THE GOOD DOCTOR 1x05 "Point Three Per Cent"

Dylan Kingwell has had a pretty regular gig portraying Shaun's brother Steve in flashbacks, but today he had his airtime bumped up drastically when invited to play a young boy named Evan who bears a striking resemblance to Steve. Evan comes to the hospital diagnosed with osteosarcoma - one of the many forms of cancer, to a layman like myself - and Shaun cannot help but involve himself in Evan's treatment. The premise should have been heartbreaking, but I feel as if this episode wasn't as successful at drawing out my emotions as much as the first two had been. At no point did I feel an urge to weep as Shaun tried to navigate the evolving situation to the best of his ability.

   Instead, I found myself focusing on how the story of Evan's treatment seemed like an amalgam of two ER episodes. In the first, Dr. John Carter struggles with the fact that Trent isn't aware he has HIV because his grandmother has not told him; similarly, Evan's parents have not told him he has cancer. (There is a distinction, however: while both Carter and Murphy violate an ethics code and divulge the truth to their patients, Trent had no idea he had HIV; Evan - thanks to the internet - was already aware of his diagnosis).

   The second ER episode came much later in the show's lengthy chronology - season 15, I believe - and featured a mother misdiagnosed with cancer when she in fact had tuberculosis. Her life was saved when the doctors properly diagnosed her, but there was no such Hail Mary for Evan. And that, for me, was the right call. A criticism leveled at recent episodes by other more esteemed reviewers is that the show has made Shaun the hero in far too many cases, so it was refreshing for him to make a mistake. And not only that, but wrapping Shaun's first real mistake around the premise of a patient resembling his dead brother was exceptional. The emotional fallout was more impactful than if the patient had been a regular anybody - and perhaps aided as well by the regularity with which Shaun has succeeded thus far.

   He even succeeded in being on time to work, as mentioned by Melendez on the two occasions day broke and a new shift began. And Melendez was one of the success stories of the episode, insofar as having plot separate him once again from Dr. Shaun Murphy served to lessen the resentment the audience may feel for him because of his attitude to Shaun's hiring. He wasn't, however, an important character today. There were no political machinations for him to weigh in on, and he simply flitted throughout both major patient plots whenever a senior voice was required.

   It was Dr. Glassman who got to shine as a diagnostician - and even as a neurosurgeon. The second patient plotline served us a middle-aged man with family issues who was suffering from an allergic reaction to cysts in his body, cysts filled with tapeworms. The necessity for brain surgery to be performed to remove one of the cysts gave Dr. Glassman his first actual on-screen outing in an OR, something his character desperately needed. It's all well and good him being a staunch supporter of Shaun's, but he is not just that and nor is he just the President of the hospital. He is a doctor, and he needed to be one after four episodes of serving as a political sounding board or a foil to Shaun's misunderstanding of social cues.

   This wasn't the most balanced episode of The Good Doctor thus far - no less than three main cast characters failed to appear - but it was an excellent one. The episode's focus on and examination of one social cue - lying, and the pros and cons of lying - gave us something else to think on other than Freddie Highmore's consistently superb acting. That aspect of this was very Lucifer-esque, and as I've mentioned tonight the very best episodes of Lucifer focus on the titular character's obsession with some facet of humanity. If The Good Doctor is taking cues from Lucifer, and sliding them into more serious, emotional plotlines, then that can only improve what is already an exceptional and thought-provoking television series.

RATING: 8.5/10

POINTS OF NOTE

• Dr. Glassman advising Shaun how to perform a medical procedure without consent should have been a serious scene, but it was a little distracting to remember that this was the hospital President giving such unethical advice.
• Dylan Kingwell as Evan looked far too much like Dylan Kingwell as Steve. That was always probable, but I feel they should have done just a little more to differentiate them visually. A different hairstyles, coloured contact lenses or a mole. Something. Anything.
• Dr. Kalu is finally growing on me.
• I like that episodes of The Good Doctor tend to focus on just a couple of patients, a far cry from the enormous footfall of ERs I'm used to seeing in other medical shows.