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Critic’s Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
3.5
Way to be depressing, Chicago Med!
I guess I should have expected this one to be painful, considering it was called “Broken Hearts,” but I wasn’t ready for so much death in one episode.
Two patients died, Maggie broke up with Loren, and Hannah’s sister attempted to manipulate Hannah after ghosting her for five years. What kind of start to the New Year was this supposed to be?
We Needed At Least One Happy Ending
The surgical team warned the conjoined twins going in that it was likely that one of them could stroke out, so it wasn’t a surprise.
That was the kind of tragic ending Chicago Med loves: one twin dies, the other lives.
And for added irony, the twin whose chances were stable died, and the one who was supposedly taking all the risk lived.
Okay, fine, that depressing ending was inevitable, I guess. But did we need to follow it up with Sully randomly dying minutes before he got a reprieve?
If you’ve been reading my reviews for a while, you know I wasn’t a Sully fan, but still. Powell’s death was bad enough without another one following right on its heels.
This unnecessary loss will send Ripley into a tailspin, especially after he spent the entire episode trying to find a way to convince Lenox to order tests so that Sully wouldn’t go back to jail.
Ripley: Where do you think he’ll get better care? Here or Cook County?
Lenox: The health care he gets in jail is not my purview. I can’t save the whole world
Ripley: I’m not asking you to save the world. I’m asking you to save just this one.
I don’t know if it would have made a difference if she said yes right away, but I can almost guarantee that Ripley will blame her.
Where Was Dr. Charles When He Was Most Needed?
One of the reasons I think Chicago Med is the best One Chicago show is that it centers psychiatry in a way that most other medical dramas do not, but Charles was MIA this time.
Damn cast rotation!
I’d rather he try to help that Sloan person than have her story end with her deciding that surviving surgery was her license to go back to being self-absorbed and obnoxious so that her assistant quit.
I somehow knew that Sloan’s back pain was connected to heart problems. Maybe it was the high-stress lifestyle and Type A personality, but something about her screamed heart trouble.
Sloan’s aortic dissection may have also been another way of honoring John Ritter’s memory. A previous episode mentioned the family’s foundation at the request of Steven Weber, who was friends with Ritter and wanted to spread awareness.
Ritter, of course, died of aortic dissection, which was where my mind went as soon as Sloan was diagnosed.
But damn, did we really need her going back to pushing everyone around? The only patient who didn’t die turned out to be worse for it.
Hannah’s Sister Was Manipulative, But Did She Mean To Be?
I hated Hannah’s sister for most of “Broken Hearts.”
After five years of radio silence, she finally touched base with Hannah, only to ask her to commit medical fraud and then leave again as soon as Hannah said no.
I agreed with Frost that Lizzie was acting extremely manipulatively.
Hannah: I can’t be her sister and her doctor.
Ripley: So don’t. Just be the best sister you can be.
But when Hannah gave her all that money so she could get her IVF treatment, she seemed genuinely surprised and touched.
Maybe her desire for a child blinded her to how manipulative she was being.
She and Hannah both survived the trauma of her mother’s death, and we don’t know how old they were or what else Lizzie went through.
Their father, or whoever was taking care of her, might not have accepted her sexual orientation, and she may have dealt with trauma in unhealthy ways.
Hannah turned to drugs, but we don’t know what Lizzie did. So maybe I’m being too harsh, and she is something other than manipulative.
Maggie’s Breakup With Loren Is Incredibly Confusing
Why, exactly, did Maggie break up with Loren?
She stomped around the hospital in a bad mood for no apparent reason before telling Frost she needed to break up with Loren.
But was it really about her “not feeling it,” as Loren put it?
It seemed like her upset started with Doris asking her if she’d signed Goodwin’s card.
Goodwin’s near-death experience was scary for everyone, and it would make sense if Maggie were pulling away from people she loved because she was having a hard time dealing with it.
That would be a more interesting story than this random breakup with Loren — the guy Maggie started dating because she got scared when he almost died in a helicopter accident.
I’m Excited That Lenox May Be Neurodivergent
One of the only good things about Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5, which was an otherwise lackluster Halloween episode, was Lenox’s ability to help a non-verbal autistic child calm down.
At the time, I thought she would eventually reveal that she had an autistic sibling, which would have been a nice nod to Sarah Ramos’ previous role on Parenthood as the sister of an autistic kid.
But now, I’m wondering if she’s autistic or otherwise neurodivergent and isn’t ready to disclose that to anybody.
The story she shared about her childhood sounded like neurodivergence of some sort.
She never understood emotions, annoyed her family by refusing to be anything less than fully honest, and took comfort in medicine because she knew her honesty was saving lives even if she was still ostracized for being different.
I could relate to a lot of that. Additionally, it explained why she has had such a hard time getting along with the staff.
Lenox doesn’t consider emotions when making medical decisions. The reforms she suggested earlier in the season were all about what she thought would be best for the hospital, regardless of how anyone felt about it.
That inflamed tensions because doctors didn’t feel heard, and Lenox was left baffled as to why no one else cared more about best practices than being sensitive to everyone’s emotions.
This reveal was a bright spot in the otherwise depressing episode. I can’t wait to see where they go with it next.
Despite all the depression, though, the fireworks and celebration of the New Year suggested there was hope for things to get better.
So did Lenox opening up for the first time about her struggles.
Still, this felt like a dark episode at a time when a lot of people were turning to TV to escape, and I was disappointed in how depressing it was.
What about you, Chicago Med fanatics? Was this episode too dark or just right?
Vote in our poll below to rate the episode, and then hit the comments with your thoughts about it.
Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8/7c and Thursdays on Peacock
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