Chicago Med season 5, episode 3 takeaways: In the Valley of the Shadows
What can Chicago Med fans learn from In the Valley of the Shadows? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago Med season 5, episode 3 takeaways.
What did One Chicago fans learn from the latest Chicago Med episode? Here’s what we took away from this week’s installment, “In the Valley of the Shadows.”
“In the Valley of the Shadows” featured a man who wanted to be declared legally dead, forcing his parents—and our doctors—to navigate more shaky legal and emotional ground. Elsewhere, Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) had to make a big decision about her continued breast cancer treatment.
If you missed any of this week’s episode or just want a refresher on the events that we’re about to discuss, you can catch up with our Chicago Med recap.
Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:
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1) Pacing is everything
A lot was packed into “In the Valley of the Shadows,” and we can’t help but think that dictated how the episode itself played out. Several key happenings took place entirely off-screen, leaving the episode without valuable context.
We didn’t get to see Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains) complete that risky surgery; we only found out what happened when it was told to us in a later scene.
We also didn’t get any understanding of what made Shep’s parents change their mind and agree to let him die. Perhaps Chicago Med wants us to imply that Dr. Charles’ (Oliver Platt) speech to Shep’s mom had convinced her somehow, but we don’t know.
A few seasons ago, the moment when they came to that realization would have been the button that tied together the whole episode. Now, it wasn’t even shown. Maybe this episode could have been stronger if it dropped one of its plots in order to devote more time to others.
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2) Will’s being weird
Chicago Med obviously wants to build up the drama between Manstead; you can’t blame the show for that, since it’s created yet another love triangle for the two. But man, was the way it handled it awkward this week!
Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) has every right to be concerned about Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) from a professional standpoint. She made a mistake, and it was a bit of a cop-out that the episode made her gaffe also the solution to their case.
Separately, if Will had simply been concerned about Natalie as a fellow doctor, that would have been fine and actually a great story. But the script mixed it in with his personal feelings toward her. When Natalie called him “obsessed” with her remembering, she wasn’t wrong. So what should have been a reasonable professional call wound up getting conflagrated with unresolved personal issues, and the scene didn’t have the same impact in either direction.
3) Where does Maggie go from here?
So after Maggie’s breakdown in this episode, she’s moving her treatment from Lakeshore over to Chicago Med. This is likely going to turn into exactly what she didn’t want, because the writers will get some mileage out of her situation being discovered by her co-workers. From the moment she said she wanted to keep it private, that set up the show making it not private.
On top of that, what will happen to her professionally, especially once the news comes out? We know she’s no longer working in the hybrid OR, but will she end up being limited in other was? Is Paula going to come back after the way Maggie treated her? Will Maggie be subject to the same concern that’s being shown for Natalie right now? There are so many questions this episode just opened up.
dark. Next. See this month's Chicago Med schedule
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