'The Good Doctor' Season 1, Episode 4 'Pipes' Recap: Porn Stars, Fetal Tumors and Personal Struggles [SPOILERS]

It’s a crazy episode. And by crazy, I mean you could literally lose your mind from the range of emotions you’ll feel during “Pipes,” episode 4 of ABC’s “The Good Doctor.” This is the first time that we see a lot going on in the personal lives of our characters, and frankly, it’s a refreshing story to follow. Not that the hospital action is beginning to dull, but it’s great to see all the resident surgeons struggle with their own lives as they try to make sense of the best methods they can apply at work.
The use of flashbacks is surprisingly very minimal (even dialed down to just two). But this episode is where we finally see conflict begin to arise, as all the characters experience some kind of an eye-opening experience in their relationship with each other and how it affects their job. This is, so far, one of the slower-paced but emotionally-loaded episodes of “The Good Doctor.”

Things begin to heat up

The episode opens with Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) laying in his apartment in the middle of the night. There’s a leak in the faucet, and it’s bothering him greatly. He attempts to fix it with his start screwdriver, but couldn’t find it. He calls Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) to help him look for it. Shaun is in distress, and the two lose their temper. Dr. Glassman shouts at Shaun but immediately apologizes. He knows that Shaun is overly stressed because of work, and he urges him to have the apartment’s resident repairman to fix it. In the end, Dr. Glassman finds the screwdriver inside the refrigerator.
The next day, Dr. Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez) orients Dr. Claire Brown (Antonia Thomas) and Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu) on their new patient, who’s 26 weeks pregnant. The only catch? There’s a tumor attached to the fetus. And to top it all off, this patient has had 3 miscarriages already. Imagine trying to reason with that. Shaun arrives and says that an MRI needs to be done for them to know how much the tumor has grown. But Shaun is obviously tired from a long night and yawns. Melendez notices this and reprimands him, but Claire defends Shaun by saying that they all had a long shift the day before. Melendez is irritated at this.

They go in and meet the patient and shares to her that according to the MRI, the best thing to do is to abort the fetus. The tumor has grown almost half the fetus’ size, and it’s both dangerous for the mother and the fetus to undergo surgery. The patient tries to urge them to still do it, but Melendez insists that it’s way too risky. Shaun suddenly speaks up and suggest that there is another way to get the tumor out, only it’s an extremely complicated one. The patient’s husband lights up and he and his wife both think that there is a chance for them to both survive the operation.
Outside the room, Melendez confronts Shaun and tells him to never contradict him again. He also tells his crew to get the patient prepped. But because of Shaun butting in, he sends him and Claire to cover Dr. Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper) who’s currently seeing a patient with a boil. Claire asks why she has to go with Shaun to do scut work, and Melendez tells them that he’s punishing Shaun for being late—and since Claire is always quick to defend Shaun, she gets to go to assist him.
Claire and Shaun get to the ER to look at their new patient’s situation. Apparently, this patient has a boil on her labia, but she’s under a great amount of pain, considering that it’s only a boil. Shaun finds this odd and takes a look at it. He finds his first diagnosis (a flesh-eating bacteria) wrong and figures out that its an abscess. Now comes the interesting part, Claire and Shaun also find out that the patient works as a porn star.

A crucial surgery for a crucial condition

Melendez goes to Dr. Andrews about the possible operation on the pregnant patient. To Andrews, Melendez wants to do it because it will make him feel good about himself. And if Melendez messes up, the hospital could lose funding due to a failing success rate. Melendez is adamant and insists that he’s doing this because he knows he can and that he needs to save a life and not to feel better about his judgment—to which Dr. Andrews eventually permits. Melendez then gives his team a pep talk before they do the operation.
He is then cut short when Jessica Preston (Beau Garrett), St. Bonaventure’s legal counsel and his wife, calls him in her office. There he finds the patient’s husband who’s not willing to do the operation anymore because he doesn’t want his wife to die from a 50/50 chance of success. Apparently, he has a say when it comes to operating the fetus since he is the father.
The Hospital board meets and discusses further action regarding the operation. It’s revealed that if they do nothing, the mother and the fetus will both die. If they continue with the surgery they could still both die. But if they do something legally and medically complicated, there’s might just be a chance for them to live. Melendez then shares this news with the couple, to which the wife insists on doing. Her husband doesn’t like it, but his wife is undeterred.

