'The Good Doctor' Season 1, Episode 6 'Not Fake' Recap: A Wedding Night Gone Very Bad [SPOILERS]

It’s one hell of a night for the entire medical staff of St. Bonaventure Hospital on episode 6 of “The Good Doctor” Season 1. After a bus containing the entourage and other guests of a wedding crashes, the entire hospital is alerted and the medical staff prepares for a stressful night. As the patients pour in overwhelmingly, Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) will experience his first emergency situation as he tries to save the groom’s leg using a 3D printed femur. Dr. Claire Brown (Antonia Thomas), on the other hand, will also have to deal with her patient’s death (something of her accidental doing). Meanwhile, Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu) will try his best to connect with his patient who’s in need of a skin graft.

A chaotic night

The episode starts with the resident surgeons of St. Bonaventure going through a seemingly uneventful graveyard shift. Little do they know that it’s actually the calm before the storm. Attending Physician Dr. Audrey Lynn comes in to check on her doctors just as the emergency room gets a call of the bus accident. It’s a mass casualty event, and all the doctors prepare for the worst—even the heads of the department.
The patients file in and the entire hospital is shaken. They sort each patient in their specific categories and Jared gets a woman who suffered a burn on her entire chest (complete with her dress melted right on to her skin). Claire and Shaun appear to be very shocked, and they are left speechless as the patients continue to arrive. Claire and Dr. Neil Melendez (Nicholas Gonzalez) gets a patient with a foreign object lodged in her neck and nicking her carotid artery. Finally, Shaun gets the groom as a patient. His leg appears to be bleeding profusely, which turns out to be a fatal condition for the groom. Shaun freezes to think and makes a DIY reboa to stop the bleeding. He is successful and things calm down for now. Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) and Dr. Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper) also arrive at the scene. However, Dr. Melendez is impressed with what Shaun did, making him more open to what Shaun can do as a surgeon.

Amputation vs. artificial bone replacement

Shaun hands his patient’s CT and MRI results to Dr. Melendez and tells him that the patient’s femur is crushed. They go the groom’s parents and the bride and tell them about his condition. His leg will need to be amputated because there’s no way for them to reconnect his femur. His lower leg isn’t getting enough blood too, which could then die if not treated right away. For Dr. Melendez, the only choice is to amputate him. However, Shaun thinks that there’s still something that can be done.
Shaun struggles to get a computer for himself. As he struggles, Dr. Glassman and the other hospital staff members talk about their own wedding and dream weddings. A nurse asks Shaun if he wants to marry her, which he outrightly refuses and says that he doesn’t want love. He runs off to find a computer and happens upon Claire about to use one. He snatches it away from her, saying that his patient’s scans are very important for him to find out what he else could be done aside from an amputation. Upon looking at them, he concludes that there’s no other way. However, Claire thinks of a brilliant idea—a 3D printed femur.  Dr. Melendez sees them watching the print of the femur, and he says that there’s a small chance that it could work. Shaun tells him that it will, as the femur is made up of titanium and can support body weight.
Shaun and Dr. Melendez then inform the patient’s parents and bride that they can replace the bone with the 3D printed femur. At first, they think that it’s a good idea, but when Shaun tells them that they haven’t done it before, they refuse and urge them to go ahead and amputate the patient. The bride thinks otherwise, though, and tries to argue with her in-laws. But they couldn’t be swayed and asks for the operation to start. As they prep him up for amputation, Jessica Preston (Beau Garret), the hospital’s legal counsel, halts the operation. She filed an emergency injunction so the bride can make her case in the presence of a Judge, with Shaun to testify.
The judge arrives and listens to the bride’s and in-laws’ arguments. A lot of secrets are revealed, and Jessica feels that they are all straying from the main point, which is to find out whether the groom would be amputated or given the femur replacement. She calls in Shaun to testify, but he fails to make a statement because he is thinking and also observing the groom. As everybody starts to argue, Shaun shouts at them to be quiet and checks the groom’s foot. There he discovers that it’s clotting, which means that there’s only a matter of time before the groom loses his foot even before any operation is made. Dr. Melendez asks the judge for a decision, and she sides with the bride’s request to replace the bone. The operation also turns out to be a success, and the blood flow is restored to the patient’s foot.
Later, Shaun and Dr. Melendez ask the patient (now fully-awake) to try and move his toes. At first, he couldn’t, but after Shaun prodded his foot repeatedly, he sees a tickled reaction and tells them that he’s good. Everybody’s happy, and the groom asks his bride if she is ready to finish what they started. The bride tells him that there’s plenty of time for that.

