Who's Doing What To Whom and Why?: a TGD Regulars Update

 

I don’t know if it was worthwhile to worry about Morgan’s future on TGD as season 3 progressed, but I did so anyway.

 

It was a completely different kind of worry than I felt when Glassman was battling cancer. The difference is that word “battle”—unless an actor is getting ready to part ways with a show (or vice versa), there are plenty of ways for the character to triumph and carry on with their life, and career, as they choose.

 

But rheumatoid arthritis? For a young surgeon? There’s no real “battle” to be had; in Morgan’s case, there certainly wasn’t once she decided to put her own hands under the knife despite Glassman’s objections. One synovectomy, one earthquake, and one desperate need to help later, Dr. Morgan Reznik’s “Plan A” was over. As in… really over. Dr. Andrews confirmed it back in March.

 

I’d worried about her future as S3 progressed because, surprise surprise, I couldn’t tell where they were going with the story. Was it going to become something about Morgan developing a dependence on painkillers? About an ever-building web of lies to protect her secret? Was her hand going to fumble so badly while leading an operation that she’d become liable for permanently disabling a patient—or worse?

 

But just as Shaun and Lea have their catapult moments (as I call them) here and there, so do others at St. Bonaventure. In fact, Morgan had something very similar in the “Heartbreak” episode: once when she announced to Lim that she’d just performed her last surgery, and again when she changed her mind about the synovectomy that might allow her to be a card-carrying surgeon a little longer.

 

So by the “Hurt” episode that followed, all my guesses about Morgan’s future were fast flying out the window. And when she unbandaged her own hands near the end of that episode (and probably threw those out the window too), I was stumped and almost wondered if Fiona Gubelmann was leaving the show.

 

I shouldn’t have been so stumped, though, as changes in jobs and/or job titles had already happened to most TGD characters several times by the end of S3. Glassman, Andrews, Lim, Debbie, Lea… even residents like Shaun (when he was briefly moved to Pathology in S2) and Park—well, offscreen anyway, before we met him.

 

We now know that Morgan has chosen internal medicine as her new specialty, and in doing so gets plenty of crossover between Morgan’s patients and the surgical staff… and just enough time doing so to aggravate her, her former colleagues, or both. Good choice, TGD writers Morgan!

 

On one end of that irritation spectrum is her revised rivalry with Claire, and it’s a puzzling thing because it’s not a fair fight anymore—Claire still gets to do what Morgan can no longer do. There’ve been moments, such as near the end of “Newbies,” when Morgan’s acknowledgement and interpretation of this fact is pure agony (telling her firefighter patient to thank Claire, not her, for saving his life because Claire did the “important” work). But when she’s not getting real about things, and not doing an Armchair Surgeon routine in the O.R. gallery (which already led to Lim kicking her out one time; I suspect it won’t be the last)… Morgan delighted in a sort of satellite undermining of Claire’s decisions, also in “Newbies.” They only scratched the surface of this new dimension five episodes into the season, but I expect it to intensify considerably by late January/early February.

 

You‘ve probably noticed, as have I, that Claire’s personal life (and personal ambition, for that matter) have been on the back burner since she spent half the TGD pandemic searching for Deeper Meaning with Ghost Melendez. We were treated to that one brief scene of Claire and Lim duking it out video-game style, and it’d make sense for Claire to factor significantly in the Lim-centric episode coming January 11 (by “significantly” I mean she’s more likely to get a scene or two than others in TGD cast). But making her way from grief to that “amazing career” promised by Ghost Melendez has yet to be seen. Now that the Newbies have been established, I think Claire’s time to be tested is coming soon. With Morgan finding new and interesting ways to breathe down her neck from afar, of course!

 

In the meantime, Morgan seems to have plenty of time to play practical jokes on Park…

 

Well, I guess they weren’t all practical jokes. One time she hid all the large-size surgical scrubs (31 sets!) to see Park forced to come to the O.R. looking like he’d just been for a ride in some sort of surgeon’s clown car; another, she changed the ring tone on his phone to “Margaritaville” without telling him, which prompted some embarrassment at the nurses' station. But she also went out of her way to chase him down in the parking garage and hit him with questions until he reluctantly shared the news about his brand-new divorce…which led to Park and Morgan now doing the roommate thang.

 

So where’s that going to go, and how long will it take to get there? That remains to be seen, but anyone who thought Park and Morgan were hooking up pre “Winter Finale” came away disappointed. Or maybe more like… relieved? 

