While the series has always toed a certain line, Chicago Med is bringing its characters back in a way that could make one hated character look even worse. The series has never been shy about letting its doctors balance between sympathetic and disturbingly terrible, but a new Chicago Med season 11 update could turn out to devastate the show’s themes.
This update looks even worse in the face of the Chicago Med season 10 finale, which set things up so that Caitlin Lenox’s major storyline right now is the need to keep her terminal diagnosis a secret. Should she fail in that endeavor, she’ll accentuate what makes the best of NBC’s One Chicago shows so great while necessitating one change.
Caitlin Lenox Is Back To Playing God With Her Patients In Chicago Med Season 11
She No Longer Questions Whether Her Own Prognosis Is Enough
When Caitlin Lenox joined the cast of Chicago Med, she was almost universally despised for her character trait of choosing to value her own opinions above those of anybody else. Now, the Chicago Med season 11 trailer shows Lenox refusing to give up a case when she believes she’s right. This is unfortunate because Lenox was previously a franchise best.
She may have started out seemingly unlikable, but Lenox became a great character the hard way. Lenox showed herself to grow with every single episode. In the process, Caitlin went from being the least relatable character in the series to one of the most relatable, and she did so without technically changing anything about her general characterization.
The tragic reality of Caitlin’s arc is that she was never going to be the most likable character from day one. If anything, it was arguably necessary to show Lenox’s bad side before humanizing her. Doing so allowed her to play a better foil to Archer, another character who tends to overestimate his own ability to determine life and death.
Now, even if fans are wrong that Archer fathered Asher’s Chicago Med baby, he’s still had enough developments in his personal life that he has less time to show up as Caitlin’s unexpected spiritual guide. Lenox now faces the same character traits that soured her for fans in the first place, and it couldn’t be happening at a worse time.
Chicago Med Season 11 Threatens To Reverse Caitlin Lenox’s Growth As A Doctor
Lenox Put A Lot Of Time Into Proving She Has Hidden Depths
There are some tropes that demand an unflinching price, and the “holier than God” doctor is one of them. Whenever this character appears, having already become detached without any hard-earned development, it’s generally a reasonable assumption that characters like Lenox will turn out to be models of hubris. The sad part, however, is that Lenox very nearly avoided this fate.
Chicago Med’s season 10 Lenox storyline began by showing her as a person who thought her word to be entirely unquestionable, but she began showing more emotional vulnerability as the season went on. Rather than merely thinking herself to be the smartest person in the room, Caitlin established herself as a surprisingly compassionate doctor who cares about her patients’ wishes.
Now, that character development stands to be undone entirely. After a full season of character growth, Chicago Med’s trailer implies that Lenox will go back to the same behaviors that made her unlikable before. The problem isn’t even that an egotistical character can’t be liked, but Caitlin, in particular, is aggressive about dismissing her colleagues’ ideas when she’s like this.
To make matters worse, Caitlin Lenox’s first Chicago Med relationship was with a man who blatantly tried to take advantage of her. Med already has the worst relationship roster of any series in the One Chicago universe, but making this Lenox’s first relationship only worsens the issue. Fortunately, for Lenox at least, there’s still a clear path to full redemption.
How Chicago Med Season 11 Can Still Save Caitlin Lenox As A Likable Character
She Only Needs To Make Changes In The Dialogue Department
Even if the new season does bring back her God complex, all hope’s not yet lost for Caitlin Lenox. Her apparent regression could easily be part of a deeper narrative arc, allowing for the possibility that the more tolerant version of Caitlin refuses to give up on patients whose cases are personally significant in a way that triggers old habits.
In other words, this might not be an ego issue, even if it appears so at first. Will Halstead’s Chicago Med season 11 return could mean Lenox will see herself from an outside perspective. It’s also possible that Caitlin simply can’t accept failure when someone she cares about is on the line, which would provide deeper insight into her character.
Allowing Lenox to play God with a patient she truly cares about, rather than making exceptions for patients that characters like Ripley care about, would show her true weakness. However, Lenox has been portrayed as so “holier than thou” that her weaknesses can only make her more relatable at this point. In that respect, new characters could help her greatly.
Whether bringing in new characters or reviving the old, what really matters is that Lenox has made great strides to become one of the best characters in Chicago Med. Reversing that growth for the sake of revisiting storylines we’ve already seen before helps nobody. Caitlin deserves something new. Otherwise, fans can never really get to know her.
