The Good Doctor‘s 100th episode is light on pomp and circumstance but heavy on drama as the tension between Drs. Shaun Murphy and Danica Powell reaches a boil.
As Powell’s attending, it is Shaun’s job to put aside his personal feelings and guide her as he would any other intern — but ever since her introduction in Season 6’s second episode, she’s has been a thorn in her supervisor’s side. Shaun is irate when he finds out that Powell played a role in Lim’s decision to forego spinal cord surgery, but that should not influence how he treats his underling. It is inappropriate when he says that he finds her annoying — first to their patient, then to her face — and his decision to list off all the things he doesn’t like about her is the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back. He calls her out, not only for being intractable, but for wearing hand lotion that smells strongly of almonds. When she calls him a jackass, it is fully earned.
And yet, Shaun isn’t entirely wrong. It’s his approach that is wrong. Powell, at times, is a know-it-all. But he doesn’t have to like her to listen to her ideas. If she approaches him with a half-baked idea, he should work with her to make it a better one. She should not be ostracized for trying to do her job.
Shaun’s initial attempts to find common ground with Powell fall short — he likes the Weather Channel, she likes natural disaster movies; he likes pancakes, she likes Vietnamese crepes — but the two eventually bond over a shared love of surgical history. They go on to employ a Civil War-era technique in the operating room when a hospital-wide power outage forces them to think on their feet.
Afterwards, Powell switches hand lotions. It goes a long way to smooth things over with her attending.
The 100th episode also sets Morgan off on a very personal journey. Dr. Reznick’s life hasn’t turned out as she’d hoped; not only is she not a surgeon, but she’s nowhere close to settling down with anyone following her breakup from Park. She reaches the conclusion that the void in her life can be filled by becoming a parent — and she seems quite serious about making it happen. How, exactly, remains unclear.
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