[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 9 “No Love Lost.”]
The good news: Chicago Med didn’t just lose one of its own. The even better news: It’s also looking like a doctor who planned to resign isn’t going anywhere.
Goodwin’s (S. Epatha Merkerson) injuries after being attacked and stabbed by the wife of a patient who died (due to a tough choice that had to be made during a blood shortage) are serious. Archer (Steven Weber), who had slipped his resignation letter under her door, first saves her during the attack; his shout once he rushes to her aid distracts Cassidy long enough that Goodwin can turn the knife around on her — pointedly avoiding the major organs, as Maggie (Marlyne Barrett) stresses later. Archer then carries Goodwin down to the ED, where it’s all hands on deck to work on her.
“She’s hour to hour,” Archer tells Charles (Oliver Platt). “It’s a waiting game now.” (Charles’ frustrated, sarcastic “my best friend in the world’s life isn’t hanging by a thread a floor below us,” as he deals with a complaint filed against him by Rachel DiPillo‘s Reese is heartbreaking.)
Elizabeth Sisson / NBC
Goodwin needs a Whipple, to reroute her digestive tract so it functions normally after her pancreas is damaged, but her daughter hesitates to give her consent due to the risk. Once Goodwin’s on the table, however, Archer decides they have to pivot and makes the call. The doctors nearly lose her, but she survives. “She’s going to live. She’s strong — stronger than you’ll ever be,” Maggie makes sure Cassidy knows as the police take her out of the hospital.
Charles visits Goodwin in her room, and she assures him and her daughter they won’t get rid of her for a long time. He brings Reese in, and Goodwin quips, “Who’s next, Will Halstead?” Charles then tells her, “You scared the crap out of me. Please don’t do that again.”
Goodwin asks Archer how close she came. “You had one foot firmly in the grave,” he admits. She remembers everything, “but mostly I remember your voice over me as I was drifting away, so I knew I still had a chance. … You not only saved my life, but you saved my ability to live it the way I want.” And what of Archer’s resignation letter? Well, Goodwin asks him to tear it up. He tries to put it off to another day, but she refuses to let him. “I want you to promise me that you’ll stay,” she says, and yes, she knows it’s “highly manipulative. But Gaffney needs you, Dean. And so do I.”
After this, Archer’s “actually in a fairly deep state of contemplation,” Weber tells TV Insider. “He knows that he’s, in a way, been called to this kind of work. In fact, maybe he feels a little bit more of that than he ever did, whereas it was to prove himself or to be a man or some of that crap. He did want to help people, but this is something more, so he sees himself in a different way that he’s trying to take the lessons he learned about personal connection, especially with Hannah [Jessy Schram], to his work and to the world in general. He’s thinking for the first time in his life about meaning, about mortality in a way that doesn’t frighten him or threaten him.”
That doesn’t mean that it will be easy. He’ll still be facing “triggers,” says Weber, namely in his relationship with Lenox (Sarah Ramos). The two were previously co-chiefs of the ED, until Weber was demoted, which then led to his resignation. “It’s a competition thing. It’s like a pissing match, but he’s learning to assess that type of response to people and the world. So what does it mean? It just means that he’s still Archer, but he’s Archer 2.0,” he explains. “It’s like the Grinch: His heart is enlarging.”
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This does seem like the perfect way to leverage himself back into that chief role; he did, after all, help save Goodwin’s life. But maybe that’s not the kind of person he is anymore.
“I’m not sure he is in that hyper-competitive mindset anymore,” admits Weber. “I’m sure he’s now seeing that anything that comes his way is an opportunity for something, for not just business advancement, not just being a boss, but for learning.”
The star points out that his son has left town and he’s not in a romantic relationship. “He’s a ship being tossed — not even a ship, he’s just a lonely boat,” he says. “But he still has to navigate, to continue this metaphor, but he’s going to do it with less anxiety and less reactivity, and he’s going to be less of a dick.”
Without spoiling anything to come, Weber promises that what’s coming up will “blow your mind” and praises Merkerson. “Epatha hits some levels of action, of real, authentic, gorgeous acting that I hope people see.”
What did you think of the midseason premiere? What are you hoping to see in the episodes to come? Let us know in the comments section below.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
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