Summary
Brilliant Minds Season 2 finally delivers a proper hospital-wide emergency that imperils everyone in “The Invisible Man”, but it also contains a big Wolf reveal that should shake things up.
You can always tell when Brilliant Minds is due to go on hiatus, since that’s when it wheels out the big guns. Season 2 hasn’t had very many of these serious, wide-ranging cases that imperil key characters, so Episode 14, “The Invisible Man”, feels like a nice change of pace, especially after a very ho-hum previous outing. It also drops perhaps the biggest reveal yet about how Wolf ends up in Hudson Oaks, and for the first time, it’s starting to seem like perhaps it’s the best place for him. But more on that later.
In the meantime, there’s a carbon monoxide leak to worry about. “The Invisible Man” opens with the hospital janitor, Amos, accidentally shooting himself in the head with a nail gun. That’s pretty alarming in itself, as far as workplace accidents go, but the more worrying detail is that an errant nail goes flying through one of the pipes, sending carbon monoxide flooding through Bronx General. Nobody knows, though, since there’s also a severe storm on, and in inclement weather, the over-sensitive sensors are turned off to prevent false positives.
It’s a perfect storm, someone says at one point. Oh, how we laughed.
Nobody else is laughing, though, least of all Amos, whose personality has been completely changed thanks to the presence of a foreign object in his prefrontal cortex. Brilliant Minds largely plays this for laughs, since Amos is privy to all of the gossip going on in the hospital and uses that to berate everyone who tends to him. But he also nearly dies, which isn’t quite so amusing. Nichols is supposed to do the surgery, but the carbon monoxide poisoning — which nobody has detected yet — starts to really set in, so he’s forced to summon Beau to operate on Amos, which means crossing the city in the storm.
Other interpersonal dramas are playing out at the same time. Wolf is still completely freezing Dana out of everything and refusing to forgive her for ratting out Carol, even though he and Carol aren’t speaking, and the show has remembered that Porter exists. I’m still a little unsure what the ultimate plan for him is, since he’s still trying to ingratiate himself into the core group, even if some — especially Ericka — aren’t so quick to forget that he was only there in the first place on account of a petty revenge mission.
Silva also remains a key cast member in Brilliant Minds Season 2, Episode 14, which is just as well, since it’s he who realizes that a lot of unrelated patients seem to be exhibiting the same strange symptoms. This is what leads to the discovery of the carbon monoxide leak, and the worrying realisation that Nichols has been exposed to the highest concentration since it was pumping directly into his locked office. Also suffering badly is a heavily pregnant lady whom Dana had suggested wait out the storm in the hospital. Sofia, who was undergoing a sleep study at Wolf’s behest, is also left to fend for herself while Wolf is focusing on Nichols. She flips out about that abandonment, but doesn’t seem to be experiencing any adverse effects from the exposure. Hmm.
There’s little time to worry about this, though, as the hospital is rapidly running out of oxygen just as Nichols and the pregnant lady need it the most, so Wolf takes drastic measures by transferring them both to a hyperbaric chamber in the basement. This is one of the better set-pieces the show has delivered all season, if you ask me. It’s novel and tense, and it also has some character subplots bundled up in it, since when asked who he wants in the chamber with him, Wolf or Beau, Nichols chooses the latter, but when he wakes up all groggy and sees Beau looming over him, he calls him by Wolf’s name. Oops!
Naturally, this leads to Nichols confessing to Beau about his history with Wolf, which he takes rather well. While in this honest and open mood, Wolf also tells Carol about Sofia, and even shows a moment of rare vulnerability by admitting how much things are getting on top of him and sobbing in her lap. As it turns out, this is a bit of an understatement. When Wolf returns to Noah’s apartment to make up with Sofia, Carol pulls the sleep study data. But the recordings show no patient. Sofia doesn’t exist — she’s a figment of Wolf’s tattered imagination. In Noah’s apartment, she hands Wolf a baseball bat and encourages him to do some damage. He’s coming undone.
