‘Brilliant Minds’ Season 2, Episode 13 Recap – AI Is the Problem (Again)

It used to be that zombies and Nazis were the most overdone, uncomplicated villains in media, but AI is definitely threatening to catch up. You can’t move for cautionary tales about the perils of rogue chatbots these days, and it’s forming a pretty timely thread in HBO Max’s superb second season of The Pitt. But Brilliant Minds isn’t exploring the use of AI in a medical setting like that show, but instead exploring the potential neurological effects of irresponsible use of AI, which is fitting enough. Episode 13, “The Rabbit Hole”, is a fairly typical hour in that sense, yet again ignoring Season 2’s overarching plot — at least until the end, when it throws in a very significant development.

But more on that later. In the meantime, meet Nora, a sorority sister suffering from catatonia. Despite her being introduced by interrupting her friends in the middle of what is quite clearly a ritual, there’s no occultism at play here. Instead, Nora has imperilled herself by turning to an AI chatbot in a time of grief and personal crisis, mistaking its peppy ministrations for genuine advice.

It takes a while for the specifics of this to be revealed, but essentially, Virginia is an AI chatbot marketed squarely at young women, and Nora had turned to it in an obsessive way after learning that her sister, Crystal, had been diagnosed with bone cancer. Nora assumed that Crystal was dying and, encouraged by Virginia, pursued the idea of travelling to an alternate timeline where her sister wasn’t sick. It’s a pretty outlandish idea, but “The Rabbit Hole” does a pretty good job of couching it in relatable human terms.

And this is the thing. This is the danger of AI. It can be extremely useful, no doubt about that, but its smug know-it-all demeanour can often be confused with fact when it is, in reality, misleading or outright spurious. That’s fair enough in normal circumstances, but a grieving young girl can easily buy into anything a chatbot says, its closeness to a living person enough to create the personality equivalent of the uncanny valley. Nora’s predicament is resolved when she’s visited by Crystal herself, who explains that while she’s still sick, she’s probably not going to die. A win for simple, in-person communication.

This subplot occupies the bulk of Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 13, but there are a few other things going on. What looks like it’s going to evolve into an interesting B-plot but ultimately doesn’t concerns Thorne, who I’ve been hoping would get a story of his own sooner rather than later. His patient is a young boy, Owen, who had a severe allergic reaction, and is later joined by his mother, who experiences a very similar allergic reaction. But the explanation for this medical mystery is provided pretty much immediately, without any fanfare — mother and son had visited Martha’s Vineyard and been bitten by a tick.

The revelation about the trip causing discord between Owen’s separated parents is, I think, intended to shine a bit of a light on Thorne’s own backstory, and it does allow him to reconcile a little with Carol, who is also having similar disagreements with Morris over the phone. But it’s all skimmed over pretty quickly and feels quite light. I still think Brilliant Minds is missing a trick by not giving Thorne his own more in-depth story, but there’s time yet.

We do still have Dana, if nothing else. After winning that grant, she’s now being mentored by Carol, which is obviously awkward for her because of the small matter of almost having ruined her career. Of course, she doesn’t know that Carol already knows it was her, so her deciding to come clean — at Ericka’s urging — isn’t that big of a deal. But it does, in a roundabout way, cause a rift between Carol and Wolf, because Nurse Silva, who has now become a part of the regular crew after the sudden departures of Van and Jacob, accidentally lets slip about it. Wolf is predictably furious about what he perceives to be Dana’s betrayal, and the fact that Carol didn’t tell him about it, but Carol’s clearly in the right when she says that Wolf hasn’t been in the right frame of mind recently to receive that kind of news.

Which brings us to Wolf himself. He’s still working with Sofia, trying to treat her insomnia in exchange for being given more information about his father, but they’re also becoming firm friends, which seems to be a good thing for Wolf, given his current social status. But not so fast! At the very end of Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 13, the ominous narration implies that maybe this friendship has a few warning signs that Wolf has missed. And just like that, we cut to a week later, with Wolf in Hudson Oaks. Sofia is a patient there, and he has arrived to try and rescue her. As we know, though, getting her out — or indeed himself — isn’t going to be quite so easy.