Summary
Brilliant Minds delivers one of its best-ever episodes in “The Boy Who Feels Everything”, a powerful examination of grief and acceptance.
In my recap of that powerful Eric Dane episode, I said that sometimes Brilliant Minds just decides to drop an hour of emotional torture out of nowhere. “The Boy Who Feels Everything” takes that to something of an extreme. It isn’t just the best outing of Season 2, but one of the best episodes the show has ever produced, a terribly moving examination of grief and acceptance that makes a leading man out of Van, of all people. Episode 11 is the halfway point of the season, and I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.
And we’re losing two main characters? It certainly seems so, but more on that in a bit. Just like how the episode decides to leave most of the events of the Fall finale unresolved to instead focus squarely on the aftermath of Michelle’s crash, I might as well start there, too.
It’s Katie who responds to the crash (and did I catch a brief glimpse of the fire chief from earlier in the season?). She’s able to drag her from the wreckage and stabilise her for long enough to get to the emergency room, where Ericka and Jacob recognise her and sound the alarm. Wolf rushes from his dad’s secret apartment — it seems Porter gave him a legitimate address — and Van and Dana race back from the gala. All hands are on deck while Michelle has surgery, and she comes out seemingly okay.
But “seemingly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Michelle’s scans indicate that her brain has been pureed by the accident. Her injuries aren’t survivable. Van, in denial, insists that Wolf can save her, since that’s what Wolf does. But Wolf is still smarting from the revelations about Porter, and is more cautious than usual about offering false hope. He tries to let Van down gently, to help him come to terms with Michelle’s passing, but he’s not having it. He even wants to be present for the exam that determines brain death.
Wolf is caught here between allowing Van to come to the obvious conclusion on his own and pressing the issue. Van deliberately delays the final test in the exam, which is to turn off Michelle’s ventilator and see if she breathes on her own, giving him time to stalk the hospital, punch Porter for being characteristically insensitive, and then concoct a harebrained scheme to take Michelle’s body in Katie’s stolen ambulance and transport her to New Jersey, where there’s a religious exemption for brain death.
Van ropes all the other interns into this, and they reluctantly agree to support him, even though they know the inevitable is coming. It gives Ericka and Jacob a chance to discuss the latter’s impending move back to Texas to pursue his dream job, which is providing neurological care for athletes. His timing could have been better, since he and Ericka had just resumed their romantic relationship, but she supports his decision.
The athletes thing ties into the B-plot of Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 11, which concerns the driver of the car who crashed into Michelle. His name is Nick, a young hockey player who is manifesting the curious symptoms of emotional incontinence — when he’s sad, he laughs, when he finds something funny, he cries, and so on. His nickname on the hockey team is the Joker, and, unsurprisingly, it’s the untreated concussions from his games that have caused his condition. It makes for one or two awkward moments — such as when Van sees him in the corridor, and he bursts out laughing — but has a nice resolution, which also tips Wolf and Carol off about the stolen ambulance.
As it happens, Van turns the ambulance around on his own, but we have to take a detour through a cruel twist to get there. Suddenly, Michelle wakes up. She’s rushed back to Bronx General, and then her life seems to play out on fast-forward, with her and Van getting married. But as they exchange vows, her hands go limp, her smile fades, and Van is plunged back into reality. Michelle isn’t coming back.
Van himself carries out the remainder of the brain death exam and declares Michelle dead. He leads her on the “Honour Walk” for organ donors, hugs Michelle’s mother, and reassures his son. It’s tremendously emotional — so much so, in fact, that Van decides he needs to take an indefinite amount of time off work. He and Jacob will both be leaving Bronx General. Even Porter, of all people, gives him some surprisingly sincere advice.
About that. Based on what we’re seeing from Porter, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe he isn’t as connected to Wolf getting sent to Hudson Oaks as we’ve been suspecting. Sure, he has the motive, but Wolf, on Carol’s advice, is keeping him around to try and help him, and there seems to be a decent guy in there somewhere. With the work done with Amelia in Episode 8, I think she might be the real villain, and Porter is more of a bystander. In fact, it might even be a nice twist if he’s the one who helps Wolf escape. But I could be wrong. And how does the mysterious woman who greets Wolf at the end of the episode fit in?
Either way, I’ll take pretty much anything over another episode with that amount of grief.
