Chicago Med season 4 character preview: Sharon Goodwin

What should happen

Chicago Med season 4 should allow Sharon Goodwin to have the storyline that we’ve been waiting for: a serious exploration of the business of running a hospital. The show continually toys with this through her character, but there’s so much more that it could do on that side of the hospital, and it feels like this is the season where it will finally step up its game on that topic.

The introduction of Gwen Garrett (recurring guest star Heather Headley) in the previous season’s finale sets up a classic battle. Gwen deals with the facts and figures; Goodwin’s focus is on their patients. If you’ve watched enough TV medical dramas, you’ve seen this general argument before; it’s a staple of the genre.

In this case, though, that’s not a bad thing because Chicago Med hasn’t really gone there yet. We want to see Goodwin have to have serious discussions about good business versus good medicine and for them to be about more than whatever the issue of the week is.

Goodwin feels somewhat like everyone’s mom, in that she pops up to discipline them and has to keep them out of trouble. It’d be fantastic if we got to see some of her out from behind her desk, too, as she was a nurse. More of Goodwin being hands-on is always welcome, and would help to set her apart from every other TV boss.