I guess it depends on your enthusiasm for the Park/Morgan possibility. Personally, I support it. I don’t think they’re destined for long-term coupledom, but aside from that I don’t have any specific expectations so I’ll welcome whatever TGD writers want to send our way. The rivalry they shared last season was fun; now that they’re not in direct competition with each other—and now that Park’s made his divorce final—the options seem wide open. The “bonding over failed relationships” thing they did throughout “Fault” was a lot more fun than I anticipated… I think that’s because I figured they’d get a little more serious about the subject at hand a little sooner. But the investigative back-and-forth was a fun way to learn more about the two characters, particularly Morgan. And the trash can fire-of-mourning ceremony—which not only honored what they’re moving away from, but celebrated their respective baby steps towards moving forward (Bumble, “swiping right”)—took them to a new level. Color me intrigued!

 

One more thing about Park while I’m thinking about it… of the four “veteran” residents, I believe he’s the only one we have yet to see leading a surgery. (Remember that he got called away during Shaun’s initial attempt at a lead surgery… while Shaun ultimately had to forfeit that one, Park successfully led his first offscreen.) So I hope the show finds a way to work a Park-led scenario this season—given that both Lim and Andrews seem to have a lot of faith in him, it’d be interesting to see that faith challenged by Park and/or whatever Newbie he might be supervising at the time.

 

Speaking of Andrews, and Newbies… pretty savvy of TGD to give newbie Olivia a familial connection to Andrews. When word went around that a character from the show wasn’t going to survive last season’s earthquake, I initially thought of Andrews (until it became clear he wasn’t anywhere near the brewpub rescue efforts) because he seemed like a doctor with little on his emotional plate once he acclimated to his demotion. With “Livvy” as his niece, however, Andrews has some real skin in the game of Survivor: Newbies Edition. What’s more, it puts him on a compatible level of sorts with Glassman. The situations aren’t quite the same of course, given Shaun has ASD and Olivia doesn’t. But the nepotism involving the latter is real, so I hope it leads to—among other things—some hard-hitting scenes with Glassman and Andrews like we probably haven’t seen since S1.

 

Which brings us to Dr. Audrey Lim, current chief of surgery and the one whose romantic relationship with the late Dr. Melendez has been overshadowed by the Melendaire fallout… until now. “Lim” (4.6), the episode promised to us when TGD returns on January 11, is exciting to me because she’s a character who, like Lea, came into the show with more dimensions than a show like this can handle on the regular:

*  She came in midway through S1(recurring, like Lea before her and Morgan after her), so her introduction was somewhat truncated

*  Her strength, confidence, and independence shone through when she was revealed (in 2.3 “36 Hours) to be a motorcycle enthusiast willing to make enough ruckus over a traffic ticket to be jailed in contempt of court

*  Her gentle side has been underscored not only in some of her dealings with Shaun, but in that weird little subplot of 3.16 “Autopsy” that had Lim chasing down an 8 year-old wandering around St. B while her mom was hospitalized.

*  At various times in the series she’s had historical touchpoints with Glassman, Melendez, and most recently with Nurse Patringa (R.I.P.)

*  And of course when she was the doctor down for the count in season 2’s “Quarantine” 2-parter, it kicked her romantic entanglement with Melendez into high gear. Although she broke up with him in S3’s “Moonshot” episode, most of her personal aftermath was unseen until Melendez’s earthquake injuries sealed his fate.

 

What’s become of Lim since then? We know she had the park bench ritual going with Claire until the latter declared (after a considerable amount of time spent with Ghost Melendez) she was ready to move on. We know Lim was as gutted by the pandemic as any doctor on the show—moreso, maybe, as chief of surgery—but we don’t know much about how she dealt with that so soon after Melendez’s death. We know she currently “likes to fill her evenings with numbing mindlessness” as per her response to Claire about why she’s so good at video games. (Oh, and if we’re to deduce anything from her on-screen video game persona… her middle name starts with an X. At least, that’s how it translates from Chinese.)

 

And finally, we have those moments during the climactic scene in “Fault” that found Lim hearing nothing but the flatline for a few moments… while the intensity mounted for Dr. Wolke and others in the O.R. I’ve got to presume this will be explained, in some manner, next episode—perhaps even re-visiting this scene from Lim’s perspective.

 

I’ve heard some associate Lim’s “flatline moment” with Melendez’s death, and I suppose that could be on target. My own guess, though, is that if her former flame turns up in “Lim” it will be in unseen-before flashbacks. They already did present-day Neil, so to speak… why repeat it? In Lim’s case, I suspect it’ll be more valuable to see Limlendez in earlier incarnations—residents days, as a couple, as a broken-up couple trying again to be colleagues. I can also see the Lim-centric episode perhaps taking us to parts of her life we haven’t seen up close yet, such as her family of origin and her personal struggles as a woman of color (something over which she’s bonded with Claire) rising to the top in a male-dominated industry.

 

So many options for this one! I’d better stop there before I get myself disappointed with what doesn’t make the cut on this next episode.

 

How do YOU feel about developments with the veteran TGD characters so far this season? Share your thoughts in the comments!