Stories about desperate patients taking hospital personnel hostage to force them to treat them have become too common on medical dramas, and I hate them.
I love a good thriller — I write them myself, so I’d better — but usually, this type of story isn’t it.
Most such stories feel like cheap, unnecessary drama, though Watson Season 2 Episode 8 added a surprising amount of depth.
The Opening Scenes Set Up a Powerful Storyline
I knew where things would head because I’d read the episode description, but the opening was captivating to me.
Honestly, it could have been part of a different type of story, one that didn’t involve unnecessary violence.
It’s easy to understand why Fitz felt so desperate. For 11 months, he tried to get help for his daughter’s rare disease, only to be brushed off by one doctor after another.
Even Watson himself was too busy to help. That had to have been beyond frustrating for a man who was terrified for his daughter’s health.
Watson’s Rejection Was the Last Straw, But the Setup Was Poor
Watson Season 2 Episode 8 could have used its montage to show Fitz gradually getting ready to become violent in order to get his daughter help, but it didn’t.
Was Fitz more frustrated each time he was rebuffed? Certainly.
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But there were zero indications that he was going to go to the extreme of becoming a suicide bomber (or threatening to be one) except for the episode description, and that’s a problem.
TV has this tendency to make violence come out of nowhere — someone suddenly snaps and becomes a hostage taker.
But that’s not really how it works. There are usually signs that someone is going to cross that line.
It’s dangerous for TV to suggest otherwise.
It reinforces stereotypes about mental health issues leading to sudden and random violence — even though in this case, Fitz’s problem was more systemic cruelty than mental health.
In This Case, It Also Took the Focus Away From the Real Problem
The truth is, our health care system is broken, and people who desperately need help are often turned away.
I’m surprised insurance issues weren’t part of the problem here, since Mycroft canceled funding that allowed the clinic to treat patients for free who couldn’t afford Watson’s services — it often is part of it.
So are long wait times, complicated procedures for getting on a doctor’s patient list, and being bounced from one doctor to another without the issue being resolved.
Watson Season 2 Episode 8 wanted to tell a story about all of that, but instead we got a high-adrenaline hostage situation… at least at first.
About Halfway Through, Things Got More Interesting Than In The Standard Hostage Story
Do you like these types of desperate patient turned hostage-taker stories?
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Watson’s response to Fitz’s implication that they drove him to take desperate action was pure gold.
The whole reason HR had demanded a day of reflection is that Watson pushes himself to the point of burnout, and it bothered him that he couldn’t help Fitz — and that now Fitz was acting as if Watson had purposely ignored his pleas for help.
Many medical shows, with or without hostage drama, focus on how the current system harms patients, but this is only the second time a medical drama has explored the effects of these systems on doctors, and the other was a 1996 episode of Chicago Hope.
So addressing the issue of doctor burnout is long overdue, and Watson did it beautifully.
It’s not only patients who suffer when doctors are overworked.
Although the stereotype is that doctors rush through patient care because they only care about money, the truth is that most doctors care deeply about their patients’ well-being, and some work too hard to try to help as many people as possible.
And in Watson’s case, he ruins his life over and over because patients always come first, and it probably will haunt him forever that he couldn’t help Livvie until her father took desperate action.
Despite Some Unnecessary Twists, Watson Did the Impossible and Made Fitz Sympathetic
One of the reasons I hate the hostage trope is that these stories often make the villain a one-note character who is so desperate that they don’t really care who gets hurt.
But Watson avoided that trap, although there were some unnecessary aspects to this story.
I could have done without the side drama of Fitz believing that Livvie was not his biological daughter, only to find out that she was, and to suddenly realize there was one night he did have sex with her mother.
That was a bit too soapy and unnecessary for me (as was this whole thing with Ingrid sleeping with Beck — what happened to her believing that he was stalking her and wanting nothing to do with him?).
I was also annoyed that Beck attacked Fitz right after Watson’s discussion of burnout. We were finally getting more depth to this story when that happened, and of course, the narrative shifted to Watson having to treat Fitz.
However, Watson Season 2 Episode 8 redeemed itself by having Fitz admit that he knew he’d hurt Livvie by getting himself arrested.
Fitz’s conversation with Watson is the only time I can think of that a hostage-taker shared vulnerability and made himself so sympathetic that I was sad he had to get arrested.
What did you think, Watson Fanatics?
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If you enjoyed this article, check out our coverage of other medical dramas like Chicago Med and Grey’s Anatomy.
Watson airs on CBS on Mondays at 10/9c and streams on Paramount+ on Tuesdays.
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