Chicago Med Season 7 Episode 14 Review: All The Things That Could Have Been
Jack Ori
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That was different.
Usually, Maggie directs traffic in the ED, assigning patients to each doctor as they come in. But on Chicago Med Season 7 Episode 14, she was the one in need of direction.
Will's house call gave her the opportunity to see someone who had made the most of being dealt a bad hand early in life, and that seemed to be exactly what she needed as she waited for biopsy results.
Ellis had to be one of the most inspiring one-off characters Chicago Med has ever had.
Aide: When I bathed him this morning he looked pale.
Ellis: Usually I have a healthy glow.
He had every reason to be bitter and frustrated. He'd been attached to an iron lung machine since early childhood, thanks to a disease that vaccines began to eradicate only a month after he contracted it.
Many people would have been angry or upset. Some might have cursed God for doing such a thing to them. But Ellis seemed to take it all in stride.
He had built a highly successful financial planning service despite being bedridden, and even when facing a potentially deadly illness, he approached life with humor.
And if he had died as a result of his thyroid condition, his last act on Earth would have been to help Maggie plan financially for the possibility of early retirement.
We all live on a razor's edge. Everybody. Just some of us know it more than others. In a way, we're the lucky ones. We have the good sense to cherish every moment.
Ellis
Almost anybody could learn a thing or two about how to live from Ellis, and he was the mirror image Maggie desperately needed.
Ellis and Maggie waited together for their respective test results, but unlike Ellis, Maggie was nervous, negative, and convinced her cancer was coming back.
It wasn't until Ellis reminded her to be grateful for every moment that she saw things differently. She even found the courage to tell Will what had been going on with her.
Thank goodness her biopsy was negative. But if it hadn't been, she would have been financially and emotionally prepared, thanks to her talk with Ellis.
Meanwhile, Stevie again displayed a complete lack of understanding of boundaries. By the end of the hour, she'd started to understand her mother's disease--but did she get why Terri didn't want to tell her that she was in the psych ward?
Terri told Charles Stevie is negative and always expects her to fail, but that's only a small part of the problem here.
Stevie apparently can't accept the idea that people don't always tell her everything. She's gone off on both Will and Charles for not sharing their plans for patient care with her, and this time she refused to understand why Charles didn't break confidentiality rules when it came to her mother.
No matter how hurt she was or what her relationship was to Terri, Charles couldn't say anything without his patient's consent. As a doctor, Stevie should know that!
She also seemed to think she should put off her move to Michigan because her mother might "need" her.
How many times does Terri have to reject her help before Stevie gets the message?
Stevie needs to stop setting up a life that revolves around her mother. Not only is it unhealthy, but Terri has made it clear over and over that she does not want Stevie's help!
The only one who seems sad for Stevie to go is Will. I get that she's his old medical school frenemy, but she adds nothing of value. The sooner she goes to Michigan and gets off-screen permanently, the better!
Elsewhere, Tyrell's story contained an interesting twist.
I didn't expect Tyrell to be illiterate, nor for him to have an undiagnosed learning disability.
This story tugged at my heartstrings. I wasn't diagnosed as Autistic until I was in my 30s, and I know how different my life would have been had I been diagnosed in childhood.
And for Tyrell, it was even worse because nobody knew that he couldn't read. That's one of the big issues with dyslexia: kids who have it tend to mask well, so unless an adult advocates hard for early intervention, they end up falling through the cracks.
Although it wasn't said explicitly, racism probably played a role in this too. People of color are often diagnosed with any learning disability later than their white peers, and that would likely be even worse at an underfunded school.
Hopefully, now that Scott convinced Tyrell to get help and that this doesn't mean he's stupid, Tyrell will stop acting out, get the help he needs, and stop turning to alcohol and drugs to numb the pain of believing he's intellectually inferior.
Goodwin also scored a major victory during the hour.
Archer: Did you just assign the compliance officer to a medical case?
Sharon: He's a critical care doctor who is credentialed at Med.
Archer: He's a bureaucrat with a suit.
We'll never know if she threw Randall into the medical side of things to influence his thinking or if she needed another pair of hands. But either way, he finally realized some of his policies are detrimental to patient care.
If there was one weakness in this episode of Chicago Med, it was that Marcel and Blake's patient didn't get enough of a backstory.
I didn't have any idea who this patient was when Marcel brought it up to Scott, and the episode spent barely any time with the patient or her family.
Marcel: I also told Avery that I have feelings for you.
Blake: Wait. Stop, stop, stop. I never should have let myself get involved. You're a surgeon on my team. That's all.
Instead, the story seemed to be a jumping-off point for Marcel to pine after Blake now that she's decided she's not dating him.
I could care less about this relationship. Marcel deserves better than Blake, who exudes zero human warmth, and this love triangle involving her and her annoying daughter isn't compelling.
Charles' decision to pursue a friendship or more with his former therapist also didn't hold my interest. What happened to Anna? I'd much rather have him butt heads with her again than any more of this.
Your turn, Chicago Med fanatics. After you watch Chicago Med online, hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know what you think of these storylines!
Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays 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.
