The Good Doctor Season 5 Episode 10 Review: Cheat Day
Jack Ori
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Just like that, Salen walked away.
After most of The Good Doctor Season 5 Episode 10 involved people taking sides and a bunch of doctors risking their careers to stand up to her, Andrews talked her into giving up the hospital.
While it was a relief to get rid of this annoying administrator, it also seemed anticlimactic.
Salen's not the type to give up, whether or not she can win. Is this really the last we've seen of her?
Lim: That's your plan? To make us look like disgruntled former employees? You really think that's going to work?
Salen: That's not the play. I have research. [To Glassman] You were a no-show for months, making wine in your garage and vacationing in Montana, after years of bending over backwards to cover Dr. Murphy's erratic behavior. [To Lim] You hired your boyfriend, then fired him when he broke up with you.
Lim: He quit.
Salen: Classic sexual harassment suit. [To Lea] And you changed metrics to help your fiancee. Right now, you've all just lost your jobs. But if you don't drop this investigation, I'll go public with this information.
She still has all that info on the doctors that she threatened to spin negatively before suddenly giving up. She may not be the hospital's new owner anymore, but that doesn't mean she'll go quietly into the night.
She's already shown how vindictive she can be. She fired all the doctors who opposed her and tried to blackmail them into silence. And she made it clear that she had her eye on Lim and intended to make Lim's life miserable.
So now that she's lost her bid for the hospital, what stops Salen from trying to sabotage it from outside? She could still make good on her threat to go public about how the doctors allegedly engage in sexual harassment, cover-up incompetence, and so forth.
From her perspective, Andrews got what he wanted and then dumped her. He's now the hospital president, and she's out in the cold.
For a woman like Salen, that's an engraved invitation to seek revenge. I wouldn't breathe a sigh of relief yet if I were Lim or any of the others who fought to get rid of her.
Andrews: You think I control Salen just because we're dating? That's ridiculous, and a little sexist.
Lim: I'm asking you to take a stand.
Andrews: That's what I've been doing. I'm working on her from the inside. You could have joined me, but instead you burned down the entire building.
Lim: She lit the match.
The resolution of the war against Salen was disappointing, though. We had all this set-up for an epic battle at the board meeting, only for Salen to bow out before anything could happen.
People put their jobs on the line while others didn't feel they could take that risk. Morgan and Park were on opposite ends of the battle, and Jordan wanted Asher to stop pushing her to join the movement. And Glassman worried that Shaun was throwing away his career and wouldn't be able to handle it if he lost the ability to be a surgeon.
But none of that mattered. Nobody but Andrews ended up having to take a stand. He did it all for them, and Salen caved just like that.
Talk about anticlimactic! All that build-up seemed like it was for naught unless Salen has a revenge scheme up her sleeve. And even then, it's not the same as the dramatic board meeting we were promised and didn't get.
One of the most irritating aspects of this was how Glassman approached Shaun's involvement.
Glassman: Apologize and save your career.
Shaun: She will not say yes.
Glassman: Oh yes, she will. You're on the poster. What's she gonna do, drag you kicking and screaming out of the hospital? That would be terrible PR.
First, he convinced Shaun to un-quit in part because it would be hard for him to find another residency when he is Autistic. Later, he tried to persuade Shaun not to join the opposition because he was "too exceptional" to throw away his career.
The whole thing felt so ableist, as if Glassman thought Shaun needed to be protected from an anti-Autistic world and couldn't take the same risks that everyone else was taking.
Park quit too, and nobody told him he was throwing his career away or that he'd never find another residency.
And Shaun had a point. If everyone competent quit, there was no reason for him to stay.
The war with Salen needed to be over since it was interfering with the doctors' ability to care for patients effectively, but the ending felt rushed.
I'd have preferred a confrontation at the board meeting as planned, ending on the cliffhanger of whether or not the board would vote Salen out, and at the beginning of the next episode, she could issue her threats and storm away.
Instead, one negative word from Andrews and Salen walked away forever. I don't quite buy it.
I'd also like to know how Salen planned to claim that Shaun was incompetent because he is Autistic and that the others covered for him when she's used him as the poster boy for diversity all these months.
That was an empty threat for the same reason that telling Shaun he couldn't be rehired was. It was STILL bad PR for her to mess with him.
The conflict over Salen provided some welcome respite from Park and Morgan's patient. Despite Ryan's positive attitude, his story was so damn depressing.
The guy was dying of liver cancer, which wouldn't have happened had he not gotten a diseased liver lobe from his best friend.
I'm so sorry, Ry. You stood up for me when I was being bullied. You took me in when my marriage failed. I tried to save your life and I killed you.
Dom
It doesn't get any worse than that. And the doctors didn't bring their A-game, either, since they were all distracted by the conflict with Salen and whether certain people should be on a different side than they were on.
I don't like Morgan, but she was improving until she decided to take Salen's side for political reasons.
She was so pro-Salen that I didn't trust her plan to speak at the meeting. I thought she might get up there and talk about how the patient thinks her blindness is a blessing in disguise, so Salen made the right call.
Elsewhere, the fighting between Jordan and Asher about this was obnoxious.
Jordan was right that Asher needed to stop pressing her. I understood her perspective, but I thought it was strange that Asher had no clue about her lack of privilege.
He's a gay Hasidic Jew. He might have white privilege, but he also has experienced both homophobia and anti-Semitism. This conversation could have gone deeper if anyone had mentioned that.
As for their medical storyline, it got short shrift thanks to all the hospital politics.
But I was amazed how once again, the doctors could spontaneously come up with a treatment plan that worked in the middle of a surgery that was failing.
Your turn, The Good Doctor fanatics. Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know what you thought. If you need to refresh your memory first, watch The Good Doctor online right here on TV Fanatic.
The Good Doctor airs on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST / PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.
