SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 2.
The best thing about Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 2 is that it doesn’t feel like a milestone episode—until the shock ending. It’s business as usual on the NBC medical drama. That means a few mistakes and some important moments of reflection. And the return of Nick Gehlfuss as Will Halstead is just the cherry on top.
Let’s take the good parts of “A Game of Inches” first: even though Will’s return is the biggest part of the episode for fans, the hour does not completely revolve around his character. He has a role to play in the primary case of the week, but so does Dr. John Frost and so does Dr. Caitlin Lenox. So many TV shows bring back characters and spend so much time celebrating them that they forget the ensemble that’s already there. Chicago Med doesn’t do that.
It’s also great to see Will again for more than just nostalgic reasons. One Chicago viewers know Gehlfuss wanted Will’s exit to be open-ended so that he had the opportunity to return, and he slips easily back into the role. Will making emotional decisions in Chicago Med Season 11 feels exactly like Will in Chicago Med Seasons 1-8. Plus, the episode serves up exactly what was implied in Season 8 and what Manstead fans have waited all this time to hear: Will and Natalie are a happy couple, expecting their first child. And the script deserves props for recalling that Natalie’s son Owen Manning exists, when he previously tended to disappear in favor of his mom’s romantic life.
However, there are issues. Having Owen shot by a drug dealer is frustrating on multiple levels. Because of the past tendency to overlook him, it feels like bringing back the character just to short-change him in a different way. It’s also yet another example of how hospital security is nonexistent, even by TV dramatic license standards. A patient is able to escape from an ED bed, and a woman is able to get through the ED and into an active operating room with a gun. Will and his ex-girlfriend Dr. Hannah Asher only share two brief scenes together—and neither of them feels meaningful enough for their history. There’s so much more that could have been said between them, even if it was just one good scene. Then there’s the fact that everyone else is gossiping about Hannah’s pregnancy.
The idea of putting Dr. Dean Archer and Dr. Mitch Ripley at odds on a case is a pretty good one, because they have different approaches to medicine. They also each have valid points of view on this particular patient. Yet people around them assuming they’re at odds over Hannah trivializes the storyline. Both Archer and Ripley have handled the pregnancy news in a mature, reasonable way; Ripley even tells Frost earlier in the hour that there’s nothing to complain about. Let the two have professional disagreements but Chicago Med doesn’t need to create a love triangle out of this (or a square if one wants to count Sadie). Hannah and Archer, and Hannah and Ripley, are two well-written, well-acted dynamics that don’t need to be punched up.
“A Game of Inches” deserves credit for not feeling the need to create some massive event because it happens to be Chicago Med‘s 200th episode. It rests on the shoulders of its actors, who do solid work throughout; the scene in which Lenox stands in front of a gun says far more about how her attitude has changed than her random hookup in the premiere, and the return of Will Halstead is a breath of fresh air. But it also makes a few missteps that keep it from being as memorable as it could have been. Hopefully, the conclusion to this story arc will make this episode feel more complete in retrospect.
Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC.
