Summary
Brilliant Minds Season 2 seems to have peaked already, so “The Rider” had a tough act to follow, but it feels like a notable step down all the same.
Guys, Brilliant Minds Season 2 might have peaked already. It was always going to be a tall order for Episode 12 to compete with one of the better outings in the show’s history, but “The Rider” feels like a bit of a regressive step all the same, lacking the raw emotional sentiment of its immediate predecessor and a lot of the compelling overarching storytelling that has been threaded throughout the season. In fact, it seems like Wolf’s relationship with Charlie Porter may be heading in a completely different direction than anyone expected, supporting my theory that, perhaps, he’s not the one who ultimately gets Wolf committed to Hudson Oaks.
It could all be a diversion, of course, but I think not — the show seems to have different plans for this dynamic, though there’s very little Hudson Oaks build-up in this chapter either way. Instead, it’s bookended by brief scenes shared between Wolf and the mysterious woman who confronted him at the end of the previous episode, so we may as well start there.
The word “confronted” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, I’ll admit. Sofia isn’t a threat or anything. As it turns out, she lives upstairs but had an “arrangement” with Noah that included watering his plants, and some other things that come to light at the end. In simple terms, Sofia suffers from what seems like sleep paralysis but is probably going to end up being a more complex neurological issue, and Noah had offered to treat her pro bono. Not one to take something for nothing, though, she had asked him to share his life story with her, which by all accounts he did, including his abandonment of Oliver.
Wolf spies an opportunity here and offers to continue to treat Sofia in exchange for her relaying to him what Noah told her, hopefully filling in the large gaps provided by three decades of his absence. Ideally, if Wolf can figure out what his father was up to during that time, he has a better chance of understanding him enough to reach him again. This will presumably give Wolf something extracurricular to focus on for the next few episodes.
Not that he doesn’t have plenty going on at work. The A-plot of Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 12 revolves around a bull rider named Benson, who, despite not having anything wrong with his brain on paper, is nonetheless experiencing a variety of symptoms, including nerve damage in his arms and legs, hallucinations, and, weirdly enough, hypothermia. This mandates a field trip to the rodeo to figure out what may be making him sick, but the problem turns out not to be environmental after all.
Benson is an alcoholic. He was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and has a fraught relationship with substances ever since. Some of his symptoms are brought about by long-term alcohol abuse, and others by withdrawal during his stay in the hospital (cured by him and his bad influence girlfriend drinking hand sanitizer). Benson has tried multiple methods of getting sober, but nothing has worked, so Wolf proposes a pretty radical solution — a risky, vaguely experimental surgical procedure that Porter is in disagreement about and that requires approval from Nichols.
Ah, Porter. He’s still working in the neurology department, and Wolf even gathers the interns to explain to them who he really is. This causes surprisingly little friction among the usual gang — now missing Van and Jacob, by the way — and also creates a weird dynamic between Wolf and Porter, who are sometimes doing the mutually respectful colleagues shtick and at other times are at each other’s throats. Either way, Porter is sticking around for the foreseeable future, though his revenge mission seems to be complete, since he was expecting Wolf to fire him at the fundraising gala and didn’t really have anything planned after that.
Nichol’s denies Benson the surgery, so Wolf goes around him, having learned through Carol that the former head of Bronx General’s neurology department would definitely perform the surgery, with the only caveat being that this guy is Josh’s current boyfriend. This isn’t as awkward as you’d think, but only because it later transpires that Nichols hasn’t been open about his former relationship with Wolf. That’s probably something he should have mentioned, but I expect we’ll return to it later in the season. Either way, Benson gets the surgery, but his girlfriend decides not to stick around, since she’s not ready — and I kid you not — to give up drinking.
There’s uncharacteristically little going on elsewhere. Carol has a couple of scenes with a patient named Betsy, who has been hoarding cats, but it rather nakedly exists just for Carol to have the epiphany that she needs to get back on the horse and get on with her life. Otherwise, the main point of focus is a mental health grant that both Ericka and Dana are in the running for. Ericka, coached very briefly by Wolf, takes the more prepared, logical route, while Dana, advised by Porter, goes emotional. In talking about her sister’s suicide, she inadvertently tips off Carol, who’s on the board, that she was the one who reported her in Season 1, which Carol and Nichols decide to hide from Wolf since he’d consider it too much of a betrayal to continue mentoring Dana. I thought we were done with all this, honestly.
Dana gets the grant, proving Porter right, but the experience also causes Ericka to decide that she wants to look for her birth mother. She was going to use that angle in her pitch, but decided against it, so now it has come time to avoid running from her emotions. Since therapy seems to have magically cured her Benzo addiction, I guess she might as well.
