Summary
Brilliant Minds settles into its comfortable rhythm is Episode 9, but a weak core case and a lack of character drama is disappointing.
I’m not going to say Brilliant Minds is running out of ideas, because Episode 9, “The Colorblind Painter”, still has a few. But the idea of a painter losing his ability to see color isn’t the most compelling idea I’ve ever heard, and it doesn’t have the most intriguing mystery surrounding it or outside-the-box conclusion bringing it to a close. It offers some nice sentiment, but with the character-driven subplots elsewhere still in a bit of a transitional phase, that scarcely feels like enough.
And where’s Nichols? His absence in this episode feels weird since it’s coming right on the back of him and Wolf deciding to make a go of things, and his presence is relegated to an iPhone that he gifts Wolf so they can communicate. I’ll grant you that this is a nitpick, but the idea of a working doctor in New York, in 2024, not only not having a phone but having no idea how one works is preposterous and the kind of character quirk that exists just to be an eccentric little flourish. I’m not buying it.
Anyway, let’s talk about the case and a couple of other bits and bobs.
The Colorblind Painter
The titular character in Brilliant Minds Episode 9 is Gabriel, a painter whose career depends on an upcoming exhibition. There’s only one problem — Gabriel has stopped painting and has begun isolating himself, and it’s up to Wolf to find out why.
To be fair, it isn’t much of a mystery. Wolf immediately spots Gabriel wearing odd socks and deduces that he has become colorblind, which is a sudden development following a recent car crash. But it isn’t just the inability to see color troubling Gabriel, but the overwhelming feeling of only seeing grey. That’d be annoying for anyone. For an artist, it’s crippling.
After a bit more digging, it turns out that while Gabriel wasn’t physically injured in the crash, his wife wasn’t so lucky. Having lost his muse, Gabriel spent a long time in the wreck waiting for help, and while he was there, undetectable carbon monoxide damaged his brain. His colorblindness is permanent, which isn’t the news he wants to hear. It only worsens his lack of desire to paint and go outside, and what was a loose sense of suicidal ideation almost becomes outright self-immolation.
Thanks to his own history of drug use, revealed through a couple of obligatory flashbacks, Wolf comes up with a typically outside-the-box solution — psilocybin. This doesn’t work either. But eventually, he discovers something else about Gabriel’s condition — he’s now hyper-sensitive to different color wavelengths and can see in the dark. Reframing his condition as a unique artistic plus helps him get his groove back, and he completes his exhibition in monochrome with portraits of both Wolf and his late wife. Aww!
Zachary Quinto in Brilliant Minds | Image via NBC
Van Is A Father?
This is as romantic as “The Colorblind Painter” gets. Despite having kindled a very sudden sexual relationship in the previous episode, Ericka and Van aren’t faring especially well.
Both want to keep their relationship a secret, but both are struggling to hide the post-coital glow that surrounds them, and Jacob’s finely-attuned radar for such things causes him to continuously blurt stuff out that makes Ericka and Van both feel terribly awkward. This is only worsened when Jacob overhears a very loving phone call between Van and what Jacob assumes to be his new beau.
Ericka doesn’t like all this pressure since it takes the fun out of their liaisons, which isn’t the news Van wants to hear considering he never actually gave anything away. But it looks like this hook-up might already be on hiatus. In other news, though, Van tells Jacob who he was talking to on the phone — his son, who lives with his mother. Wasn’t expecting that.
Carol Has A Stalker
As if it wasn’t weird enough that Carol was knowingly treating her husband’s mistress, Alison, she continues to treat her throughout Brilliant Minds Episode 9, almost as a way to torture herself. Nothing Alison says matches up with her husband’s claims of a meaningless one-night-stand, and each revelation is only ruining Carol’s marriage further.
More worryingly, Alison is clearly bonkers. She turns up at the hospital in a frenzy, demanding to see Carol, and Dana naively mentions that Carol must really care about her since she asked the interns to track her down. Carol is fuming about this when she learns of it, but mostly because she knows this is a clear conflict of interest and she’s continuing to indulge it out of morbid curiosity.
After a chat with Wolf, Carol decides to do the right thing and end her professional relationship with Alison, but she doesn’t take it well. “He said he loved me,” she bitterly mentions as Carol leaves, and at the end of “The Colorblind Painter”, Carol finds her car has been vandalized. I don’t think we’ll need a police investigation to figure out who’s responsible. But how far will Alison take things?
