Chicago Med season 4 character review: Natalie Manning

What it means

Natalie’s season started off with a lot of promise, but then it felt like drama was being thrown in just for drama’s sake, and Chicago Med ended up highlighting some of the reasons why she can come off as unlikeable.

The second half of her season had a lot of issues. The writers had her involved in a helicopter crash, in a clear instance of “injuring a character so two of them make up” (a plot device that was used more than once this season). Then Natalie continued to pressure Will, which got annoying, though to be fair, Will’s issues dragged out for a while so one could argue that she would have behaved differently if he’d been able to actually work anything out.

But it’s the Phillip storyline that got ridiculous. Aside from having yet another love triangle for Manstead (or square, if you want to count Ingrid Lee), it was just all kinds of wrong. To have her flirting with a patient’s widower was unprofessional, but nobody seemed to care; Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) mentioned it but then in the same scene encouraged Natalie to go to him.

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The bigger issue, though, was just how uncomfortable and rushed it was. The man loses his wife, and then just a few weeks or months later, Natalie’s kissing him? Then they’re suddenly so deep in love like his wife’s just been forgotten? And he’s planning to propose marriage? Chicago Med did drop a hint about something being up with Phillip, but since it never followed through, all the fans can surmise is that this is creepy and doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The good news is, the writers were also pretty clear that this was just a speed bump for Natalie and Will getting back together—presuming she survives. More on that in the next slide.