katie to be safe, but it ultimately saves Gloria’s life, but Gloria is not actually our patient of the week.
It’s a twist! Dr. Wolf (Zachary Quinto) and his team are introduced to Gloria’s charge, Adam (Liam Galway), through Michelle (Stacey Farber, thank you, executive producer Michael Grassi for never wasting an opportunity to bless us with a Degrassi alum). She’s a social worker at the courthouse, and Adam is the primary suspect in Gloria’s assault. Adam is Autistic and non-speaking, so he can’t communicate with the police. Michelle asks Wolf and the team to help her get Adam’s side of the story before he’s thrown into the system for a crime no one can actually prove he committed.
Finding a New Way to Communicate
The team is initially stumped on how to communicate with Adam. Wolf has to remind them that humans have been communicating for millions of years, but the spoken word has only existed for 200 thousand of those. So what do you do when you have a patient who can’t tell you what’s wrong with them? You bring in the empath. Van (Alex MacNicoll) can tell Adam is in distress and finds him a pair of headphones that helps Adam calm down enough for Wolf to perform a neuro exam. Adam also keeps saying the word “Saya” when Wolf asks him about what happened on the train platform.
If Adam doesn’t need medical tests, then Wolf’s team has to turn himback over to the police for questioning. That doesn’t work for Wolf, so he sends Van and Michelle to Adam’s group home to ask around and tells Carol (Tamberla Perry) to tell the police they are still running tests anyway. Carol refuses because she just got her job back and doesn’t know who reported her, so she’s not trying to wind up in front of the medical board again. Wolf immediately says he’ll do it, so she doesn’t have to risk her job, and it sounds like he gets it, but our boy is pretty thick.
Gloria soon wakes up from her surgery but she’s coughing up a terrifying amount of blood from an unforeseen internal bleed, so she’s taken back to the OR. With Gloria in surgery again for an unknown amount of time, Wolf really has no more excuses for keeping Adam, so he suggests Carol hide him in her office. Dude, what? She just told you she can’t put her job at risk again. Carol immediately reminds him of that conversation, but this time it’s harsher. She’s already lost out on being chief because of her suspension. She’s not trying to lose her license entirely for Wolf’s latest crusade. I understand that Wolf is laser-focused on whatever case is on his desk for the week, but this request is not just him being oblivious. It’s a premium level of white man audacity that does not sit right.
There’s not a lot of time for Wolf to sit with his conscience because there’s a breakthrough in Adam’s case. Van and Michelle discover Adam is a very talented artist when they visit his room at the group home, and talk to his roommate (played by Love on the Spectrum breakout star Connor Tomlinson). They give him a pen and paper to draw with at the hospital, and he draws a series of butterfly sketches. Wolf realizes that Adam repeating “Saya” is actually “Say ah,” like a code for doctor. The police arrive to take Adam away, but Wolf now has enough information to get Gloria the treatment she needs.
The butterfly is a clue for what’s wrong with her. If there are any House fans reading, you’ll scream for joy because the answer is Lupus. The butterfly refers to the rash she sometimes gets on her face, and it is Adam’s way of telling the doctors about her condition. They give her steroids, and Wolf explains how Adam helped save her life when she wakes up. Gloria reveals that Adam didn’t push her off the platform. The heat caused her to faint, and she fell onto the tracks. Adam rushed to her to try and save her, but he couldn’t get to her in time. Her statement gets him released from the police, and Gloria shares that she’s going to be his permanent caretaker. The exposition about Autism and the justice system is heavy-handed throughout the episode, but it leads to a heartwarming conclusion for Gloria and Adam. Not many of Wolf’s cases get this kind of favorable resolution.
Charlie Porter Is Still an Opp
Charlie Porter (Brian Altemus) doesn’t have a lot to do in this episode, but he’s irritating in the little that he does do. He is not helpful when the team is brainstorming ways to communicate with Adam. Then he tries to conduct his own neuro exam even after Wolf explains that the team has to build trust before Adam will let them get close. We don’t see the full interaction, but Charlie claims that Adam attacks him when he’s trying to do the exam and throws him across the room. It makes him believe the pattern of violent behavior is there, but he wasn’t supposed to be talking to Adam by himself anyway. Was he trying to set Wolf up so he could report him? Every season needs a villain, but I really wish this kid weren’t so obviously evil and annoying about it. We also need more clues about what his ultimate endgame is besides being a pompous jerk. If that’s it, he’s doing an incredible job, but that won’t really bring Wolf down, so what is the point?
