Chicago Med season 3, episode 8 takeaways: Lemons and Lemonade

CHICAGO MED -- "Lemons and Lemonade" Episode 308 -- Pictured: Brian Tee as Ethan Choi -- (Photo by: Elizabeth Sisson/NBC)
CHICAGO MED -- "Lemons and Lemonade" Episode 308 -- Pictured: Brian Tee as Ethan Choi -- (Photo by: Elizabeth Sisson/NBC) /
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Did Chicago Med push Dr. Ethan Choi too far? Should we be second-guessing Sharon Goodwin? Here’s what we learned from Chicago Med season 3, episode 8.

Last night’s Chicago Med episode asked a lot of certain characters, so that left us with a lot to talk about!

Season 3, Episode 8 was called “Lemons and Lemonade” and involved Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) fighting to help a woman with an eating disorder, while several of his colleagues tried to take a big step forward in their own lives. Some were more successful than others.

If you missed any of this Chicago Med episode, or just want a refresher on the events that we’re discussing, you can catch up with our “Lemons and Lemonade” recap.

Here are our Chicago Med season 3, episode 8 takeaways:

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1) Did Choi get the short end of the stick?

You have to feel for Dr. Choi after this episode. He’s the doctor who doesn’t give an inch, and yet he was legally forced to stand by and watch a patient die.

That’d be a tough storyline for any of Chicago Med‘s characters, but it’s particularly difficult for Choi, who isn’t someone who stands by for much of anything. What he saw may have been legally right, but was it morally right?

Not to mention, he’s already been through at least one case trying to hold onto a patient whom he lost in the end (last season’s “Cold Front”). So this episode was pretty much flying in the face of all that we love about Ethan Choi, and while Brian Tee was wonderful in it, you have to hurt for his character. He might not have shown it, but he’s got to be angry and sad simultaneously now.

He needs a break, and we don’t just mean a cute Chexton scene or two. We mean like an actual day off. Or a panda to cuddle.

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2) Do too many people get along in this hospital?

The best part of “Lemons and Lemonade” was watching Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) and Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) working together. We don’t get enough plots where they are paired together for more than a scene or two, for one. And for two, it reminded us of how these two did not get along when this show started.

They’ve pretty much buried the hatchet by Chicago Med season 3, but thinking of how they were playing off each other then made us realize there aren’t really rivalries among our main characters. Everybody gets along (we’re not counting Ava, since she was brought in specifically to be a rival for Connor).

That’s super-awesome as a fan who wants everyone to be awesome and have a great bond, but is it the best for the show? Maybe we need to have more opportunities when Connor and Will, or an other pair of characters, can seriously disagree. And not just kind of disagree, but really push back. That doesn’t mean they have to stop being friends, but a little conflict can be exciting when you’ve got actors like Colin Donnell and Nick Gehlfuss who can square off.

3) Is Goodwin turning into the bad guy?

Another week, another instance of Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) only caring about the hospital’s bottom line. We get it to a point—that’s her responsibility as the administrator, and she has the board breathing down her neck. But Chicago Med has seemed to make that the focus of her character. Before, she’d make tough calls but we always got the sense that she still cared, no matter what. Now, in that last scene, it felt like Connor had more compassion for the patient than she did.

S. Epatha Merkerson can sell that, because we know she can play the authority figure from her years as Lt. Anita Van Buren on Dick Wolf‘s Law & Order. But just because Goodwin has to crunch numbers, that shouldn’t mean she can’t have scenes or episodes where she still gives a damn. If not for the Christmas episode, we’d think Goodwin is turning into a real Scrooge.

Next: Is Chicago Med's Connor Rhodes breaking down?

What did you take away from this week’s Chicago Med episode? Leave us your thoughts on “Lemons and Lemonade” in the comments.

Chicago Med airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on NBC.