Chicago Med season 3, episode 14 recap: Lock It Down

Chicago Med goes into lockdown and Chicago Med fans go for a ride this week. Here’s what happened in Chicago Med season 3, episode 14.

This week’s episode of Chicago Med turned the hospital upside down and backwards.

Tuesday’s episode is called “Lock It Down” and starts with a baby. Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) is giving the adorable kid an X-ray, trying to figure out what’s wrong with him. He’s convinced the poor kid has pneumonia.

While he admits the baby to the pediatric ICU, Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) gets another earful from Dr. Sarah Reese (Rachel DiPillo), who snuck a look at her dad’s chart and figured out that he’s a “psychopath.”

She’s upset that she didn’t know sooner, and Charles tries to console her by saying that at least Dad’s original departure had nothing to do with her, but that doesn’t make Reese feel any better.

Back downstairs, Halstead gets a call and finds out that the baby never made it to the PICU. So where the flying heck is the baby?!

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Everyone is looking for the kid while Will and Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) interview the parents, who tell them a woman was posing as a nurse. Goodwin immediately orders a lockdown to keep the child hopefully in the hospital.

One patient barely gets in the door in time and is handed off to Noah Sexton (recurring guest star Roland Buck III). Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) lets in one other patient she shouldn’t, who’s been hurt in a bar fight and is handed off to Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee).

Choi is in immediate need of a cardiothoracic surgeon, but one isn’t available. Why? Because Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) has been forced into going to a fundraising mixer.

He looks like he’d rather do heart surgery on himself, especially when he finds out his dad (recurring guest star D.W. Moffett) is there and has been talking up his ex-fling Dr. Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling). In fact, Dad seems to actually like Ava. Uh-oh.

"Connor: I wouldn’t believe everything my father tells you."

Goodwin asks Charles and Reese to consult on the abduction, thinking they can provide insight into who they’re looking for. Charles wonders if the woman was a previous patient since she knew where the PICU was, and suddenly he and Reese are leading Baby Search 2018. Although they are very divided on who the perpetrator may be.

Elsewhere Will, burdened by guilt over the abduction, teams up with Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) to help a cancer patient from another hospital. Unfortunately, Chicago Med’s oncologist doesn’t think there’s anything they can do to help. The patient takes it on the chin, including the part where he can’t leave the hospital because of the lockdown.

Natalie, however, is much less happy when Will shuts down her idea of an unproven treatment. She goes around him to the patient himself, and the patient signs off on it. There has to be some kind of repercussion for this, right?

"Natalie: What happened to you? You used to go to any length to try and save someone."

Choi, knowing he can’t do heart surgery, has now decided to call Connor and Ava via video chat for help. Give him props for knowing what he doesn’t know. Unfortunately, he’s in over his head so as Ava literally holds the phone, Connor decides to do some breaking and entering—into his own hospital.

One thousand boss points, Dr. Rhodes.

When arguing with the patrol officer outside doesn’t work, Connor leans on the security guard, who directs him to a secret tunnel. (Yes, Chicago Med has a secret tunnel!) He gets to wander through the bowels of the hospital all X-Files-like for a few minutes while Will confronts Natalie about disobeying a direct order. She says he didn’t listen to her; he points out that he did, he just didn’t agree with her. And then Gary dies all of two and a half minutes later.

Baby Search 2018 finds the baby’s ID bracelet cut off in a stairwell, while Connor channels his inner Jack Bauer to get into the hospital. He literally busts through the door into Pathology (too bad Patti Murin is doing Frozen and wasn’t available for this!), then rushes into the ED just in the nick of time.

"Choi: How’d you get in here?Connor: Long story."

Working together, Choi and Connor are able to stabilize the patient long enough to get him up to the operating room. And speaking of teamwork, Will takes the bullet for Natalie by saying that he gave Gary the experimental treatment; Goodwin tells him he’ll face the disciplinary committee.

Natalie is angry at him, too, saying that “you do not need to protect me.” And then she makes it into a bit of sexism, adding that he wouldn’t do the same for Choi or Noah “because they’re men.”