Carol’s Mystery Reporter Comes Forward
Before her tiff with Wolf, Carol is on a journey of making amends. She apologizes to Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop) and Dana for involving them in Alison’s case. They tell her not to worry about it, but Ericka takes it upon herself to investigate who turned Carol in, so the head of psych doesn’t have to be paranoid about whom to trust in the hospital. It doesn’t sit right with Ericka that Wolf gets away with bending, or straight up breaking, hospital rules all of the time, but Carol makes one mistake and almost gets fired over it.
Wolf overhears Ericka making this point and that seems to be what he needed to hear to see reason where Carol is concerned. He doesn’t apologize to his best friend, but he does throw her a welcome back to work party to show how much everyone at Bronx General appreciates her. It’s a step in the right direction, at least.
Meanwhile, Dr. Thorne (John Clarence Stewart) helps Carol realize that finding out who reported her isn’t going to make her better at her job. He offers to tell her who reported her, but he’ll only make the offer this once, so she has to decide if she really wants to know. Carol thinks through it and comes to the conclusion that the reporting protocol is there so that patients can feel safe with their care. She did make a mistake and needs to be held accountable, so it doesn’t matter who turned her in — but she also doesn’t need to torture herself about it anymore. Dr. Thorne congratulates her on passing his test and confesses that he doesn’t actually know who reported her.
He doesn’t know, but we do. Ericka announces that she’s dropping her investigation because Carol doesn’t seem to need it. She also says that keeping secrets is toxic and is about to confess to Dana that she’s taking Lorazepam for her anxiety, but Dana admits that she’s the one who reported Carol. She doesn’t elaborate on why, but is adamant that she has her reasons and she’d do it again if she had to. Ericka is pissed that her best friend did this and then kept it from her, but it doesn’t seem like Dana has any regrets about what she did. Let’s hope Carol means what she said about not caring who actually turned her in, because this revelation could break a lot of trust within the team.
The Game-Changing Twist
In last week’s recap, I said that getting rid of Muriel (Donna Murphy) at the hospital gets rid of a huge source of drama for Brilliant Minds. It turns out the creative team has a backup plan in place because “The Pusher” reveals who the new chief is. If Wolf thought having his mom as his boss was awkward, there’s no way he’s going to be calm about taking orders from his ex-boyfriend.
Josh (Teddy Sears) is the new Chief Medical Officer at Bronx General. He’ll be in charge of approving Wolf’s treatment plans and demands for expensive tests. He’ll be responsible for keeping Wolf in line, and he’s not going to be as lenient as Muriel often was. It’s also safe to say these two probably won’t be hooking up any time soon. It’s against hospital policy for a supervisor and subordinate to date. Also, the two had friction when they were just coworkers. It’s going to be an all-out fight when Josh tries to tell Wolf how he can and can’t treat his patients. The seismic shift in this dynamic is almost enough to make up for not getting more clues about what leads Wolf to Hudson Oaks. Or maybe working for your ex that you’re still hung up on is enough to send you to a hospital? We’ll definitely need to see how all of this shakes out.
Brilliant Minds continues Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on NBC. Episodes are available the next day on Peacock.
- Release Date
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September 23, 2024
- Directors
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Lee Toland Krieger, David Katzenberg, Dawn Wilkinson, Harry Jierjian, Jordan Canning, Maggie Kiley, Sudz Sutherland, Charles Randolph-Wright, Deborah Kampmeier
- Writers
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Sara Saedi, Ryan Knighton, Will Ewing, Daniela Lamas, Davia Carter, Stasia Demick, William Yu, David Carter, Alex Berger, Shannon Looney
Pros & Cons
- LOVE the cameos in this episode
- Okay, Josh is a more dramatic chief than Muriel
- Dr. Thorne and Carol is definitely a ship
- The show got preachy when talking about the Autism experience
- There is a random alarm in this hospital that sounds like Michael Myers’ theme and it’s driving me nuts
- Charlie Porter needs to be less obvious he’s evil
