Critical Care & Compassion: The Dedicated Doctors and Nurses of Chicago Med, Delivering Hope and Healing in the Face of Unpredictable Emergencies.

Sully’s visit to Chicago Med reveals that he’s in the early stages of lung cancer, but the other man says he “only came [to the hospital] to stay out of jail” and has no interest in treatment. Ripley asks Dr. Daniel Charles if Sully is in his right mind, and when Charles tells him that there’s nothing they can do, Ripley takes the step of physically blocking him from leaving the Emergency Department. This turns into a brief brawl; the fight isn’t that surprising either, because the ED has seen a lot worse. It’s what the fight says about Ripley that matters. It shows that he is his own worst critic. He’s furious with himself, takes immediate accountability for his mistake, and learns the lesson that Sully was looking for his friend — not someone else to judge him. Unlike Zola, Ripley’s chaos is internal. Even in the most archetypal storyline, he doesn’t fit the mold, and that’s something Chicago Med needs.

Mitchell is fantastic at building Ripley’s emotional turmoil throughout the story so it gets to the point where his loss of control is believable, and then at conveying the character’s disappointment in himself. Those notes are what give the plot its depth. If there’s a criticism to be had, it’s that this story would have had an even more complex angle with a different patient. If Ripley was willing to literally fight for a patient he didn’t have a personal stake in, then it would be just Ripley also fighting for what he believes in — it takes away the excuse of him being biased. But what is on the screen at least shows how much he’s committed to doing the right thing now, even if he didn’t back then.

Are Chicago Med’s Maggie and Goodwin Stories Too on the Nose?

Both Characters Face Decisions in Season 9, Episode 6

“I Told Myself That I Was Done With You” features two other stories for Maggie Lockwood and Sharon Goodwin respectively. Maggie is still dealing with her divorce from Ben Campbell, with early dialogue revealing that she’s been spending more time in the hospital — even sleeping in the on-call room. Maggie and Archer treat a young man named Caleb, who wants to have a particular surgery that could help him pursue his goal of playing professional basketball. Caleb’s mother Deb is staunchly opposed to the procedure, because their doctor back home in Oakland has told them that Caleb needs to wait another 10 months to have it. Archer offers to speak to the other doctor… but of course, that would tie the plot up too quickly, so instead it’s a conversation that Maggie has with Deb that turns the tide.

It’s pretty clear that this case of the week exists to reflect Maggie’s own issues with moving on. The conversation between Maggie and Deb is the best example; when Maggie talks about wanting to “hold on to what’s familiar… your world has been turned inside out,” that’s an obvious parallel to her using the hospital to do the same thing. Furthermore, the resolution of the plot becomes more about Maggie. After she stops Deb from leaving the hospital, Deb changes her mind about the surgery — yet that important moment for Deb and her son happens off-screen. Why not show the beat when mother and son get on the same page? The audience does get to see both Deb and Caleb later, after the surgery, but then the plot is mostly about Deb thanking Maggie, and Maggie finally deciding to go home.

Elsewhere, Goodwin learns that her ex-husband Bert has Alzheimer’s dementia, and goes through a phase where she tells Charles how all of Bert’s care is going to fall on her and that “I can’t do it, Daniel.” But she changes her tune when she and Charles find Bert in his living room and she sees how scared he is. This gets the least screen time of all the plots, so that shift in her thinking doesn’t hit quite the way it should. But neither Goodwin nor Maggie’s ex-relationship stories are that interesting. Neither adds much to a Chicago Med episode that reminds viewers the hospital is always in some kind of turmoil. As Ripley learns by the end, sometimes it’s okay to take a step back.