Wait, what?!

And with everyone else indisposed, Maggie breaks something of her own—a rule as she jumps in to help Noah’s patient before it’s too late. Noah is not happy that she went against the rules, but April sets him straight. Dude, you’re a newbie, you have no place talking like that especially since you not being there caused the problem to begin with! But of course, with the patient worsening, Noah wants to stare down Maggie.

Can Chicago Med get us back to the missing baby? Goodwin has finally identified the woman who took her as a former patient named Joanna, and Charles deduces she could be holed up in the old maternity wing—which of course security did not check as it’s not part of the hospital anymore. They find the baby almost immediately; now they have to get him back from Joanna.

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Reese gets Joanna to trust her, although the trust evaporates as soon as Joanna is arrested for the kidnapping. But her arrest ends the lockdown so it’s time to pick up the pieces from all of the work that happened in between.

Turns out that Noah’s patient took a turn for the worse, and Maggie has to defend her choice not to wait for a doctor. Goodwin warns her that she’s in legal trouble and suspends her, even though she says she’d have done the same thing. It’s a completely incredulous moment, and good on our head nurse for pointing out that the patient would’ve died if she’d done nothing.

At least Connor and Ava seem to be getting back on the same page, while Will gets off the hook when it turns out Natalie’s treatment didn’t kill Gary after all. It actually helped slightly. Will then admits Natalie did it, but the oncologist doesn’t care. He literally says “whatever.”

It’s an easy out in the plot, but it doesn’t change Natalie’s feeling that her relationship with Will “puts me in a kind of jail” professionally. She wants a break from Manstead. And that is a weird and stunted way to end an otherwise interesting episode.

“Lock It Down” is not your average episode of Chicago Med. A bunch of things happen here that you wouldn’t see in any other week, and that makes this episode a whole lot of fun. It’s a wild ride to see Connor Rhodes literally busting down doors, and Ethan Choi trying to do heart surgery, and a little amateur sleuthing from Daniel Charles—who’s totally an armchair Sherlock.

There are tiny little details here that we could even file away for future use, like the whole tunnel into the hospital, or that there was a previous maternity wing. It just enriches the world of Chicago Med and who knows, maybe these concepts could come up in a future episode. Plus, you get the feel-good bonus of once again seeing our doctors and nurses definitely go above and beyond to do what their patients need them to do.

To be fair, there are some flaws here. Connor’s father Cornelius instantly taking to Ava, after hating Robin, feels unintentionally like Chicago Med is trying to get us to root for Connor and Ava because see, even his dad likes her! And Cornelius is a bit creepy, hovering behind Ava while she’s trying to help Choi and April.

Plus, the way Natalie is written for the second week in a row is frustrating. Why on Earth should Will take the fall for her mistake? He’s let her off with a slap on the wrist before; she needs to face the consequences of her behavior. And he may say that he’s doing it because he’s the attending, but that doesn’t sound like he means that. It feels like he’s doing this for his girlfriend, which isn’t fair to either character. They are mature enough to separate work and personal lives.

And then for Natalie to make it a gender issue? Where does that come from? That’s completely unfounded, especially when she’s talking to Will. If nothing else, she ought to know him better than that. It feels like Chicago Med doing to Manstead what Chicago Fire did to Brettonio last season; having a fight to fight.

Last but not least, Maggie’s suspension is a bit of a hot-button issue. Yes, legally and procedurally she should have waited for a doctor, but there was no doctor. Do we go by the letter of the law or the spirit of the law? It’s a catch-22; she would’ve been in a whole other kind of trouble for letting a patient die, and morally that’s just not right. Med is punishing her here, and it feels wrong even as Goodwin spells it out.

Those aspects drag down this episode in places, but most of it is exciting and different and there’s a lot of fun to be had. There should be episodes like this more often.

Next: Chicago Med star to revisit his previous TV role

What did you think of this week’s Chicago Med episode? Leave your reaction to “Lock It Down” in the comments.

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

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