This week on The Good Doctor, Shaun and Carly work toward intimacy, while Claire continues to grapple with Breeze’s death — and finds a good friend in Melendez.
The episode begins at the loft and picks up some time after Shaun promised Carly that he won’t live with Lea. While it would seem only fair that Shaun find a new apartment, it’s Lea who has packed up her belongings. She tells Shaun how much she’s going to miss him, then Shaun reiterates just how much he loves Carly. “Now you can hang the toilet paper incorrectly anytime you want, and Carly and I can go back to the way things were before our fight,” he says. But Lea isn’t so sure. “Sometimes couples need a little time to recover,” she tells him.
At the hospital, Lim, Shaun and Morgan work on James, a long-distance runner with lymphedema. Because of a genetic mutation, his body is not responding to medication — and if they don’t find a medication that works for him, he’ll drown from the inside. Because of the unique nature of the case, Lim asks Carly to come up from the lab and lend the team her expertise. “This is exciting,” Shaun exclaims. But Carly is used to samples and slides, not patients. Shaun tells her that she’ll be fine.
The following night, Shaun and Carly head back to his apartment. Shaun is finally ready to have sex, but Carly puts a stop to it. “Did I do something wrong?” Shaun asks. “No, I’m sorry,” Carly replies. “It’s me.” Before they can have a real conversation, Shaun receives a page from Morgan: James has suffered an upper G.I. bleed. They head back to the hospital, where Carly suggests a path forward: They’ll use zebrafish to test myriad genetic mutations in order to figure out which medicine James will best respond to. Lim gives Carly the go-ahead, then Shaun accompanies his girlfriend to the lab, where they have a larger discussion about what went wrong in the bedroom.
“I told Lea to move out like you wanted. You said that things were OK. They aren’t. How do I make them OK?” Shaun asks. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know,” Carly answers. “I thought I was ready for us to be together, but my body had a different response… I can’t turn that response off any more than these fish can control how their mutation reacts to the medication.” Carly confirms that the “mutation” in their relationship was his trip to Wyoming, but she’s confident that they’ll find the “right medication” to overcome this barrier to intimacy.
Soon after, James takes another turn for the worse. Lim comes to Shaun and Carly and asks what medicine will give James a fighting chance. Shaun and Carly’s zebrafish experiment has narrowed the field considerably, but the MDs still have five potential remedies — and Carly has the final say. Worried that her decision might cost James his life, she heads down to the pathology lab and has a good cry. “He’s not a slide, he’s a person — a good person and he might die,” Carly tells Shaun. “This is why I like to stay in the lab.” But Shaun thinks she’s looking at this the wrong way. “If you had stayed in the lab, James would probably be dead already,” he says. “Your plan with the zebrafish gave him a chance. It was a beautiful, perfect idea from a beautiful, almost perfect person.” (D’aw!)
The couple eventually makes their way back upstairs, where Morgan catches up to them. “Nice call on the zebrafish,” she tells Carly. James is OK. Shaun takes Carly’s hand and they head home. “Did we fix our mutation?” he asks. Yes, she nods. We then cut to Shaun and Carly in bed. Carly is fast asleep, and Shaun’s got a goofy grin on his face. They’ve finally consummated the relationship.
While Lim’s team works on James, Melendez’s team works on Ryan, a teenage cancer patient who met his girlfriend, Angie, while they were both in chemotherapy. Claire sees how in love Ryan and Angie are, and tells Melendez that she “wouldn’t mind being an idiot like that again.” (Hmm…) Soon after, the doctors discover that Ryan’s treatment has worked, and his tumor has disappeared; he won’t need surgery. While he and Angie embrace, Angie collapses and starts seizing. Her cancer has returned, and her prognosis is not good. She’ll have to go under the knife and miss out on prom.
In the wake of Angie’s cancer reoccurrence, Angie’s mom prevents Ryan from visiting with her daughter. Claire, who worries that Ryan’s absence will depress Angie and affect her surgical outcome, gets the OK from Melendez to do what she can to make the patient happy. That’s when Claire decides to stage an impromptu prom at the hospital, with an assist from the surgical attending. At the makeshift dance, Melendez notices that Claire is glowing. “Looks like you may be feeling a little idiotic happiness right now,” he says. “Just a touch,” she replies. He then asks if she’d like to dance with a former prom king. (It’s a friendly gesture, but it’s also a tease for all those #Melendaire ‘shippers out there.)