Dr. Jared Kalu, the skin grafter

Jared tries hard to calm himself down while tending to his burn patient. She’s having difficulty breathing and Jared diagnoses her wrong the first time—in which Dr. Andrews refutes him. What she really needs is an escharotomy, something that would treat a third-degree burn. Dr. Andrews orders Jared to bring her to the burn unit and has him remove the embedded dress particles on her skin one by one. The patient cries at every piece that Jared removes, and so they rest for a bit as the morphine takes effect on her. He’s obviously agitated, and can’t even look at her—making the patient feel that he isn’t capable of doing what he’s doing. She asks for a mirror and cries at the sight of her burned skin.
Jared goes outside to get some air, as Claire talks to her about how stressful it is for surgeons who are currently having their first emergency situation at the hospital. Jared is having a hard time to connect with his patient and Claire tells him that in order for him to do that, he simply needs to listen to the patient, clear his head and act as her escape from what she is currently enduring. He goes back inside and tries to have his patient pick a movie to watch, thinking that it would take her mind off of her situation. Obviously, it’s a dumb move. But this is when Jared gets a bright idea.
He goes to Dr. Andrews to ask for his help in hurrying up a request for tilapia skins. Apparently, these can be used for bandaging the burns so the skin can heal on its own. Dr. Andrews refuses and tells Jared to think of another way as he takes over the patient’s care. Persistent, Jared comes back with good news and says that he was able to obtain the sterilized tilapia skins from the San Diego Community Hospital, saying that all they needed was the data of the patient and her burn condition so they could further their research. Jared then tells his patient that he will do the procedure as she thanks him. The operation turns out to be a success, but Dr. Andrews also finds out that Jared actually acquired the skins by donating a huge amount of money to the San Diego hospital.

An accidental death

Claire checks in on her patient who previously had something lodged in her neck. She’s fine now, and Claire tells her that she’d only need to rest for a couple of months. The patient then asks her if her wife was also fine, which Claire has no knowledge of. She tells her that maybe she’s not a casualty and is only in the waiting room. Claire goes out to check and finds out that the wife isn’t around. She asks one of the survivors of the accident if they’ve seen her, and they tell Claire that she was indeed on the bus. Claire asks the EMTs to come with her to the accident area and look around so they could find the patient’s wife.
They arrive at the scene and find her sprawled in a ravine. They lift her out and Claire performs a tracheal intubation, where a tube is placed into the windpipe through her mouth so she could breathe. She also sees that the patient’s pupil is blown indicating that she has a subdural hematoma. Claire drills into her skull to drain out the blood and then brings her back to St. Bonaventure. They prep her up for an operation and Dr. Glassman is brought in to take over.
During the surgery, Dr. Glassman finds the source of the bleeding and lets Claire clip the inter-cranial artery. Glassman knows that it’s Claire’s first time, and he wants her to savor the moment. Claire clips it and closes the skull. After that, Dr. Glassman checks for brain activity—which shows nothing. They try to check again, and still nothing. The patient’s gone.
After the operation, Dr. Lynn tells Dr. Glassman about what she found out about the patient before she died. He then goes to Claire, who’s waiting for her first patient to wake up so she could tell her that they weren’t able to save her wife. Glassman asks her about the things she did before the patient was brought in. She detailed everything she did, but apparently, she left one detail out—Claire forgot to check her breathing after she did the intubation. According to Dr. Lynn, the patient wasn’t getting enough oxygen because Claire inserted the tube too deep. This lead to hypoxia, a condition where the body is deprived of sufficient oxygen, which also caused her death after the operation. Claire is shocked, and Dr. Glassman tells her of how he also lost a patient before due to misdiagnosis. He also tells her that she will never forget about it, but she has to find a way to keep going and be better at it the next time. He sends her home and tells the other patient about her wife’s death. As Glassman talks to her, Claire looks on and is in tears.
The episode ends with Dr. Glassman asking Shaun about why he didn’t want love. To Shaun, he sees no point in the need for love, even after the person you loved is already dead.

‘The Good Doctor: Not Fake’ Overall Verdict

Tonight’s episode featured more medical action, which is something that “The Good Doctor” hasn’t done until now. I’ve been looking for something like this from the get-go, and “Not Fake,” shows it very well. Not all the major operations done today turned out to be a success, but it will turn out to be for the better in the future for Claire. It’s not that emotionally heavy, but the stakes are still high. It’s crazy to even think about a patient dying because of a minor mistake, but in a situation like this, it’s inevitable. I could see how this can shape Claire into possibly being the next superstar surgeon next to Dr. Melendez in the coming episodes. One thing that’s bothersome, though, is Shaun’s misunderstanding of love. But surely, this will change seeing how he “has the hots” for his neighbor Leah.
“The Good Doctor” continues November 13th with “22 Steps,” 10 PM on ABC.