Morgan has been less obnoxious lately, but that couldn’t last forever.
On The Good Doctor Season 3 Episode 9, the controlling, in-everyone’s-business, nosey version of Morgan was back, and she was just as irritating as ever.
Thank goodness she didn’t know about Claire’s one night stand. It’s anyone’s guess what she would have done.
To be fair, Morgan meant well even when she came off as her most judgmental.
She thought accusing Carly of wanting to “fix” Shaun protected Shaun somehow and that the patient needed to be pushed to consent to the surgery.
Morgan: I like Shaun and I’m thrilled that he is dating you. But I can’t help but think that anyone who’s willing to go out with him sees him as more of a project than a person.
Carly: Last week, two techs called out sick and I had to analyze over 200 slides. When I told Shaun, he came down and helped me til 3 in the morning. I’m not going out with Shaun because I have a martyr complex. I’m going out with him because he’s a great guy who treats me well. And the condescending notion that anyone needs an ulterior motive to date Shaun shows that you’re the one who doesn’t see him as a person.
But in both cases, Morgan was imposing her own opinion, based on her skewed, cynical perspective, and it was annoying.
It was delicious to see Carly put her in her place.
Dating Shaun means putting up with all of his friends’ opinions about their relationship all the time, and Carly seems to have to tell everyone to butt out constantly.
She’s a lot more patient than I would be.
Forget her being able to deal with Shaun’s fears and idiosyncrasies. Dealing with his friends’ beliefs that they have a right to be in the middle of this relationship canonizes her sainthood.
Morgan’s backstory of cheating on her boyfriend made her quasi-sympathetic, but at the same time, that doesn’t give her the right to be cynical and negative towards everyone else’s relationship.
The bottom line: She screwed up. That doesn’t mean that no relationship is real and that no one should care about things like sex and intimacy.
The sad thing is that nobody disagreed with Morgan — they just didn’t appreciate her overbearing approach.
Morgan kept insisting that there was more to a relationship than sex, but that had nothing to do with why Jeannie didn’t want the surgery.
Morgan: Every time you have intercourse, you’re risking her life.
Husband: We’re both aware of that. I’m just trying to be supportive.
Morgan: I don’t think you are. I think you’re being incredibly selfish. You’re risking Jeannie’s life so you can get laid.
For Jeannie and Tony, sex was part of the whole. They enjoyed the emotional intimacy of sharing their feelings and lives and the physical intimacy that came with having sex.
They both feared that not being able to have sex could doom the relationship, but that didn’t mean they thought sex was the only thing that was at all important.
Of course, it is possible to have an intimate relationship without sex — that’s what asexuals long for.
When Andrews said that sex is vital to any relationship, I died a little inside. For those who are asexual, that’s not true.
Unfortunately, the idea that everyone is sexual is so ingrained in people’s minds that asexuality often gets erased via comments like that. But I wish someone would have pushed back on it.
Many (though by no means all) people with Autism are asexual, so it’s a shame that asexuality hasn’t been explored more via Shaun’s character.
Nevertheless, Shaun’s continued struggles to be intimate with Carly have been fantastic, and his difficulty getting past her incomplete tattoo was no exception.
Glassman turned out to be right that the tattoo wasn’t the real issue, but it made sense that a half-drawn heart would irritate Shaun because of its incompleteness.
She had an incomplete tattoo. I don’t know why anyone would have a tattoo of half a heart. She had it on her body where I could see it.
Shaun
I figured that Carly had got half a heart because she wanted to get the other half when she met her special someone.
Shaun’s wondering whether she ran out of money before the tattoo was finished was hilarious, and her drawing the other half with a marker to show she’d found love with him was sweet.
Too bad that wasn’t enough to get Shaun to go to bed with her.
If anything, he seemed to take a step backward — wasn’t he able to lie in bed with her, fully clothed, by the end of The Good Doctor Season 3 Episode 8?
He’s going to need her more than ever now that his father is dying.
That seemed random as if the writers needed to tack on that cliffhanger to move into the winter finale.
Of course, death often strikes randomly, and there’s a ton of drama to be mined out of such a seemingly random event.
And in Shaun’s case, his unresolved issues with his parents make this even more painful.
But the best surprise twists are the ones that make perfect sense after the fact even though you didn’t see them coming.
That’s not what happened here. Sure, Glassman made an offhand comment about how Shaun hadn’t talked to his parents since he was 14, but there was no indication that they had been in touch with Glassman.
Even a one-sided phone call would have worked. That would have allowed the audience to wonder who Glassman was talking to.
Meanwhile, Claire had the most awkward drama ever when the man she helped cheat on his wife showed up in the ER while she was on duty.
That is one of those things that probably wouldn’t play out this way in real life, but which made excellent drama nevertheless.
Throughout the hour, Claire kept insisting she did nothing wrong because she wasn’t the one who was married.
She seriously needed a wake-up call, and let’s hope that slap across the face did it.
She gave the guy’s wife emotional support, for goodness sake. She told her to get the truth out of him.
The wife probably thought of her almost like a friend, only to find out she was the latest woman in her husband’s bed.
That had to have hurt.
Man: I almost died in that accident. And when I woke up, all I could think of was my wife and child and what an ass I’d been and how much I’d hurt them. So why is it that as soon as I get out of here, I’m going to cheat again? I can’t help it. No guilt, no remorse stops me.
Claire: Then you should leave them.
Man: I can’t. I love them. How messed up is that? But I think you know.
Claire: I don’t cheat.
Man: I could see you in the bar, checking out my left hand. You wanted to make sure I was married. You’re as big a cheater as me, Dr. Brown.
It was odd that Melendez went after her to comfort her. I guess he’s her boss, but still.
He needs to remind her about the ethical code side of being a doctor, and how being the one to ask the wife of the guy you slept with last night to consent to a procedure on his behalf may not be the best idea.
Not right now, of course, while she’s sobbing, but at some point.
And since Park is the one who confronted Claire about this mess throughout the hour, it would have made more sense for him to be the one who was there for her.
Not Melendez, who is still reeling from his break-up with Lim.
Hopefully, Melendez and Claire won’t bond over both being broken-hearted right now.
Also, hopefully, what Lim realizes is she was right to break up with Melendez after all. We’ve had more than enough of their on-again, off-again relationship.
What’d you think, Good Doctor fanatics?
Did you enjoy Shaun’s struggles with intimacy?
Are you looking forward to how he handles his dad’s impending death?
And did anyone else want to hit the mute button every time Morgan was on screen?
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The Good Doctor continues to air on ABC on Mondays at 10 PM EST/PST. The winter finale will air on December 2, 2019.
Jack Ori is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter.