Chicago Med season 3, episode 15 recap: Devil In Disguise

Chicago Med’s doctors and nurses had demons to overcome in this week’s episode. Did they? Here’s what happened in Chicago Med season 3, episode 15.

This week’s Chicago Med was a hard case for the hospital staff, both professionally and personally, and some of them handled it better than others.

Tuesday’s episode is called “Devil In Disguise” and it opens with another cute moment between Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) and April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta).

But this one is interrupted by his sister (returning guest star Arden Cho), who’s been evicted and wants to crash at her brother’s apartment. April pushes Choi to say yes, so he reluctantly hands over his keys.

As if that wasn’t enough, Choi and April have to immediately spring into action to help a woman whose father pulls up outside the hospital.

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Inside, Reese’s father (recurring guest star Michel Gill) begs Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) to put him on the heart transplant list. When Charles says he can’t do that, Dad literally turns around and breaks up with Reese (Rachel DiPillo) to prove he’s self-sufficient.

Reese just stares blankly before Choi asks for a psych consult on his newly acquired patient. Why? Because the woman’s mother had her tied to a bed, claiming she’s possessed. As in, by a demon. As in, where’s Father Marcus Keane from The Exorcist?

We feel compelled to remind you that this is not Chicago Med‘s Halloween episode.

Charles refuses to let the woman out of his sight on medical grounds, and wisely separates her parents before they can fight more. Reese is still staring blankly, this time confused by the psych case of the week.

What else is going on? Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) is still getting the cold shoulder from Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) after last week’s “break” speech, before we finally meet the pair of conjoined twins we’ve heard so much about. Time to bring in our team, because their surgery is about to be moved up!

Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) has the oh so adorable moment of carrying the twins up to the pediatric ICU. Man, Connor would be the best dad ever if he could manage to hold onto any kind of a relationship.

Upstairs, he and the rest of the squad put together for this operation, including Dr. Ava Bekker (Norma Kuhling) realize that one of the twins is suffering from heart failure and they need to be separated pronto. Unfortunately, they’re not ready to be separated either, which gives us not one but two conundrums here. Uh-oh.

And by the way? The actress playing Dr. Frisch is Emma Duncan, whom you should recognize from the series finale of Chicago Justice. She was Sarah Wheeler, the daughter of Frank Linden (Richard Schiff) whose husband died in a crane accident.

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Connor is adamant that they find a way to save both twins, because duh. Dr. Isidore Latham (Ato Essandoh) decides that Connor will be his second on the separation procedure, which is a big win for Connor, but he does not give a damn right now.

Upstairs, Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) is having a meeting with Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) and hospital attorney Peter Kalmick (guest star Marc Grapey). They say her actions in last week’s episode could be excused as her operating under her paramedic’s license, but it turns out her license has expired.

The not-quite-possessed woman’s dad, played by Nick Searcy (Justified), tells Dr. Charles and Dr. Reese about his divorce and heart attack. Reese wonders if the woman is suffering from a severe form of separation anxiety, afraid of losing her father. Charles says hey, if there’s a demon, let’s go talk to the demon!

Meanwhile, Will treats a patient whose name is actually Malcolm Tucker. As in the character from The Thick Of It. Except this guy is not Peter Capaldi and he does not have diverticulitis. And Natalie does not want to help Will figure out what he does have.

Maggie goes to see Barry (guest star James Vincent Meredith); she wants him to reach out to one of his friends to “fudge” her license and save her career. He’s willing to help because he loves her, but not before pointing out the facts:

"Barry: You weren’t so keen on bending the truth when I was the one doing it."

Back to the twins: Connor continues to argue that he can save both babies, as even Dr. Latham doesn’t think he can. Dr. Frisch orders that the twins be separated immediately, which will kill the twin with heart failure but save the other. But because Connor is Connor, he’s not going to take this lying down—just look at his face as the squad breaks the news to the parents. It’s killing him not to say anything.

As everyone else prepares for the surgery, he has wheels turning in his head faster than a hamster on speed. So he marches into the pediatric ICU and decides to speak his mind, which convinces the parents but ticks off literally everyone else. But he’s got parental consent and so the plan has now changed whether they like it or not.

