Thank goodness Vanessa’s crush wasn’t as big a deal as the spoiler video suggested.
Chicago Med Season 7 Episode 4 was full of misdiagnosed patients, and Vanessa’s interactions with Marcel mostly centered around him insisting that she take breaks once in a while.
This may not be over despite Vanessa’s embarrassment when Marcel didn’t return her interest in him. But at least it didn’t take up much time during the hour.
It would have been neither compelling nor realistic for Marcel and Vanessa to begin a relationship.
Marcel was a serial bedhopper until Natalie came along during Chicago Med Season 6, afraid to let anyone close because of his daughter’s death. Then the first woman he trusted ended up leaving the hospital in disgrace.
So if he had jumped into something with Vanessa, at best, it would have meant he was returning to the habit of using casual sex to numb his pain and fear of intimacy. Vanessa wouldn’t have wanted that or been happy with it.
Plus, there’s so much more to her character than this, and an illicit romance with her advisor would have detracted from her intelligence, compassion, and ambition.
Besides, Maggie is already overstepping every other week and driving Vanessa nuts. The last thing Vanessa needs is Maggie’s opinion about her relationship with Marcel.
So let’s hope that one ill-advised attempt to take Marcel’s hand is the end of this, though Chicago Med does sometimes tend toward soap opera tropes, so chances are this will come up again.
Maggie: So I was wondering –
Scott: Not interested.
Maggie: You don’t even know what I was going to say.
Speaking of which, what was that throwaway line about Maggie setting Scott up with her cousin? Scott got busy trying to take care of the Baxters, and that was the end of Maggie’s matchmaking for now, but that’s almost certainly going to come up again!
And why is Maggie putting her nose in Scott’s love life? Her interference in Vanessa’s is understandable, even if it is annoying. She’s trying to make up for lost time.
But there is no earthly reason for her to have decided Scott needs a date. I am curious as to where this goes and how problematic Maggie’s cousin is, but at the same time, that whole thing feels entirely unnecessary.
Scott’s case was one of the most compelling he had yet.
Pam: I was hopeful this was the start of something for him. But the bus was crowded and there was traffic… if you hadn’t come, it might have been our family today.
Scott: I know.
Pam: Roland is a sweet boy, and kind.
Scott: He is.
Pam: I wish we weren’t the only ones who saw it.
TV has often put a spotlight on the problem of police officers dealing with mentally ill citizens, but this was one of the best such stories I’ve seen.
I found myself wishing that in real life, cops would listen to a doctor telling them to stand down so he could take care of his patient. We’ve all seen headlines that didn’t happen, especially if the doctor was also Black.
It might have been more believable if the cops had worked with Scott in the past. But the rest of the story was so good that I accepted this as a depiction of how the world ought to work, even if, sadly, it often doesn’t work that way.
It wasn’t just the cops that were a problem, though — it was the psychiatrist that Roland initially saw.
From Roland’s account, the psychiatrist never bothered to even come into the room and asked him many yes/no questions. Most likely, in addition to potential racism, the psychiatrist was in too much of a rush to assess Roland properly.
That’s a problem within the field of psychiatry on top of the tendency to misdiagnose non-Whites because of racist beliefs.
Charles: Psychiatry is far from an exact science, and unfortunately, research does show that African Americans, especially males, are misdiagnosed with schizophrenia far more often than whites.
Scott: We’re perceived as dangerous so we get a diagnosis that matches that perception.
I”m glad that the writers put a spotlight on this problem. It’s not something that’s often discussed but is important to be aware of.
One thing that wasn’t touched upon here, though, was that high misdiagnosis rates often lead to lower levels of trust in medical professionals among Black people.
That leads to fewer doctor visits and less compliance with treatment regimes because of mistrust, but in Roland’s case, his mother completely trusted the other psychiatrist and was surprised to hear that the diagnosis was wrong.
This story would have been a golden opportunity to highlight how mistrust of doctors due to racism can also impact health care for Black Americans, and in that sense, it missed the mark. The story was still powerful without that, but it would have made it even better.
Interestingly, Roland wasn’t the only one misdiagnosed on Chicago Med Season 7 Episode 4.
Ashley turned out not to have brain cancer, terminal or otherwise, and Stevie said that meant she had a long future ahead of her. But I couldn’t help wondering what the long-term effects of unnecessary chemo and radiation might be.
That type of treatment is rough on the body, and many a cancer patient has gotten sicker or even died as a result of chemo.
I’d imagine there’d be some long-term consequences for that kind of treatment regardless of whether the patient had cancer and that it would be worse if the therapy only targeted healthy cells since there were no cancerous cells, to begin with.
Stevie never mentioned that, and it made me feel as if she were overly positive to compensate for the 30 years Ashley wasted on diagnosis and treatment.
Similarly, the problem of the biopsy causing minor brain damage didn’t go away just because Ashley was no longer facing a death sentence, so I’m not sure why she suddenly consented to it. I was expecting this story to go toward finding an alternative way of testing the tumor so that the poor woman wouldn’t need yet another biopsy.
Finally, Sharon told Will to let her know if he was getting in over his head with the undercover operation, but it seemed like he already did.
Archer likely walked into his presentation on purpose to interfere with it. Of course, Sharon knows that Will is undercover, so Archer reporting him to her won’t do anything.
But it did seem like Will was turning into Cooper 2.0 and was determined to sell Archer on the machine, most likely because he and Archer are constantly butting heads, and he didn’t want to let the guy win. Or was he playing his role to perfection so Cooper wouldn’t suspect anything?
Either way, it was bizarre that Will was suddenly all-in, to the point that he almost sabotaged the monitor Archer was using instead to prove a point.
Your turn, Chicago Med fanatics!
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Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8 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 Twitter.