SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 7.
The Chicago Med Season 11 fall finale is a reflection of how uneven the first six episodes have been. “Double Down” is picking up the loose ends from those six episodes and putting them together into one basket, rather than feeling like a concentrated midseason finale. And like the installments that came before it, there are highs and then there’s potential left on the table.
The main storyline is revisiting the events of Season 11, Episode 4, “Found Family.” The abusive husband from that episode (played by How to Get Away with Murder alum Jack Falahee) is back in the ED, and his injuries lead Dr. Caitlin Lenox and Dr. Mitch Ripley to believe that he’s severely injured or even killed his wife. This is really a Lenox storyline, and meant to be the culmination of the “Lenox is taking too many risks” theme from Episodes 1-6. When she tells Ripley that she’s going to the Carter house, in a storm, alone, every viewer knows that this episode is ending with Lenox being attacked, too. There’s always a cliffhanger in every One Chicago fall finale, and this one is very obvious. Having said that, Sarah Ramos delivers her most sharp performance yet.
Elsewhere, Dr. John Frost treats a young girl who participated in a drug trial overseen by Dr. Theo Rabari (portrayed by The Resident‘s Manish Dayal), who also first appeared in “Found Family.” Frost and Dr. Daniel Charles become concerned that Rabari’s drug is responsible for their patient’s issues, and that Rabari is only concerned with preserving his work. They turn out to be wrong. Absolutely no viewer will have “glitter glue” on their medical bingo card. But it’s nice to see continued screen time for Darren Barnet.
Unfortunately, this episode is also proof that Chicago Med is persisting with the unnecessary love triangle (or whatever it is) between Frost, Lizzie Novak and Naomi Howard. Frost asks Novak for her phone number while Naomi is encouraged by Dr. Hannah Asher to come forward with her feelings for Frost. Naomi does so—but only to tell Frost that she’s fine with them having “missed their window.” All of this just makes this subplot worse. There’s no groundwork between Frost and either Naomi or Novak; Naomi saying she’s had feelings for him for a long time feels like the writers telling what they should’ve shown. And given that all Frost has done so far is ask for Novak’s number and not get it, Naomi’s speech feels premature. The confused look Frost has after she leaves the break room is an appropriate reaction to this whole thing.
(And Chicago Med also needs to stop trying to make Kacy the nurse happen. Nothing she’s said at any point this season has been funny. Plus, having all of the comic relief bits come from the same person makes it even clearer that she’s a one-dimensional character.)
“Double Down” does have some good ideas in its mix, though; they just don’t get fully executed. The underlying theme of the storm and the power outage is not utilized enough. Said power outage doesn’t happen until the final minutes; it would have been a lot more dramatic and fun to have that be a larger factor in the episode. Maybe the writers avoided it because it would have made everything else much harder to shoot—but that would have also been the challenge, for both the crew and the characters.
Plus, Sean Archer makes a welcome return… but it’s just for one scene, to hear that he’s about to have a half-brother. Shipping Sean off in the first place was a terrible mistake, so it’s great to have him back, yet he’s definitely underused. And it also seems like Merrin Dungey’s character, Dr. Jennifer Kingston, is flirting with Archer. Is the show trying to stick a third wheel between Archer and Hannah to see how Hannah reacts? It’s not a novel idea, but it’s not unexpected. The bigger question is, why is Kingston chatting up Archer over a patient in the OR? That falls into the category of “moments that only work on TV.”
Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 7 does clean up the proverbial room efficiently. It picks up these plot threads that were clearly left behind in Episode 4, and even ongoing themes like Lenox’s personality change, and moves them toward resolution. But because it’s working with these preexisting pieces, it doesn’t feel like its own entity. There are aspects that could have been expanded upon to make something more unique, and bigger in its emotional effect. At least viewers can know that Devin Carter is probably going to get what he deserves? Because Caitlin Lenox is definitely not going down without a fight.
Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC.
