Chicago Med season 6, episode 3 takeaways: Do You Know The Way Home

Chicago Med season 6, 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, “Do You Know The Way Home.”

“Do You Know The Way Home” featured Dr. Crockett Marcel (Dominic Rains) treating an ex-lover, which made things slightly awkward for Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto). Elsewhere in the ED, a young woman was reunited with her mother years after being abducted.

If you missed any of the most recent 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 episode:

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1) Sometimes, insular storytelling has its downfalls

Of the three One Chicago series, Chicago Med is the one least likely to leave the workplace. The majority of scenes take place either in or around the hospital, or out on a medical call—while we do get to follow the characters home sometimes, it’s not a regular occurrence like it is on the other two shows.

That results in plotlines like this week’s main story, where Crockett’s ex-girlfriend turned up in the ED. We’ve constantly seen characters from people’s pasts become patients, whether it’s their exes or family members or somebody else they know. That’s the best way for the show to work them in, since our heroes don’t have a convenient way to run into them. The downside of that is it tends to feel like we’ve seen this story before…because we have.

It’s another example of plot being dictated by structure, and makes for some very awkward scenes around the Emergency Department. All things considered, Crockett handled it pretty well, at least in the ED (not counting his moment with Natalie, which you can rewatch below).

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2) Does the ED have an authority problem?

The B-story of this episode involved April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta) and Dr. Daniel Charles (Oliver Platt) going against Dr. Ethan Choi’s (Brian Tee) authority when they believed a patient had been abducted. Choi did eventually come around, and they were proven right in the end, but it’s the latest time a character on this show has done what they feel is right and been justified after the fact.

Natalie bucked authority and/or anyone else’s wishes so many times that it became a huge part of her character for a few seasons. April is now demonstrating that same self-centeredness. There are some consequences in the moment—they get scolded or that one time Natalie got arrested temporarily—but it usually turns out that what they did was okay because they were ultimately right.

It’d be interesting if there was another storyline where a character went with their instinct, ended up being wrong, and admitted it, just to mix things up a bit more. Or now that Choi is ED chief, will he crack down on people stepping over the line?

3) How often will we see Lanik again?

A small but cool development in this episode was that ex-ED chief Dr. James Lanik (recurring guest star Nate Santana) briefly resurfaced as a regular trauma surgeon. Santana’s a fun actor to watch, even if his character is insufferable, so it’s good that the writers didn’t drop him when Lanik’s job title changed. But how long will he stick around in the rest of season 6?

Chicago Med doesn’t need Lanik to referee arguments or issue orders anymore; that’s now Choi’s responsibility. As a garden-variety surgeon, he doesn’t have any authority or ability to meddle in other people’s cases. That would seem to limit Santana’s guest appearances in future, since Lanik doesn’t have an obvious function. But he still has value; he could collaborate with one of the main characters on a case, or be brought in for a consult.

Let’s hope that the writers find ways to work him in now and again. Maybe his demotion will take some pressure off his shoulders and/or give him a new outlook and he can grow as a character, too.

For the latest Chicago Med season 6 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Med category at One Chicago Center.