Chicago Med season 4, episode 20 recap: More Harm Than Good
Chicago Med turned slightly disturbing in More Harm Than Good. Find out what happened in our Chicago Med season 4, episode 20 recap.
This week’s Chicago Med had more than a few moments that were not only disturbing, but also frustrating. So who was right and who was wrong in this messy episode?
Wednesday’s installment “More Harm Than Good” saw Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) once again decide she knew best in treating a young woman who was revealed to be part of a cult that intended on killing themselves as a way of saving the planet.
Meanwhile, Natalie’s ex Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) followed his own gut a step too far as he investigated what appeared to be a black market kidney transplant—and also appeared to catch her new boyfriend Phillip (recurring guest star Ian Harding) in a lie.
Click through this slideshow to find out what happened in the latest Chicago Med episode for each of your favorite characters, starting with:
Natalie and Charles
Down in the Emergency Department, Natalie and Dr. Ethan Choi (Brian Tee) were greeted by Chicago PD‘s Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) as she helped wheel in two suspected drug mules. But were Gaia and Meadow really moving drugs or was there something more sinister at work?
Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) was immediately called in, while Chicago Med played really ominous music underneath and showed us a suspicious tattoo on Gaia’s arm. It looked more like they were part of a cult, which jibed with Burgess’s statement that ten other people had already died under similar circumstances.
Goodwin told Choi and Natalie that without consent from either woman, they couldn’t treat them. Naturally, that meant everything got worse, and Gaia killed herself by putting a bag over her head. A postmortem tox screen confirmed that the two women had been affected by thallium, not drugs.
Meadow only consented to treatment to get Natalie and Charles to leave her alone, so Chicago Med didn’t shock anyone when it revealed she never swallowed the pills. “We’re killing the planet and no one cares,” she said, “Except for us. The Angels of the Earth.”
Natalie wanted Charles to put Meadow on a psych hold to force her into treatment; Charles explained that’s not the purpose of a psych hold, and said the only option was to have her legally declared mentally incompetent.
Meadow was happy to explain her organization’s reasoning to Natalie, who was equally happy to point out the flaws in her logic. When that didn’t change her mind, Natalie chose to force treatment on her own. She ordered Meadow restrained over the woman’s vocal objections, while looking about as conflicted as she would ordering dessert.
Charles found out and chewed out Natalie, who physically tried to get in his way before he took out the tube that she’d put in. But Charles wasn’t blameless either: he convinced Meadow to take sleeping pills to give Natalie a sneaky way to finish treating the other woman.
Natalie thanked Charles for his help, but he told her that Meadow would need dozens of further doses to actually get better, and asked her if everything was okay. She, of course, insisted it was.