While Shaun spent his workday trying to save a woman’s life, Lim spent hers trying to prove he was to blame for her paralysis.
The Good Doctor Season 6 Episode 3 is still stuck on this ridiculous conflict.
And to make matters worse, Lim not only ended her friendship with Shaun but implied that she’d rather be dead than in a wheelchair. Double ugh!
Lim has every right to grieve the loss of her ability to use her legs. It’s a significant change for her, and she’s frustrated and saddened by it.
That’s fine, but there’s no reason for her to dig for proof that Shaun did something to cause it.
The M & M report suggested that the surgery led to some sort of problem with her blood vessels, which then caused paralysis.
Okay, fine. How does she know that she wouldn’t have had the same problem if Shaun had followed Glassman’s suggestion?
She doesn’t. Nobody does because it didn’t happen that way, and Shaun is a convenient target for her anger.
Do you really think you can be impartial? Or are you just looking for a reason to punish Shawn?
Andrews
Andrews was right: Lim was looking for a reason to punish Shaun.
The fact is that there is one person to blame for her paralysis: the guy who stabbed her. No stabbing would have meant no life-saving surgery, no need for a split-second decision, and no paralysis.
How about directing some of her ire toward that person instead of the one who saved her life?
While it’s understandable that Lim is upset about her paralysis, her treatment of Shaun doesn’t make her sympathetic.
She seems ungrateful and determined to prove that the doctor who saved her life is the villain of her story.
Her attitude that Shaun saving her life doesn’t matter because she’s paralyzed also borders on ableism, and that’s a shame considering how much work The Good Doctor has put into trying to end prejudice against invisible disabilities like Autism.
Some people won’t vaccinate their kids against measles because they think the shot causes Autism. It doesn’t, but that’s beside the point. These parents are saying that they’d rather their child have a possibly fatal disease than be Autistic.
The Good Doctor stands against that attitude, yet somehow thinks it’s okay for Lim to say she’d rather be dead than live her life in a wheelchair.
Lim has to adjust to life in a wheelchair (unless Shaun comes up with a miraculous cure for her condition!), and until she figures it out, her quality of life will be impacted.
Again, it’s totally fine that she needs time to deal with that. But implying that life in a wheelchair is worse than death goes too far.
It’s also okay for her to set boundaries. Shaun wastes too much time asking everyone for advice about his relationship with Lea. And if she needs space, she needs space.
But she communicated her boundaries in such a hurtful manner, especially since Shaun doesn’t understand social rules all that well and doesn’t know what he did wrong.
Plus, this came on the tail end of a whole hour of her harassing Glassman into agreeing with her.
What a waste of everyone’s time!
Shaun’s insistence that his patient had a tumor wasn’t much better.
He said after Julianna died that she had a tumor that would have killed her within six months, so I guess they found something during the autopsy.
But Shaun’s main reason for believing the patient had a second tumor was that she believed she saw the afterlife when she crashed and needed to be resuscitated.
Scans didn’t show evidence of a tumor, and there was no explanation for how she knew what had happened while she was crashing under anesthesia if it was all a tumor-related hallucination.
Shaun’s belief in that tumor took as much faith, if not more, than Julianna’s belief that she saw her husband in the afterlife. It didn’t seem like enough of a reason for a second surgery. When she crashed a second time, I wondered if she would have survived had she not agreed to surgery.
Her comments to Shaun before she went under made it seem like she expected to die and was at peace with it. She probably was looking forward to reuniting with her husband.
Julianna’s advice led to yet another silly Shaun/Lea conflict that isn’t worth dwelling on. As usual, Shaun was annoyed with how Lea did things, Lea tried to accommodate him, and after an argument, he agreed to let her do chores her way.
Park and Powell’s case was interesting.
For the most part, it depicted severe mental illness realistically, including Katie’s mother and stepfather nearly splitting up because of the stress of dealing with her condition.
Park discovering severe hydrocephalus was a novel twist, especially since the surgery threatened to leave Katie unconscious for a long time.
I love Katie like a daughter, but if she comes home, I don’t know if I can.
Man
Powell released Katie’s restraints without permission from her attending. Unlike Lim, Park didn’t make a federal case out of it even though he had far more reason to be upset.
(As a side note, Lim might want to chat with Powell about living with a physical disability since Powell has a prosthetic leg and walks with a limp. While it’s not the same as a wheelchair, maybe Powell could offer support and resources.)
Powell redeemed herself, though, by getting Katie’s mother to give her husband a second chance. Katie’s recovery was on the miraculous side, but we needed a feel-good story, so I’ll take it.
Your turn, The Good Doctor fanatics. Hit the big blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know your thoughts.
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The Good Doctor airs on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST / PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.