The most watched show on television right now doesn’t have zombies, dragons, or a young Sheldon. It has Shaun Murphy, an autistic surgeon with savant syndrome (played by Bates Motel’s Freddie Highmore) who loves chocolate chip pancakes and who I’m told is above all things “Good.”
The fact that you don’t see Shaun Murphy perform surgery inside a hospital at any point is all you need to know about the first five episodes of ABC’s The Good Doctor. It’s a series that’s unrealistic yet predictable, and overly sentimental; it’s the This Is Us of medical shows, only it has a worse title. But because nothing means anything, The Good Doctor is the biggest show on television—Episode 3 pulled in 18.2 million viewers, surpassing The Big Bang Theory.
And because I seem to enjoy watching things that are objectively terrible (see: voluntarily seeing The Snowman), I sacrificed myself to see if there was something more to The Good Doctor than the laughable trailers and the reviews calling it “frustratingly simplistic.” I set out on a journey to watch all five episodes of The Good Doctor that have aired so far, and I returned with a list of questions. It’s a long list.
Episode 1
1. I mean, right off the top, what’s with all these “Good” shows? The Good Fight, The Good Wife, Good Witch, The Good Place, and now The Good Doctor—is there an extended “Good” universe?
2. If someone dies in The Good Doctor, are they sent to the Good or Bad Place? Will there be a crossover episode of The Good Fight in which Shaun Murphy is sued for malpractice after he leaves a piece of floss in someone after performing surgery at a Duane Reade?
3. Almost immediately in the first episode of The Good Doctor, an airport sign falls down and hits this poor, random kid. Has that ever happened at an airport? What the hell? It kinda looks like those construction guys just, uh, dropped it? Well, thank god the Good Doctor is right there to help!
4.Except he’s not helping at first, as another guy who says he’s a doctor rushes to the boy’s aid. The man applies pressure to his neck to stop the bleeding, and that’s when we get Shaun’s first line of dialogue: “You’re killing him.” Care to explain, Good Doctor?
5. Apparently kids and adults have different pressure points with the arteries in their neck, so Shaun steps in and does things correctly. This is when—for the first of what will be many times—I ask: What’s happening?
6. From what I can gather, when Shaun thinks about doctor things, terms and parts of the body float around his head, similar to when Benedict Cumberbatch solves crimes in Sherlock or that one Zach Galifianakis meme from The Hangover. Why is this necessary? Because, without the visions, Shaun wouldn’t have been able to save the kid by using a box cutter (how he attained one in an airport is a bit of a long story) and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Got it? Yeah, me neither.
7. The Good Doctor flashes back a lot to Shaun’s youth. I guess he grew up in an unhappy home, and there’s this scene where his parents are fighting about Shaun—his dad either doesn’t understand or is apathetic to his autism. It’s honestly really sad, but then all the dramatic tension disintegrates when the dad, in a fit of anger, grabs Shaun’s rabbit and throws it across the room. WHO THROWS A RABBIT?
8. I will ask again, WHO THROWS A RABBIT?
9. What even is this show?
10. In another flashback later in the pilot, we learn that Shaun and his brother ran away from home and were living in an old school bus inside a junkyard. (Huh????) While playing hide and seek with some other kids in the junkyard after school, Shaun’s brother slipped and fell off the top of a train car and died. (No, I’m serious.) To which I ask: Is Shaun the Angel of Death? So far I’ve seen one kid nearly die when an AIRPORT SIGN almost sliced open his neck, and then an innocent—if unnecessary—game of hide-and-seek turned deadly. Shaun would probably be the Best Doctor if he just didn’t go near anyone ever.
Episode 2
11. As the credits begin to roll on Episode 2, I wonder: Who the hell is watching this?
12. Wait, this is based on a Korean drama? Was this announced in the pilot? How did I miss this?! Who is Jaebeom Park, and why has he done this to me?
13. At St. Bonaventure Hospital, Shaun is assigned to “scut work” by his surgeon boss, which essentially boils down to doing menial tasks that other doctors don’t like to do. Shaun, however, accepts this responsibility with intense optimism but then begins over-diagnosing patients and, at one point, ordering an MRI for a dude who has an ear infection. How much is Shaun costing the hospital in one day of scut work?
14. … why?
15. Do doctors even say things like this? Just take my tonsils out, General MacArthur!
Episode 3
16. Shaun’s moved into an apartment near the hospital—as in, not the house in Casper, Wyoming, he lived in during the pilot—and yet, I’m pretty sure the same cat from the pilot is on his porch. How did that cat get there? I’m not asking for much, but unless that cat boarded a plane, it shouldn’t be there. And if that cat did board a plane, why did The Good Doctor not show it?
