Are we gearing up for a depressing storyline for Glassman?
The Good Doctor hasn’t known what to do with his character for a while. After spending most of The Good Doctor Season 5 contemplating retirement, Glassman returned and mainly acts as Shaun’s surrogate father.
So the series may have decided to cut its losses by allowing Glassman to have a fatal resurgence of his brain cancer, as spoilers for The Good Doctor Season 6 Episode 18 suggest.
There doesn’t seem to be anywhere else for this storyline and character to go. Still, The Good Doctor won’t be the same without Glassman if it chooses to go that way.
Not to mention that this could be one hell of a depressing storyline!
The Good Doctor is no stranger to sad storylines. Its depiction of the COVID pandemic on The Good Doctor Season 4 Episode 1 was damn good television. It was also impossible to watch because it depicted the worst parts of the disease’s trajectory so realistically.
You’d hope they’d have learned their lesson and not decided to go the same route with Glassman!
There hasn’t been any news about Richard Schiff leaving The Good Doctor, so this could be an elaborate fakeout. It would be just as emotional for Shaun to fear losing Glassman unnecessarily.
If Shaun has actual evidence of Glassman’s condition deteriorating, it’s yet to have appeared on-screen. So far, all we’ve got is Shaun’s opinion that Glassman’s suture technique was sloppy.
That’s neither here nor there. Shaun tends to be overprecise, so Glassman’s sutures might have been perfectly fine. (Maybe they should head to Chicago Med and see what OR 2.0 thinks!)
And even if Shaun is right that Glassman’s technique was off, it doesn’t necessarily follow that something’s wrong with his brain. Glassman doesn’t do major surgery regularly anymore and may be out of practice.
When he is in the OR, he’s usually supervising while other doctors do the lion’s share of the work. While theoretically, surgical skills should be second nature to him by now, a lack of practice could make him rusty.
In any case, does one slip point to brain cancer? Glassman should find out if he has any cognitive decline that could be dangerous for patients and his health, but Shaun seems to be jumping to conclusions.
Shaun’s fear of losing his surrogate father, just as Shaun’s son is about to be born, is dramatic enough without Glassman having a serious disease.
Even if Glassman’s cancer is back, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dying this second. Brain cancer is one of the most severe, fatal cancers, but Glassman beat the odds once with Shaun’s help.
Shaun refused to accept Glassman’s terminal diagnosis during The Good Doctor Season 2 and eventually found an unorthodox treatment that worked. Why should this time be any different?
While Shaun worries about Glassman, other doctors are scrambling to find answers for a patient whose COVID symptoms haven’t gone away despite being disease-free.
This could be a story about long COVID; if so, it’s about time one of the medical dramas addressed this!
While most people, especially those vaccinated, experience only mild COVID symptoms at this point, a select group of patients have symptoms for months or years.
Sometimes the symptoms are severe — some people have cardiovascular issues, weakness in their limbs, or breathing issues — and other times, they’re merely annoying. Either way, it’s a risk with COVID that is rarely talked about.
Having a patient present with long COVID could help educate viewers about this syndrome and provide a dramatic storyline.
The worst part of long COVID is that previously healthy people become more or less permanently disabled, which provides an emotional storyline for this patient.
The Good Doctor is equally prone to miracles and depressing stories, so the team might find an experimental treatment that works for their patient. They may also find that this patient doesn’t have long COVID.
The series seems to be fond of the trope of finding a different serious issue while running tests. Often, the doctors find tumors while looking at MRIs and chest x-rays for another reason or in the middle of surgery.
So it wouldn’t be surprising if the patient’s symptoms turned out to be lung cancer or some other syndrome that isn’t COVID-related.
Bonus points if it’s an exceedingly rare syndrome! The Good Doctor seems to specialize in such cases.
As usual, there will likely be a lot of personal drama mixed in with the medical stories. In addition to Shaun’s fears for Glassman, spoiler photos suggest several doctors enjoy a night out. In addition, Andrews and Villanueva try to work out the dynamics of their relationship.
Did we know these two were dating? It had slipped my mind if so.
In any case, this is why supervisors and their employees shouldn’t date. It was bad enough when Lim and Melendez sneaked around so no one would know they were in a semi-inappropriate relationship. Let’s not have a repeat of that, please.
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The Good Doctor airs on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST / PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
