Summary
Brilliant Minds handles the obligatory procedural catastrophe well in Episode 12, but it’s a last-minute twist that throws things for a real loop heading into the finale.
Brilliant Minds kept its audience on tenterhooks for weeks after collapsing a building on one of its key cast members and heading off for a midseason hiatus. Episode 12, then, has a lot to answer for, and “The Doctor Whose World Collapsed” starts as it means to go on in the rubble of a collapsed Bronx apartment building where Ericka being stuck in the elevator is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is one of those classic big disaster procedural episodes that imperils everyone, slightly defies the typical A-B plot structure, and teaches the characters a lot of important lessons about themselves and each other. And it accomplishes all that pretty admirably, with some kinks along the way. But what I wasn’t expecting was a superb last-minute twist — another one! — that helps to retroactively justify some of the seemingly ill-fitting flashbacks.
Just in time for the finale!
Wolf on the Scene
The chaos is palpable from the off. Bronx General is the closest hospital to the building so it is immediately inundated with casualties, demanding all hands on deck and everyone focused on the task at hand. This means not being distracted by Ericka’s potential fate. The irony of Dr. Wolf, of all people, preaching disassociation isn’t lost on the interns. But he has a point. There’s more than enough to be doing in the meantime.
It takes less than five minutes for Wolf to find himself on the scene. Katie, the paramedic from Episode 10, discovers a woman trapped under the rubble who desperately requires a neurosurgeon. That technically means Nichols, but Wolf isn’t missing the opportunity to accompany him and ask the nearest fireman if Ericka’s name is on the list of the deceased (it isn’t). But there are bigger problems. The woman’s legs are crushed under a giant pile of rubble. Moving the rubble could collapse the entire building, but her head wound needs immediate attention, even if that means cutting off her legs to give it to her.
In classic Wolf fashion, he won’t allow Nichols to perform the life-saving impromptu procedure until the patient, Jenna, gives her consent, which she won’t do until she’s accompanied by Stuart. Wolf goes looking for the mysterious Stuart outside, greatly impeded by his face blindness. He’s less annoyed than I would be when he eventually discovers that Stuart is a dog. Jenna is saved nonetheless, and the whole ordeal necessarily brings Wolf and Nichols closer together, since the former has to grapple with the fact that he almost got the latter killed by being stubborn.
Ericka’s Elevator Adventures
Ericka spends most of the episode trapped in the building’s elevator with another woman, Celia, and her grandfather Gene. And despite her having to think fast to help Gene when it appears he has a stroke (he doesn’t — he has pulsatile tinnitus), things don’t get especially dangerous for her until she’s rescued.
When the elevator doors finally open, Gene is helped out, and Ericka follows at Celia’s request to accompany him in the ambulance. Then the elevator’s final supporting wire snaps, and Celia plunges down the shaft to her death. When Ericka eventually staggers into Bronx General, she’s traumatized and guilt-wracked. It’s up to Dana — in a nice moment, given how she had avoided delivering bad news earlier in the episode — to deliver the bad news to Gene.
But it’ll take a lot for Ericka to get over this. Towards the end of Brilliant Minds Episode 12, Dana invites her to be her roommate, which will certainly help, but that kind of guilt isn’t something you can easily brush off.
Noah in Brilliant Minds | Image via NBC
Loneliness Is A Killer
Carol devotes her attention in “The Doctor Whose World Collapsed” to an elderly woman named Ms Chase, who was in the building but is unharmed. Not totally, though. She’s still nursing a cut from three weeks prior that hasn’t healed, which understandably piques Carol’s interest. Tests reveal she’s seriously dehydrated and malnourished. Carol’s first question is whether she’s lonely.
As it turns out, she is. Following retirement, the death of her husband, and then the pandemic, Ms. Chase dangerously isolated herself and got a little too used to being on her own. It became normal, and her normality became neglecting herself. Carol explains that loneliness is the equivalent of smoking 15 cigarettes a day, health-wise. It’s tightly linked to all kinds of medical maladies, strokes and heart attacks included.
In being given a second chance, Ms. Chase realizes she doesn’t want to be lonely anymore. And in the midst of all the trauma from the building’s collapse, she manages to find a little bit of connection and hope for the future. In that regard, at least, she fares better than a lot of the other survivors.
How’s THAT For A Twist?
Periodically in Brilliant Minds Episode 12, Wolf, Nichols, and the EMTs are helped out by an older guy who claims to be a doctor visiting his wife. He’s kind, switched on, and largely untroubled by the situation; I’m sure he saves many lives just by being there. And then we don’t see him again. He slips into the episode’s margins while various other subplots occupy our attention.
The weakest aspect of this episode seemed, at least to me, to be Wolf’s obligatory flashbacks to his past, most of which revolve around his father, including the few here. I was a bit annoyed by this in “The Doctor Whose World Collapsed”, since now didn’t seem like the time for Wolf to recall a trip he took to the psych ward where his father was being treated (they just let him stroll onto the ward? With all the patients?) But I think you can tell where this is going.
At the end of the episode, Muriel returns home after a difficult day to find someone has broken into her house. And it’s the doctor from the apartment building. This is Noah, Wolf’s father.
And Another Thing…
Here’s a couple of other things I couldn’t fit into the recap proper:
- Jacob and Van patch up their differences in quite a sweet way. Van is struggling with the crisis thanks to his mirror-touch synesthesia and Ericka’s absence. Jacob volunteers to be his anchor of calm in the interim, and it works out pretty well.
- Katie asks Dana out, and while they have to take a rain check, it does seem like we’re going to be pursuing this relationship. Katie even saves her number in Dana’s phone under “Hot EMT”.
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