Taking work matters home (actually, in bed)

The doctors’ shift finally ends and Claire, Jared, and Shaun all prepare to go home. Jared learns that Shaun used to watch porn too, despite how he is. That night, Jared and Claire are in bed. Claire can’t shake off thinking about her porn star patient and cannot believe that she is one too. Jared, on the other hand, sees this as Claire slowly opening up to him, which is good for their “relationship” or whatever the hell they have going on between them.
Meanwhile, Melendez and Jessica also talk about their own patient and somehow manages to divert the topic to their own marriage. Melendez wants kids with her, but Jessica shares her doubts.
Shaun is on the bus and fixes his attention on the posters that feature girls in their lingerie. He remembers that one time when his brother first introduced him to a porn magazine. After mulling over the thought of it, Shaun misses his stop and gets off the bus, unsure what to do. Luckily his neighbor Lea happens to pass by in her car and spots him. She offers him a ride and they both throw truth bombs about each other’s personality. Shaun tells her she stinks, while Lea calls him a sucky neighbor.
That night, Shaun knocks on the apartment repairman’s door and hands him the list of things he needs fixing. The repairman is annoyed and gets the list from Shaun.
The next day, Dr. Glassman apologizes to Shaun over breakfast at the hospital. But he also thinks that Shaun must learn to work around basic human emotions because he is smart. Tha being said, Dr. Glassman also suggests to Shaun that maybe he needs a Personal Support Worker with him at home—to which Shaun responds with hostility.

Looking for an effective compromise

The pregnant patient’s husband tries to talk Melendez out of the operation, but he is firm that he could do it and that he’s confident that he can do it successfully. The surgery with the pregnant patient begins, and as they cut her open, she suffers a heart attack, forcing Melendez and his crew to stop the procedure and close her up to prevent her from dying. Melendez shares this to the patient and her husband and is on the verge of giving up when the husband tells them to try again. And so Melendez meets with the board again. However, the board believes that it’s a complicated idea, and they can only resort to having the fetus aborted so the mother could still live. Jared, who’s hovering outside the room, interrupts the meeting with an idea: they can stop her heart while on surgery and let it undergo bypass. That way, they can fully operate without the risk of her having a heart attack. The board agrees and Melendez tells the patient the plan, to which she also agrees.

Meanwhile, Dr. Andrews now does the surgery to the patient with a labia abscess. As they progress, they soon find out that the abscess is actually a front for the benign tumor that’s covering one of the labia’s nerves. When she wakes up, Claire and Shaun inform her of their discovery and tells her that she might not get the feeling in her genitals anymore if they proceed with the operation.
That night, Jared and Melendez work tirelessly to find out the best way they can execute the plan, while Shaun annoys the repairman by saying he shouldn’t have fixed the faucet leak. He goes back to his apartment and “fixes” it to leak again. That’s when he figures out an idea that can help save his patient.

The resolution

Come operation day, Claire goes to see their patient and ask what her decision would be. Shaun comes in suddenly presenting his idea: they can still connect the nerves in her genitals that will be affected by using a nerve from her thigh, switching it with her genitals’ dilemma. Shaun asks her which she would rather keep the feeling of, and of course, the patient chooses the feeling for her genitals to be saved. They do the surgery and turns out a success. Dr. Andrews praises Shaun, and he is obviously encouraged.

In Melendez’s camp, on the other hand, they also successfully remove the tumor from the fetus, and Melendez calls it a baby for the first time. Jared is awed at the sight of the baby, and he couldn’t be more happy at saving the patient and the baby’s life. After the procedure, Melendez accidentally reveals the baby to be a boy, and the couple smiles in gratitude.
It’s a cause for celebration and Jared and Claire convince Shaun to go with them on a night out. As they settle themselves in the bar, Shaun remembers that awkward would-be first kiss with his childhood friend Colleen. She comes to him and asks if he likes her, and Shaun says yes. She then urges him to show his dick to her so she could show her vagina too, and Shaun refuses, asking for a kiss instead. It turns out that it’s a joke she pulled for Shaun, and he is left embarrassed.
Back in the bar, the three raise a toast to themselves for successfully saving lives that night.

‘The Good Doctor: Pipes’ Overall Verdict

“The Good Doctor” keeps on getting better and better when it comes to storytelling and the expert use of emotions. I never thought that they’d show Shaun’s complicated, annoying side, which is something that also happens in real life for people living in the spectrum. But it’s something that sets Freddie Highmore apart. He plays the role so well that you begin to feel emphatic towards his character, making you a part of his dilemma and frustrations. “Pipes” is a great episode, and it doesn’t fail to deliver yet another impressive story.
“The Good Doctor” continues next Monday with “Point Three Percent,” 10 PM on ABC.