State of the Shea, Pt. 58: Everything is Happening Now (“Sons” part 1)
“Everything is happening now… But I’m still having the hardest time” — From “Head Above Water” by Olive James, one of three songs selected for use in TGD 5 x 18
One thing to say on The Good Doctor’s Season 5 finale about which every viewer can likely agree: it had something for everyone.
Family drama? Check. Flashbacks? Check. Powerful, sob-inducing moments? Check (maybe double-check).
Philosophical discussions? Check (the three-minute versions of such, anyway).
Awesome technical moments in medicine? Check that tech.
A love story threatened by life, personalities, and geography? Check that too.
Humor? Sex (OK, sex was mentioned)? Violence? Check, check, and oh Lord (check).
Song choices/montages to facilitate storytelling? More than one.
A devastatingly relevant social issue? Actually there were two, if you count Asher’s estrangement from his family… but only one issue prompted a trigger warning and a call to action at the front and back of the episode.
Did you notice what I haven’t even gotten around to yet?
I hope you’ll forgive the fact that I’m saving the detailed discussion of Shaun and Lea’s wedding until part 2 of this post. One reason is that it deserves its own post– enough shared billing on their big day, dammit! But the other reason is to first highlight the biggest “star” of the episode: an evil genius that I’ll simply refer to as Breakneck Pacing.
It’s no secret around here that The Powers That Be at TGD seem to enjoy jam-packing the episodes, often at the expense of certain characters or storylines. And as I intimated at the end of my post for “The Lea Show,” there was a lot– no less than four major storylines– to keep up with in “Sons.” That translated into many more 10 or 15-second scenes than usual… multiple scenes that converged two storylines at once… and with one VERY notable exception, a breathless rhythm to the entire episode. (The “exception” is not the wedding sequence, but I bet you know what I’m referring to anyway. If not, you will shortly.)
Is Breakneck Pacing what viewers want in a season finale? Had this been any other year; say, one that did NOT tease the titular character’s wedding ad nauseum, only to save it for the final act of the final episode and THEN slap a gruesome cliffhanger onto the final two minutes… then I/we might collectively say SURE! The key element of the season has already taken place… bring on the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach!
The problem is that they don’t ask us what we want. No scripted show does, to be fair. The writers, directors, and producers do what they feel is best for the show at hand, and hope the audience agrees. For better or worse this year, Shaun and Lea’s wedding was dreamed/nightmared about, fretted over, canceled, rebooted, reality-showed, and postponed… so by the time it simply had to happen, a few other storylines “had” to happen as well.
And on the whole, I’ve gotta say, they are incredibly good at this method of creation. See this funny little scene where Lea’s still trying to hand back wedding gifts, and Lim retorts “What am I gonna do with two blenders?”
It came at the tail end of not one, but two brief walk-and-talk scenes at the top of Act 2: one with Shaun and Asher discussing Asher’s father, and one with Park and Morgan discussing both their patient and Morgan’s job interview. That’s three of the four storylines touched on in about one minute’s time!
And in a literal blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, Park called out “someone’s phone ringing” in one of those tiny scenes I mentioned… did you catch that “someone” was Nurse Villanueva, still actively avoiding talking to her ex?
(This was immediately followed by Morgan swooping in and summoning Park to help her with her voice technology idea for their patient– two storylines covered in about 11 seconds.)
The more notable example– again underscoring the domestic violence storyline– came when Jordan was too preoccupied with Asher’s situation to even give the “flower delivery guy” her momentary attention. Turned out the guy was Villanueva’s ex Owen… as we’d see later.
(Asher’s story & Lim/Villanueva’s story both covered in about 10 seconds)
Operating Room scenes on TGD are often home to a peanut-gallery style of storyline input… so when it was Asher recalling good memories with his father while he was on the operating table (yeah… I know… we’ll get to that in a minute too), it wasn’t surprising to hear both Andrews and Jordan chime in with their own treasured tales about their dads. What WAS surprising, though, was Shaun silently tapping into a treasured memory of his own.
We find out later in the episode that Glassman– his sidekick in the fishing recollection– literally tells Shaun It’ll be a good memory. But of course the point is that for the first time in such a situation, we don’t hear him matter-of-factly share an awful fact about his biological dad… a lovely, subtle hint of what’s to come between him and Glassman.
Later on, this 30-second scene not only advanced Morgan’s hopes for her patient, but (because the clip Lea was working with happened to be said patient’s wedding video) also fueled Lea’s growing regret about the courthouse elopement idea. Again, two storylines progressing for the price of one short scene!
The economy of these particular moments in the “Sons” episode may have given us plenty of overlap, but there were still four very clear stories being told.
In order of the amount of screen time each story received in “Sons,” here’s my quick take on each one:
Asher and his parents: nearly 19 minutes
Here’s the thing: Asher's story (which we’ve heard about since day one of his time on TGD) was very important, and commanded its own day. Since Asher and Shaun have a commonality of sorts with their Dad issues, and this episode was also used for Shaun to finally acknowledge the father-son bond he’s long had with Glassman, I see why TGD put them together.