You go, Dr. Rhodes.

Maggie rushes to her hearing with her now-fixed license only to find that the whole thing went away, because the family of the patient she saved last week went to bat for her. There’s a sigh of relief, except for the part where she’s now falsified the expiration date on her license.

Will informs Malcolm that he has sarcoidosis, but his patient is still more concerned about money than his survival. It turns out that he skimped on his health insurance so that he could put money toward his son’s college tuition, and he’d rather be dead than broke.

"Will: Everything I did was to save your life.Malcolm: Well, you shouldn’t have."

Charles sits his patient’s parents down and expresses his belief that she suffers from “dissociative repression” after a trauma that happened when she was six. In short, she’s been taken over by her six-year-old self. He’s recognized the nonsense she spoke as actually being a Lewis Carroll poem, and the parents recall that they read the poem to their daughter as a child.

When Charles starts reading the poem again, everyone realizes that he’s right—and mom sees her daughter’s reaction and realizes that their child was molested by her father. Now it’s Reese’s turn to angrily yell at a patient’s father, even if it’s a little more private than when Natalie did it.

The final ten minutes of this Chicago Med episode kick off with Connor’s surgical gamble. He’s able to stabilize both twins, against all odds. Too bad we don’t get the moment where he tells everyone “I told you so” because he deserves it.

Dr. Frisch calls Connor a “diva” and wants him off the separation procedure, but Dr. Latham tells her to shove it, in a much nicer way than we would have. However, that’s just for show; he then replaces Connor with Ava anyway. Are you kidding us?!

Will finally confronts Natalie about avoiding him (apparently it’s literally been a week between this episode and the last one), but she just reiterates that she needs a break and leaves him in the, um, break room. And April confronts Emily about having her friends over to the apartment, but keeps it quiet to not upset Choi.

Connor and Will go to have several drinks and kvetch together, which they should do more often. Then we see Frisch walk into the bar, and Connor should slap her, but instead he just leaves as he is a good guy. Wait, why is she chatting up Will? Are you kidding us, again?!

“Devil In Disguise” is an interesting episode for Chicago Med, because it pays off several stories we’ve been building towards in past episodes. It’s just up to you if you think those payoffs are satisfying or not.

The biggest storyline is the conjoined twin procedure, on two fronts. For one, it’s revealed that Connor wins the competition to assist Latham in the procedure. But for two, we also finally get to see what all the fuss is about. This plot is great because we get back to the Good Guy Connor that we know, love and have rooted for after he’s become a bit thorny in some of the past episodes. It is refreshing to see him get back to the things we embrace most about him.

That’s what makes it so frustrating that he ends up screwed. Much like Maggie, he made a choice that saved a life, but all anyone cares about is that he’s not falling in line. Dr. Latham should have more trust and a better understanding of Connor than that, after all they’ve been through. Is this just drama to create drama? In fact, does the whole Frisch character just exist for drama?

The psych storyline is hit and miss; everyone knows it’s not really demonic possession, and it’s not too hard to figure out the actual cause, even if you don’t know the specifics. Charles takes Reese’s outburst toward the dad as her unloading the anger she has at her own father, which is awkward; why assign that bigger meaning to it? Why can’t she just be upset that this guy is a child molester who’s scarred his daughter for life?

This is a very well-cast episode; it’s great to see Ato Essandoh back, and Chicago Justice fans will get a kick out of Emma Duncan’s guest appearance. Plus, anyone who watched Justified and saw him as Art Mullen knows how talented Nick Searcy is, even if he’s playing a bad guy.

There’s some criticism to be had in how Maggie’s hearing and potential lawsuit go away easily off-screen; at least she’s still in a spot because of changing her license, but it feels like Med‘s version of the non-cliffhangers we’ve seen on Chicago Fire all season.

All in all, “Devil In Disguise” wraps up some threads that needed to be concluded, and if nothing else you can enjoy watching the actors work. It gives Chicago Med season 3 a chance to clear the deck and refocus as we head into the end of the season, and that’s just what we need right now.

Next: Which Chicago Med star is going back to his old show?

What did you think of this week’s Chicago Med episode? Leave your reaction to “Devil In Disguise” in the comments.

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

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