It’s not easy saying goodbye to a show like The Good Doctor, a medical drama that viewers have bonded with over seven seasons, and compounding that loss is a serious cancer diagnosis for a beloved main character, Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff), whose terminal illness was confirmed in Tuesday’s penultimate episode, “Unconditional.”
Not only is Dr. Glassman a gifted surgeon, but he’s also a mentor and father figure to Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore), who came to St. Bonaventure Hospital as an innocent young man and achieved what he did in part because of Glassman’s unrelenting faith and guidance.
What weepy fans and distraught viewers want to know is: Why? Why did The Good Doctor writers decide to bring back Dr. Glassman’s cancer? Parade put the question to showrunners and co-executive producers David Shore and Liz Friedman.
“It seemed like a natural place for the story to go,” Friedman offered. “We had [Dr. Glassman] deal with this illness previously and it just seemed a real natural thing for us, that a challenge that Shaun would face is the passing of his mentor,”
“Particularly having to deal with it in a situation where it happens, not out of the blue, but having some preparation for it and some choices of how to handle that,” she added. “That has always seemed like an area that would be extremely challenging for Shaun, and so it was a natural place for us to go to test him once again.”
Shore, who was also the creator of the hit medical drama House, sees this choice “to some extent as the natural course of any story,” he told Parade. “It’s very much a parent-child relationship and the show has been very much about Dr. Murphy facing new challenges. The biggest one is arguably facing life without a parent. I thought it was a nice way to bookend it.”
While bringing back Glassman’s cancer was not always the plan, Friedman said that “it was always a big story element that we thought there was a good chance would come back into play, and that when it happened, it would be a very significant challenge for Shaun.”
Knowing that Dr. Murphy is highly sensitive, especially regarding his supportive relationship with Dr. Glassman, who is referred to as Dr. Murphy’s infant son Steve’s honorary grandpa, viewers can expect Dr. Murphy to cling to the familiar.
“I think you can expect Shaun to have an impulse to rely very heavily on the things that are most comfortable and familiar to him, which is medicine,” Friedman said.
“And to sometimes have a hard time or a challenge for him to empathize with other people’s responses, to take on somebody else’s emotional point of view,” she continued. “As we know, he and Glassman have a different emotional point of view on how to handle this. Then I think we will also see how much Shaun has learned and grown as a person over the course of the show.”
Overall, Friedman teases that we are “certainly going to see Shaun facing one of the biggest challenges he has ever faced and a real struggle to accept the feelings of others and to be put in that challenged position with a bit of a limited time frame. There’s a ticking clock here!”
Shore added that the Season 7 finale, which is also the series finale, will provide fans with an ending that’s “very true to our show.”
“Life doesn’t always work out,” he said, “but there’s a lot of good there.”
