The Good Doctor Season 2 Episode 14 Review: Faces
Jack Ori
at
.
Updated at
.
The Good Doctor sometimes asks big questions that have no answers.
The Good Doctor Season 2 Episode 14 tackled what makes a person who they are, in more ways than one. Between the patient who needed a new face and Glassman's trip down memory lane, there were a ton of heartfelt moments, along with some thought-provoking questions.
First things first: yes, face transplants are a real thing. I looked it up since this whole procedure seemed like science fiction.
In reality, it takes months of planning and can only be done at a special transplant facility, plus the patient has to be on immunosuppressants forever. But I'll forgive The Good Doctor for taking some dramatic license because the story was that riveting.
I felt bad for Shannon, the mother of the girl who died.
Not only was she struggling with guilt over her daughter's fatal accident, but she also had to live with the fact that someone else now had Karen's face.
You want to take my daughter's face and put it on someone else?
Grieving mother
It was asking a lot even to ask her to consider agreeing to donate Karen's face tissue, and it must have felt so unfair that another girl survived her accident and even got a new face while Shannon's own daughter died on the operating table.
Andrews was surprisingly sensitive when he asked, too. His empathy for Molly as well as for Shannon showed how far he's come since the days when his only purpose seemed to be to convince everyone that Shaun's Autism made him unsuited for the medical profession.
If Andrews keeps this up, he might become likable!
My favorite part of the hour, though, were Claire's scenes with Molly.
Molly was uncomfortable both with her deformed face and with the idea of having someone else's face grafted onto her.
Her fears were understandable. The face she had was hers -- deformed or not, it was part of her identity, and the idea of looking like someone else would be scary for anyone.
Molly's youth made it even more difficult for her to fathom the idea of having a different face since she likely had been questioning her identity even before her accident.
Molly. Right now your face is all anyone sees. This operation will let everyone see, not a new face, but what has always lay behind it.
Claire
But Claire's explanation turned the cliche that beauty is only skin deep on its head and helped Molly understand that she was far more than what she looked like so that she could go ahead with the surgery.
Related: The Good Doctor Season 2 Episode 13 Review: Xin
It was a beautiful moment, as was Shannon's request to say goodbye to her daughter after Molly woke up with her new face.
Melendez and Lim put a slight damper on this storyline, though.
I'm not a fan of secret office romances. It's a TV trope that I could do without that seems to happen on every medical drama and some cop dramas.
And Melendez and Lin's argument after he encouraged her not to second-guess herself was irritating.
Lim: Your advice to me not to second-guess myself makes me think you're second-guessing yourself.
Melendez: About what? You're the one who insisted we deal with the heart before the brain.
Lim: And you didn't fight me.
Melendez: Cause you were right.
Lim: And you've never thought anyone but yourself was right since you first set foot in an OR. You backed off because we're sleeping together!
Granted, half the problem was that Lim blamed herself for Karen's death and wished Melendez had fought her on making the call that she did.
But still, her insistence that he agreed with her because they're sleeping together was based on absolutely nothing and is the kind of thing that makes me loathe this trope.
It might have been predictable, but I'd much rather have had Melendez and Lim be on opposite sides about how to proceed with this operation. Then at least there'd be a reason for them to blame each other for Karen's death.
Related: 13 Tired Tropes TV Can Turn on Their Heads
As it was, we got them arguing because... Melendez supported Lim. Please.
Speaking of unnecessary relationship drama, I was glad for a break from the Lea/Jake drama!
Judging from Twitter, lots of fans ship Lea/Shawn, but I think they're better as friends and the constant friction at Shaun's is one of my least favorite parts of the show.
Of course, we'll be back to that soon since Shaun admitted at the end of the hour that he's not okay with Lea being with Jake, but at least he and Glassman got to go on a road trip without her!
I have to admit, I wasn't sure about this storyline before I watched it.
The promo at the end of The Good Doctor Season 2 Episode 13 seemed...well, silly.
Shaun and Glassman getting high and into trouble was amusing, but it would have become irritating had it dragged on much longer.
Shaun: Am I high?
Glassman: You're pretty high.
Shaun: Am I acting more normal?
Glassman: No, you're acting high.
Once the world's most awesome Uber driver showed up, though, things got interesting fast.
I'm convinced that Glassman's not wanting to go home was a metaphor for his not wanting to deal with his cancer or his chemo or the boredom that came from sitting around recovering from the chemo.
He was talking about high school even before the subject of Robyn Demain came up, and the road trip seemed like an attempt to reclaim his lost youth.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the trip down memory lane. It was both sad and fascinating to think that Glassman was once an insecure teenager who was a star athlete and wrote nasty things in a girl's yearbook to get back at her for her seeming rejection of him.
Sure, it was unrealistic that a Uber driver would drive for 11 hours to help an old man get closure on a teenage crush, but again, dramatic license.
The trip offered a glimpse into Glassman's history that couldn't be got any other way and left me with a richer understanding of how depressing it must be for him to be more or less bedridden because of his cancer.
Glassman is a man who lives with a ton of regrets, everything from his stupid high school behavior towards the first girl he ever liked to his daughter's untimely death. That road trip was almost like traveling in time, for him and for viewers, and it made me wonder what else he's been ruminating on for the past 40 to 50 years.
Your turn, Good Doctor Fanatics!
What was the most emotional part of "Faces" for you? Did you enjoy Glassman and Shaun's road trip? And did you think Lim had a reason to be upset with Melendez?
Weigh in below, and don't forget you can watch The Good Doctor online if you missed anything.
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.
