This episode does a good job of highlighting how many faces the results of trauma take, with their associated multiple responses along a large spectrum, just like humanity at large varies along a spectrum of responses generally. We see at least five doctors and one particular patient cope (or not so much) with the burden of some level of PTSD affecting them. That, in part, the experience and the responses we each have varies according to our specific background, characteristics and prior life experiences is emphasized really well. I would hope the drama here might impress this, if not as specifically as I write about it here, and especially with the empath's thread throughout the episode providing its prompting, might prompt a certain level of new or improved understanding of the illness that PTSD genuinely is.
I suspect this episode might cause some less well-informed persons (especially perhaps with such fortunately privileged lives to date they are unable to relate to how brain chemistry and emotion-related reactions can change following trauma, and alter the nervous system?) to trivialize one or another of these characters' experiences and resulting challenge with the high stress impacts - some of which may seem disproportionate to the cause, in some cases, where viewers cannot relate to the situation the character is portrayed in. Still, the soldier's traumatic experience as an apparent result of not observing an IED that kills others is not, in my opinion, inherently different to that of the traumatic loss created by one intern's/resident's fatal error with a patient. That combination of apparent guilt and grief resulting in part from a lack of control, especially where theoretically that was the job, to control the outcome, affecting the brain so badly, is no different I imagine, to the reliving and challenge to function that the student who couldn't perform a certain procedure found was the 'gut' response to her own PTS response in her "moment of truth" poised to carry out said procedure, notwithstanding what's revealed before and after this, as her intellectual intentions. Almost like a PSA for PTSD awareness, this episode shows us some of the many faces of PTSD!
All that said, given the trajectory of the season and this episode's implicit acknowledgement of COVID-19 in The Good Doctor's now-post-COVID world, via Lim's growing struggle arising from her pandemic experiences, it reflected well, I thought, the substantial additional burden that everyone in healthcare environments, especially frontline doctors and nurses, is shouldering now - and may live with the negative effects of, for the rest of their lives, in many cases.
I think that the correlation in time, and specifically (perhaps by a visual flashback instead of largely just audio) making it clear, now or in the future, Lim's thread is highly related to the pandemic is an important part of the chronology the creators missed here. Making it much more obviously post-COVID, through a few casual conversational interchanges early in the episode, would have been easily done. My thought on this might perhaps have helped another reviewer who appears angry (disproportionately, IMO) that this work of fiction fails to continue in the same timeframe the rest of us still dwell day-to-day, during a worldwide pandemic. I, for one, am really grateful that this show decided to largely leave the pandemic behind. Some of us appreciate not being bombarded with the same stress we are living, with seeing horror stories at every turn in what is supposed, mainly, to entertain us.
All that said, my final thought to share is that the PTSD portrayal didn't go quite far enough to substantiate the commonality of the stress responses to trauma the many subplots and characters involved in them displayed. Many viewers simply won't "get the message," I suspect. And that represents missed opportunity.
I suspect this episode might cause some less well-informed persons (especially perhaps with such fortunately privileged lives to date they are unable to relate to how brain chemistry and emotion-related reactions can change following trauma, and alter the nervous system?) to trivialize one or another of these characters' experiences and resulting challenge with the high stress impacts - some of which may seem disproportionate to the cause, in some cases, where viewers cannot relate to the situation the character is portrayed in. Still, the soldier's traumatic experience as an apparent result of not observing an IED that kills others is not, in my opinion, inherently different to that of the traumatic loss created by one intern's/resident's fatal error with a patient. That combination of apparent guilt and grief resulting in part from a lack of control, especially where theoretically that was the job, to control the outcome, affecting the brain so badly, is no different I imagine, to the reliving and challenge to function that the student who couldn't perform a certain procedure found was the 'gut' response to her own PTS response in her "moment of truth" poised to carry out said procedure, notwithstanding what's revealed before and after this, as her intellectual intentions. Almost like a PSA for PTSD awareness, this episode shows us some of the many faces of PTSD!
All that said, given the trajectory of the season and this episode's implicit acknowledgement of COVID-19 in The Good Doctor's now-post-COVID world, via Lim's growing struggle arising from her pandemic experiences, it reflected well, I thought, the substantial additional burden that everyone in healthcare environments, especially frontline doctors and nurses, is shouldering now - and may live with the negative effects of, for the rest of their lives, in many cases.
I think that the correlation in time, and specifically (perhaps by a visual flashback instead of largely just audio) making it clear, now or in the future, Lim's thread is highly related to the pandemic is an important part of the chronology the creators missed here. Making it much more obviously post-COVID, through a few casual conversational interchanges early in the episode, would have been easily done. My thought on this might perhaps have helped another reviewer who appears angry (disproportionately, IMO) that this work of fiction fails to continue in the same timeframe the rest of us still dwell day-to-day, during a worldwide pandemic. I, for one, am really grateful that this show decided to largely leave the pandemic behind. Some of us appreciate not being bombarded with the same stress we are living, with seeing horror stories at every turn in what is supposed, mainly, to entertain us.
All that said, my final thought to share is that the PTSD portrayal didn't go quite far enough to substantiate the commonality of the stress responses to trauma the many subplots and characters involved in them displayed. Many viewers simply won't "get the message," I suspect. And that represents missed opportunity.
