SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 10.
In every TV season, there are usually one or two filler episodes. Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 10 is a filler episode. It’s an hour that focuses too much on the soap opera elements of the NBC show, with cases of the week that never entirely get off the ground. “Rebounding” is more interested in the doctors rebounding from their various romantic dramas.
After the previous bombshell that Dr. Dean Archer is in love with his best friend Dr. Hannah Asher, the episode opens in part with Archer being asked out by Dr. Kingston (a returning Merrin Dungey). Archer turns her down because of his “complicated” situation with Hannah, which prompts another brief argument between Hannah and Archer. It’s obvious Chicago Med is using Kingston to create a love triangle, but at least Dean and Hannah can talk things out, even if the conversation is awkward. Everyone else’s developments feel more like soap opera than medical drama.
Dr. John Frost and Chicago Fire paramedic Lizzie Novak hook up at the end of the episode, and nothing leading up to that is subtle. The script is quick to explain away the would-be romance between Frost and Dr. Naomi Howard, which brought Naomi back to tease, with Frost simply saying that it “just didn’t work out.” That statement feels strange, as that storyline never actually started.
Elsewhere, Dr. Mitch Ripley’s insistence on checking on Dr. Caitlin Lenox turns into Natalie and Crockett 2.0—the pair spontaneously kiss in a stairwell and end “Rebounding” having sex in a storage room. This idea of a sexual relationship as a pseudo-trauma response didn’t work then, and it doesn’t work now. This show does a lot of things well, but it does, on occasion, substitute romance for character development, and so far, this feels like that. It comes across as Chicago Med putting Ripley and Lenox together because both of them are in need of romantic partners.
This impression that the episode is more interested in romance isn’t helped by the fact that most of the medical stories in Episode 11 are not fully developed. The only one that feels complete involves Hannah, Lenox, and a surrogate who learns she’s also pregnant with her own baby. The plot about a college basketball player who accidentally overdoses starts to create tension between Frost and Novak, but that tension lasts for about a scene. Because that doesn’t materialize, the biggest thing this story has is a celebrity cameo by Chicago Sky player Courtney Vandersloot—and the cameo sticks out because the One Chicago shows rarely do such things.
Ripley gets a case involving dementia and elder care that has untapped potential. It could have been a storyline about the stress that caretakers are put under, an underappreciated topic that The Pitt Season 1 did very well. But there’s a reveal of childhood abuse instead, and the plot ends pretty quickly after that. That creates a similar impression that the story was more of a device to bring nursing home staffer Tamika back into the picture, as she’s accepted into a nursing program at the end of the episode. Luckily, the sub-subplot about a board member wanting her nephew to get the position is short-lived, although it’s still cringeworthy when said board member can’t pronounce the name “Tamika.”
“Rebounding” is an episode Chicago Med can easily move on from. The fact that the promo for Episode 12 is solely about Ripley and Lenox’s new fling only serves as more proof that this episode tilted too far in one direction. (It’s the second consecutive week that the promos have solely been about who’s sleeping with whom.) Personal entanglements will always be part of this show, yet it’s better when they develop on their own instead of storylines being written to get to those places. A prime example is what happens with Hannah and Dean. That dynamic developed on its own, and now it’s the most mature relationship this series has.
Chicago Med is at its best when it slows down and really digs into an idea, whether it’s a relationship (remember the layers of the ill-fated relationship between Connor and Robin?) or putting some extra effort into a medical case. This is the show that once had doctors operating on a panda and made it interesting, not because it was a panda but because the medical stuff was fascinating. Season 11, Episode 10 is an hour that falls well short of what the series is capable of.
Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC.
