The Good Doctor is sadly coming to an end after seven seasons, and it has been quite the right over the years.
In the aptly titled “Goodbye,” the doctors work together to solve one of the most important cases of their careers. And there have been quite a few of those along the way. For star Freddie Highmore and showrunners David Shore and Liz Friedman, narrowing that down isn’t easy.
“The ones that come to mind are big sort of Shaun beats,” Highmore tells TV Insider, pointing to Season 4’s “Dr. Ted” and “Love’s Labor” in Season 6. “When Shaun and Lea [Paige Spara] tragically lost their first baby felt like a special episode. And Season 6 was a special season, very much a journey with ups and down that ultimately culminated in them having a kid in the season finale.”
For Shore, he does say choosing a favorite moment is like being asked, “Which one of your children do you love most?” but does share some. “There are moments in the pilot that will always stay with me just because of Freddie saying, ‘I’m Dr. Shaun Murphy. I’m a surgical resident at St. Bonaventure Hospital,’” he recalls. “Seeing Freddie work was incredible. After that, he surprised me over and over again, but that first time is just different.”
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Friedman points to “Faces” from Season 2. “The parade of faces, with the woman whose daughter gave her face for a face transplant,” she says, with Shore adding, “I get emotional just thinking about it. It was inspired by a real event. In some hospitals when people agree to allow their loved ones’ organs to be used for donation, to save lives, everybody in the hospital comes and stands for them and watches as they walk by. We had extras lining the hallway and they were weeping. It’s based on what really happens every day and the sacrifices people make, so that others can live.”
Like other medical dramas, The Good Doctor did write in the COVID pandemic, and Friedman names the two episodes that she and Shore wrote together, “Frontline, Part 1” and “Frontline, Part 2,” from Season 4. “Everything was shut down and we were figuring out how to get people back to Vancouver and the set, and then how to portray what doctors were going through, and somebody had the idea of telling the COVID story, concentrating two episodes on it,” she explains. “It was a very surreal experience of living a little bit of what your characters were living—but not really.”
And it sounds like The Good Doctor will be going out on a high note. Highmore also pointed to filming the series finale, noting it “brought us back to the pilot. David and Liz mined seemingly small moments and made them into something emotionally big and compelling satisfying. The big climax at the end of Season 1 was Shaun hugging Dr. Glassman [Richard Schiff]. That was big enough to end an entire season with that as Shaun’s emotional climax.”
The Good Doctor, Series Finale, Tuesday, May 21, 9/8c, ABC
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