A heat wave… in November?
According to spoilers for The Good Doctor Season 6 Episode 6, the heat will lower Shaun’s tolerance for dissent even more than usual, knock out the hospital’s primary source of electricity, and put both Lim and the patients at risk of serious complications.
The blackout isn’t the only thing aggravating Shaun: he’s also going to get into it with Powell when he learns she advised Lim against having the paralysis reversal surgery.
Shaun’s irritation with Powell begins when he notices Lim is having a more challenging time with the heat than others.
According to Shaun, her heat sensitivity is related to her spinal cord injury; he thinks if she’d had the surgery, she wouldn’t be having trouble with temperature regulation. When he learns that Powell told Lim not to have the procedure, as far as he’s concerned, it’s a declaration of war.
The promo video suggests that Shaun goes as far as refusing to work with Powell ever again, something that Glassman discourages.
Understandably, Shaun views this as a betrayal. He worked hard to find a safe way to do the surgery, only for Lim to reject it altogether, and in his mind, it wasn’t only about Lim’s physical health.
The surgery was meant to repair their friendship.
Shaun’s a stickler for the rules, and the rules say that as the attending, he makes the final call, not some first-year resident.
Of course, when Shaun was a first-year resident, he wouldn’t have hesitated to interfere with a patient’s treatment plan if he thought he had a better idea. Maybe Glassman can help him remember that so Shaun stops trying to remove Powell from his cases.
Glassman will be too busy to deal with what he views as Shaun’s nonsense, though. Spoilers say that he and Lea race to find a solution once the power goes out.
Hospitals should have backup generators so that ventilators and other lifesaving equipment don’t go offline if there’s a power failure. But a heat-related blackout might be too much for the emergency generators to handle, which could lead to an extreme emergency.
The Good Doctor has also released two preview videos. The first clip is an extended version of the first scene between Shaun and Powell.
Sadly, Powell was excited to work with Shaun.
She doesn’t see what was wrong with what she did. She is thinking of Lim as a fellow disabled person.
Powell lost her leg, which is somewhat different from Lim’s situation. The loss affected Powell’s life, but once she got a prosthetic leg, that was the end of it. There was no risk of further health problems if she didn’t address the cause of her disability.
There is nothing wrong with needing to use a wheelchair, and The Good Doctor needs to be careful not to imply that non-disabled people are superior to those with irreversible paralysis.
However, the situation is not as black-and-white as Powell thinks it is. Lim’s spinal cord injury could worsen without treatment, making it more difficult to reverse, and she could suffer other health complications because of her injury.
The heat wave is as dangerous to her as it is to many patients in the hospital.
Several senior citizens might be at higher risk of severe illness or injury if the power isn’t quickly restored.
Some patients may have dementia or similar conditions, making it difficult for them to understand what is going on during the blackout. These people will need extra care to ensure they follow protocols and don’t hurt themselves.
Other patients, such as Park’s patient, might have physical issues requiring machines to keep them alive.
Ventilators are a primary concern; most monitors are also electric.
Without being able to monitor patients’ vital signs, it’s impossible to catch life-threatening emergencies before it’s too late. The doctors won’t know if someone has stopped breathing or their heart is beating irregularly.
There could also be a lot of false alarms, as some machines make noise when they lose power.
All in all, this situation could lead to chaos.
Whenever there’s an emergency such as a blackout, there’s the possibility that people who’d rather not spend a lot of time together can’t leave each other’s side.
Getting stuck in an elevator is a trope that dates back to All in the Family, if not earlier; could that happen for any of the doctors at St. Bonaventure?
Hopefully, Park and Morgan won’t get stuck together anywhere. Their constant sniping at each other has gone on for years, and we don’t need any more of it.
However, Shaun and Powell might be forced to resolve their conflict if they’re trapped together, though Shaun might have an autism-related meltdown from being trapped in the dark and unable to follow his usual routine.
This already happened on The Good Doctor Season 3 Episode 20, when the doctors were trapped due to the earthquake, so we don’t need a repeat.
But what about Jordan and Perez? These two have had an awkward co-existence since the aborted kiss, and getting stuck together might help them explore their feelings for each other despite Perez’s claim he can’t handle a relationship due to his nascent sobriety.
What do you think, Good Doctor Fanatics? Do you hope anyone gets stuck together, or would you rather skip this trope? Who do you think is right in Shaun and Powell’s conflict? And are you looking forward to this weather emergency?
Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know! If you need to catch up, watch The Good Doctor online.
The Good Doctor airs on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST / PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.
