The Good Doctor

Review by Brian Slade

With the small screen world spread so thinly across so many channels and streaming platforms, it can be difficult to find new ways to create noteworthy medical dramas. In 2017 ABC debuted a new drama starring Freddie Highmore as an autistic surgical resident with Savant Syndrome in The Good Doctor.

The Good Doctor was based on a 2013 show translated to the same name made in South Korea. Dr Shaun Murphy (Highmore) is joining St Bonaventure Hospital in San Jose as a surgical resident, but his appearance there is most definitely not without its critics. Shaun has had a troubled life. His father was violent, and his mother didn’t intervene, so Shaun and his older brother Steve, who we see in flashbacks, ran away. Steve promised to forever be Shaun’s guardian but was killed in an accident that left Shaun completely alone. With attempts to reunite him with his parents having understandably failed, the father figure that Shaun needed came in the form of Dr Aaron Glassman.

Glassman (Richard Schiff) is now president of St Bonaventure Hospital. It is there that Shaun wishes to apply for a junior surgical residency. On the way to the hospital, Shaun is witness to a child having a life-threatening accident, successfully saving the boy’s life with his accurate on the spot diagnosis but agitating the doctors in attendance in the process. Dr Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas) and Dr Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez) are both impressed but frustrated at the interference in their patient’s care.

Glassman is challenged as to the suitability of Shaun for a hospital environment. Glassman is convinced that Shaun can thrive and that his surgical knowledge will be of greater benefit to the hospital than any social compromises surfacing from his conditions. He is convinced enough to suggest that if Shaun fails, he will resign the presidency of the hospital.

Dr Browne eventually becomes Shaun’s most trusted friend within the hospital staff, but others are more difficult to win over. Top of that particular list is Dr Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper), vice-president to Glassman and the most reluctant to take Shaun onboard. Alongside Dr Browne is Dr Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu), a more experienced staff member who comes round to Shaun’s ways more quickly.

While most of the show is focussed on the dramas of the hospital, away from there one character is vital to the story of Shaun’s progress – Lea Diallo. Lea (Paige Spara) is initially a wild child occupying the neighbouring apartment to Shaun. She takes him on a road trip and introduces him to elements of the world he would normally find uncomfortable, like drinking and spontaneity.

Shaun’s progress through the seven seasons is cornered largely by his relationships with Dr Glassman and Lea. Fatherly Glassman does his best for Shaun, but with his own health and relationship problems the two clash on many occasions. Glassman also struggles with the influence Lea has on him in their early friendship, which eventually becomes a romantic one.

The writers of The Good Doctor weren’t afraid to freshen things up. It wasn’t a show to get too attached to characters as aside from Shaun, Lea and Glassman, everybody else came and went, some more dramatically than others. Becoming significant characters beyond the first season were Doctors Park (Will Yun Lee), Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Lim (Christina Chang) and in later series, Allen (Bria Samone Henderson) and Wolke (Noah Galvin). Each had their own skills and demons, particularly Dr Lim, who would become president at the hospital but who would also experience paralysis when under the knife to Dr Murphy.

The Good Doctor covered every topic imaginable. Some carried an element of humour, but for the most part there was heavy-hearted drama, in or out of the hospital setting. Inevitably Shaun would be at the centre of much of it, fighting perceptions of his condition and battling to rise in the ranks of the hospital, as well as becoming a family man. Subject matters like racism, sexism – in fact any -ism one might imagine – are commonplace, and there was even one episode specifically related to the pandemic and the hospital’s battle with it.

There are two schools of thought with the show’s approach to Shaun’s autism. One is that it presents an overly critical view of those with autism – in his case, his value is only based on his medical skills enhanced by his conditions, displayed in the show by Shaun looking passively into space as graphics display complicated medical formula and case studies on screen. In other words, without this his autism would prevent him from being a functional part of the world. But Highmore went to pains to point out that Shaun is portrayed as just one person encountering these conditions and is not supposed to be an accurate blueprint of what life is like for those with autism.

The other is the more positive side of the coin – that understanding of autism in the viewer is enhanced by Shaun’s success. There are many uncomfortable moments where Shaun finds himself overwhelmed, and where his social challenges cause him to be too cold and honest when dealing with patients…but undoubtedly Shaun is somewhat of an antihero in his role, and throughout the seven series we are always rooting for him, not specifically because of his condition, but because he is a good person.

Whatever your viewpoint on the specific challenges face by Dr Shaun Murphy, it was a successful run for The Good Doctor, helping it carve a spot in the genre all of its own, and for that one can only applaud the producers, writers and stars.