‘Brilliant Minds’ Season 2, Episode 7 Recap – Wolf’s Past Comes Back to Tempt Him

Brilliant Minds is typically quite elegantly plotted, and has been throughout most of Season 2. But I think it’s fair to say that in Episode 7, “The One That Got Away”, it flirts with contrivance. Its patient of the week, Tom, is an old flame of Wolf’s, but only if you interpret “old flame” as “shared a confused kiss once many moons ago”. It isn’t that this is a bad storyline, just an overly functional one, since it’s obviously a way to progress things between Wolf and Nichols.

Predictably, that doesn’t go as expected either, but nothing ever does in this show. Paralleling this, though, is Ericka’s downward spiral, and as she reaches her lowest ebb, I think it’s probably the best her personal arc has been. So, that’s nice. There’s something for everyone, unless you’re looking for more movement in the overarching plot, which was teased so capably in the previous episode but left a bit by the wayside in this one.

The Oliver and Tom thing is all about moving forward. Tom is stuck in the past. He’s a married man, but he’s constantly hearing music in his head that connects in a roundabout way to Wolf, and to the missed opportunity of their relationship (or, at least, the relationship they might have had in different circumstances). He has to weigh up the cost of a risky surgery, and that means having the bravery to move forward and leave the nostalgia that the condition is stirring in his past.

It’s a bit rich for Wolf, of all people, to be giving advice about this, given how hung up on his father he has been for two whole seasons. But he’s right. Tom isn’t pining for him, necessarily, since, as I sai,d he’s happily married, but there’s undoubtedly a fondness there that speaks to something unresolved. And medicine needs resolutions. So do relationships, it turns out.

And thus, in ministering to Tom, Wolf also makes a decision about what to do with Nichols. He decides to tell him how he really feels and hopefully resume their relationship. But he left it too long! Nichols is seeing someone else. And, frankly, it kind of serves Wolf right, since he has been beating around this particular bush for altogether too long. What was Nichols supposed to do? Sit around waiting forever? Considering he’s also going through his own guilt and grief over Benny’s death, that wasn’t a fair ask.

Elsewhere in Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 7, we have Ericka, who continues to rely on pills to cope with the loss of life during the Season 1 finale. She’s putting all of her focus into guiding Sam into treatment for his paranoid schizophrenia, but that’s a process with real challenges that requires patience, and every setback reminds her of her own issues.

Ericka is doing a good thing for Sam, but she has also bundled her problem into his recovery. She’s trying to avoid dealing with her own issues by devoting herself to his, and that isn’t going to work long-term. She has to deal with what happened in her apartment building, which means she has to give up the pills. That means admitting she has a problem, and, finally, she does.

Granted, she admits it to Dana, which, after the whole snitching on Carol debacle, I’m not sure was necessarily the smartest play. But here we are. Either way, it’s still a positive step for Ericka, who can hopefully start moving in a healthier direction with some support. But hopefully she still has time for Sam, since he’s doing pretty well himself.

Dana probably needed this for the sake of her own character not seeming too aloof, controlling, and off-putting, and her lack of judgment of Ericka is beneficial to their own relationship, but also to the audience. And “The One That Got Away” feels as if it’s arriving at this conclusion much more naturally than the one with Wolf and Nichols. So, fair’s fair. But I still have plenty of faith that the show will carry all of these subplots through to a satisfying payoff.

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