That said, I was sad to “do the math” and discover that Asher’s story ate up nearly twice as much airtime as Shaun/Lea/Glassman’s did.
(Even if it DID allow them to sneak in a moment of ShaunVision.)
(And to see how Asher redefines “anger management” once he’s in the cafeteria… was there anyone watching who wasn’t wowed at the size of that piece of cake?)
But I digress.
One big contributor was Asher’s big talk with his mother in the chapel (or whatever they’re calling it these days; wasn’t this space gutted by Salen earlier in the season? Did they resurrect it (pun intended)? But I digress again…)
It was a doozy of a scene for these two, extremely well-written and acted, particularly by Noah Galvin. And it would’ve been tough to cut it down past the 3:38 it took for Asher to both lay it all out for himself and show deep compassion for his parents simultaneously.
But that Shabbat sequence earlier in the episode? Different story.
I don’t mean to sound heartless here. It was obviously seen as important to keep the rushing of this part to a minimum– lots of camera dissolves, gentle-yet-contemporary music, lots of guests (Park? Morgan? How’d you two end up in this scene?), some laughter, some elements being passed around. And all this did serve a purpose when Asher was asked to contribute a “prayer for the sick” and refused outright, eventually kissing boyfriend/nurse Jerome on his way out the door. But from the sundown shot that started the Shabbat scene to that emotional end, the total running time was 5:06.
Shaun and Lea’s entire wedding sequence, on the other hand, was 4:09.
(starting with Andrews’ first words, continuing with Glassman’s toast/Shea’s first dance, and ending with Lim joining Glassman on the sidelines).
For all the little things we still MIGHT have gotten to see in this “impromptu” wedding of theirs– and didn’t, because TGD chose not to keep the Shabbat scene to three minutes or less– I can’t help but feel some resentment.
(But this part is one of those “details” I’m sharing for next week!)
If the St. Bonaventure bridge could speak… oh, the sad tales it could tell
As Asher himself said in this episode, people have been “curious” about his pre-St. Bon’s existence… and “Sons” no doubt eased some of that curiosity. It would appear this was a one-time-only event for his father; it’ll be interesting to see if there’s even an occasion to bring Asher’s mom back for an episode.
Shaun/Lea/Glassman scenes: 9 minutes 10 seconds
Much like this desk of Lea’s popping up in the server room out of nowhere (what, is her office being painted?), some things make more sense if you just stop thinking so hard about them.
But, hey, why make it make sense?
My quick take on the wedding itself (to tide you over till next week):
It was minimalistic elegance
It was not disappointing in my eyes, because as Shaun said earlier in the season (paraphrased): “Any day that I marry Lea will be a good day.” THEY ARE MARRIED NOW. That’s what counts.
But it’s also not how I’d have written it. Not by a longshot.
Park & Morgan scenes: 16 minutes 19 seconds
(But if you subtract the Shabbat sequence and the wedding sequence, they only had 7:04.)
Something was coming with these two– it felt apparent from the “Potluck” episode onward– but a job offer for Morgan on the other side of the country was not on my shortlist. Maybe it should’ve been, though: As Lim summed up while she and Park were in the OR: “As long as she’s at St. Bon’s, she’ll be seen as the doctor who used to be a surgeon but can’t be anymore.”
But– quick– when’s the last time Morgan’s RA came up AT ALL on TGD? It was “Vamos”... a whole year ago. Point being, if it’s a reason Morgan is leaning on as she makes her decision, it would’ve been nice to see the RA crop up a time or two sooner than this.
Park has quite a moment, though, taking Lim’s words to heart in realizing his own selfishness on the matter. So when the NYC plans fall through for one reason or another, I hope the communication steps up for Parnick…. It’s OK for us to not recognize Morgan’s line of thinking. Him? Not so OK.
A quick Patient-of-the-Week mention: It seemed important to have a POTW here because it was a way to conduct Park and Morgan’s disagreements and difficulties. But did they need a physical patient and a physical storyline there? Or would it have served to have them talking about an (offscreen) patient we didn’t really get invested in at all?
I say this not because the POTW storyline was subpar and pointless, but because it WASN’T. Like other times in recent months, it was rather fascinating. All the more reason, then, to NOT shoehorn it into this episode much as Park and Morgan were shoehorned into the Shabbat sequence.
Finally, with just 4:20 to work with, the Lim-helping-Villanueva story gained more depth by providing scenes that bonded the two women even moreso than before… and then counterbalanced it with the aforementioned, subtle placements of the Owen (ex-boyfriend) character. I give this arc a 4 out of 5 this time around, except… well, as I said, we’ll talk about that end scene next time. (If they want to affiliate #Shea joy so closely to tragedy, that tragedy is going to wait its damn turn.)
Speaking of which— here’s a nice shot of these two with the magic words to go with it.
If you want to talk about the wedding NOW, and not next week— I got you. Hit the comments below… and if you haven’t done so already on Twitter, don’t forget to share what you’d get #Shea for a wedding gift!
