[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 2 “The Contestant.”]
It has not been an easy start to the season for Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) on Brilliant Minds. First, his father Noah leaves with just a letter (after Wolf avoided him, despite the other man living in his house). Now, his mother, Muriel (Donna Murphy), has stepped down as CMO of the hospital and will just be his mother. Then there’s the complicated relationship with Josh (Teddy Sears) — the two are trying to just be friends — and the fact that Wolf will be a patient at Hudson Oaks’ psychiatric facility in six months.
First, Quinto is quick to assure us that Murphy isn’t going anywhere, though the show has lost the mother and son working together. “We spent so much of the first season watching Wolf deal with his trauma that originated in his family, his primary family of origin. I think Michael [Grassi, showrunner] wanted to open up some new storytelling landscape for Wolf,” Quinto explains in the video interview above. “And so I think that the vacuum that Muriel’s absence creates at the hospital will be a very interesting thing to chart and to navigate. I also think that it gives space and room for Wolf to become his own doctor in a way that working with his mom always had him maybe up against some degree of expectation that he’s no longer beholden to.”
Pief Weyman/NBC
He also reveals that the line about him looking forward to her being his mom and not his boss was something that they came up with on the day of shooting that scene. “I felt like it was something that Wolf needed to say and that it is nice to consider exploring their relationship from a different angle and not from the angle of Muriel having to be the messenger of the hospital mandates,” he says.
Elsewhere in the episode, Wolf invites Josh out for drinks and kisses him in what Quinto says was “an impulsive, vulnerable moment.” He also says that Josh was right to stop him because it was, in part, an attempt at a distraction from the fact that his father left.
He continues, “I don’t think Wolf is particularly comfortable in his own vulnerability. I think he’s able to show up for other people and their vulnerabilities when he is dealing with his patients. But I think in that moment, he felt like Josh showed up for him, supported him, and he wanted to connect on a level that allowed him to put things behind him that he didn’t want to really look at. And I think rightfully so, Josh interrupts that moment and says, ‘I can’t be a part of your distraction. I can be a part of your support system, but I can’t be a part of your distraction.’ And so I think it’s an attempt for Wolf to avoid looking at the magnitude of the impact that Noah’s return and then immediate disappearance or relatively immediate disappearance has had on his emotional and mental wellbeing.”
Wolf also understands why Josh hit pause on them. “He respects Josh’s boundaries. I think he has to understand that he wasn’t behaving in a way that was particularly respectful or particularly generous toward Josh at the end of the first season, according to Quinto. “I think he realizes that Josh deserves better and maybe in time Wolf will be able to provide that for him, but maybe not.”
In the Season 1 finale, Josh told Wolf he was falling for him. Wolf didn’t respond in kind. Grassi then told us he would in his own unique way. What might that look like?
“I think he finds different ways to communicate the way he’s feeling to Josh throughout the course of the second season,” teases Quinto. “I think part of what he’s learning is how to be present with his feelings and communicate them in real time. I think he’s somebody who’s lived a lot of his life not doing that —compartmentalizing and intellectualizing and processing in different ways. I think one of the catalysts that Josh is for Wolf is to kind of just be more present and be more comfortable in his own vulnerability.”
This episode ends with another flashforward, and in this one, Carol is by Wolf’s side, telling him it’s for the best, as he signs himself into Hudson Oaks, the psychiatric facility run by Amelia (Bellamy Young).
“I think there’s no one that Wolf trusts more than Carol, and probably at this point, including his parents,” Quinto tells us. “And so I think bringing her with him for that moment of surrender is very telling. And I think they have each other’s backs in a way that you can probably rest assured that it is the best place for him to be, at least in that moment if she’s advocating for it.”
Watch the full video interview above with Zachary Quinto about Muriel’s news, Oliver and Josh’s relationship, the flashforwards, Amelia showing up in the present, and much more.
Brilliant Minds, Mondays, 10/9c, NBC