17. Is Shaun getting a love interest? In Episode 3, an attractive neighbor drops by asking for AAA batteries so she can continue playing Uncharted (again, this is all true). Good for Shaun. Is “cute girl plays popular video game” the new “cute girl likes baseball?”
18. Back at the hospital, Shaun and fellow surgeon Claire (Antonia Thomas) have to get a liver from another hospital for one of their patients. On their way back via police escort, we learn Sean can use his Genius Text Powers for … highways?
19. The Good Doctor gets ridiculous again when Claire and Shaun need to remove a blood clot from said donated liver, and can’t wait to get back to the hospital to do so. So in the middle of traffic, they stop the car and Shaun performs surgery on the liver on the trunk. This show is actually fun? Once you sit through hours of it and accept it for what it is?
20. Sorry, I need to nitpick quickly about this absurd situation. Claire keeps emphasizing that the liver needs to remain at a certain temperature—basically, if it gets too hot, the liver won’t work in a new body. They even stopped at a general store to make sure it stayed cool! So, what I need to know is: Wouldn’t Shaun operating on the liver in the middle of the highway with no shade from the sun just straight up roast the liver? Apparently not: The operation is a success and the liver survives.
21. In what way, officer?
Episode 4
22. It feels like I’ve been with Shaun and the Grey’s Anatomy knockoffs of St. Bonaventure Hospital for days. But guess what: Shaun’s latest case involves lancing a boil from a porn star’s vagina. Wait, am I still asleep?
23. Nope, that’s Shaun actually using his Genius Text Powers on a vagina! The Good Doctor, everyone! Does Shaun watch porn? I’m not the only one who wants to know: a surgeon actually asks Shaun if he watches porn. He doesn’t say anything, but his silence is telling. Shaun watches porn.
24. Oh god, are we going to get a Shaun sexual awakening flashback?
25. Unfortunately, lancing the porn star’s vagina boil isn’t as straightforward as lancing a porn star’s vagina boil should be: Shaun and the other surgeons discover a tumor in there too. Through four episodes, I don’t think a single surgery hasn’t experienced a dramatic setback. I’m not saying The Good Doctor needs to rid itself of the dramatics, but at least once—for the sake of unpredictability—can we see something like an appendectomy that goes according to plan? This question ties back to my previous point that everyone should just stay away from Shaun Murphy.
26. The doctors have to remove the tumor, but in doing so, the porn star will lose all feeling in her genitals. What a conundrum! Thankfully, Shaun has an epiphany, courtesy of the pipes in his apartment, which he compares to nerves in the human body (all true, once again). Hang on, did Shaun really just ask the porn star this question?
27. Do you want to guess what her answer was?
…
…
(She picked thigh.)
Episode 5
28. Episode 5 is broken down into two cases: A dad apparently gets an intense allergic reaction when his son returns from Thailand (I’m sure it’s fine), and Shaun meets a patient that looks exactly like his dead brother, Steve. Also, I think Shaun—an autistic man—can understand sarcasm now?
29. Good to know. Anyway, the kid that looks like Shaun’s dead brother is only at the hospital for a broken arm. But! You didn’t forget the Angel of Death theory, did you?
30. The kid has osteosarcoma: terminal bone cancer. This is no longer a question: Shaun is absolutely, 100 percent responsible for all of these bad things happening.
31. Meanwhile, the dad’s allergic reaction actually has nothing to do with his son, or Thailand. He has several cysts in his body … that are filled with tapeworms. Is that the scariest medical emergency possible? Tapeworms are the worst worms, right?
32. Is that really the appropriate response to a TAPEWORM BRAIN CYST, Richard Schiff of The West Wing?
33. Shaun is so distraught about his dead brother lookalike patient having bone cancer that he tries to run a series of tests on the 0.3 percent chance he was misdiagnosed. He lies to the parents and his surgeon boss to do this, and he gets caught. Isn’t this grounds for firing? Of course not. Shaun instead gets a tear-jerking final scene with the kid, reading him the last few passages of To Kill a Mockingbird (because his actual dead brother liked the book; for all we know, the actual still-living person sitting next to Shaun hates it, and would rather do anything else with his final moments of life).
34. That’s the end of Episode 5, which means I am officially up to date on The Good Doctor. So, what did we learn?
35. Will the American viewing public watch literally anything that makes them sad?
36. Is “Doctors, but specialer,” all you need for a successful TV show?
37. Do fans have to wait until the finale to see Shaun perform an actual surgery?
38. Will I be tuning in for more? Would I dare miss another episode of the most watched show on television?
Good call, Shaun.
