Tonight on NBC their new medical drama “The Good Doctor” airs with an all-new Monday, October 25, 2021, episode and we have you The Good Doctor recap below. On tonight’s The Good Doctor season 5 episode, 4 called, “Rationality,” as per the ABC synopsis, “Dr. Shaun Murphy and the team treat a young girl whose father’s personal research complicates their treatment plans.
Meanwhile, Dr. Park, Dr. Reznick and Dr. Lim’s patient refuses a life-saving lung transplant despite having a family donor.”
So make sure to tune in between 10 PM and 11 PM ET for our The Good Doctor recap! While you wait for our recap make sure to check out all our television spoilers, news, recaps, videos & more, right here!
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The Good Doctor begins tonight with Lea Dilallo (Paige Spara) standing with Dr Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) looking up at the huge poster of him; her telling him it is a nice photo. Shaun remains silent, walking into the building, up the stairs after Salen Morrison (Rachel Bay Jones), saying he did not want to be the star of her ad campaign. She tells him it is amazing what he has accomplished and the poster inverts his image as his hair part is on the wrong side. She calls him emotional; she suggests they both take 48 hours to think about the billboard and use reason, not emotion to make a decision and then they will talk.
Dr Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper) walks with Dr Mateo Rendon Osma (Osvaldo Benavides) and Shaun, who are also discussing the billboard. Andrews feels representation is important as only 4% of doctors are black and he gets his face out there whenever he can. Mateo feels she is only exploiting the doctors that already work there. A nurse approaches the doctors, informing Dr Murphy that a patient’s father specifically asked to see him.
Shaun walks into the patient’s room, wondering if the father only wanted him because of the billboard but he assures him it is not. He introduces Shaun to his daughter and the patient, Holly and begins to explain her symptoms. She has seen 19 doctors and he insists it is fissure myopathy, but Shaun says it doesn’t match and looking up symptoms on the internet is not very wise. He checks and says she has a serious bowel obstruction and this has now become a surgical case.
Dr Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) meets with her patient who has a persistent cough especially since her return from Africa. She traveled the world until she found serving the world through charity was her call in life. Morgan says she is not overreacting and is barely moving any air in her left lung. Meanwhile, Dr Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) is interrupted from tinkering under one of his cars at home. He slides out from the car to see Salen who wants to talk to him about the press conferences she has scheduled for him. Aaron says he is going to focus on things that actually need his attention and closes his garage door on her, saying goodbye.
Shaun is in the OR with Andrews and Mateo, together they were able to clear the obstruction for their patient. In the meantime, Morgan and Dr Alex Park (Will Yun Lee) meet with their patient again, explaining that her left lung is very damaged but it is also in her right lung but still functioning. She asks how long without the transplant, and She is informed a month or two. She tells Morgan and Alex that she better call her son, whom she hasn’t seen since he was about 12.
Shaun is in the cafeteria with Lea, where Lea wants him to reexamine his own presumptions of the billboard and trying to see it from her point of view, but before they can continue the conversation, Mateo arrives with Holly’s results. Her father was right about it being fissure myopathy.
Morgan is giving her patient, Jean an update, her son, Henrick arrives. He is confused as to why he is there and she tells him there is something wrong with her lungs. When he asks if she is dying, she says probably and he is frustrated that she only called for that reason and wonders if she even feels bad for what she did. She feels bad for hurting him but he said it was too painful to keep in touch with him. She isn’t blaming him; Morgan interrupts them to tell her that there is a potential match available for her.
Shaun and Marcus walk into Holly’s room to find Salen sitting there talking to her. Walt, Holly’s father, is not a doctor at all but has been studying his daughter’s case for over 4 years, so Salen feels he is the best informed one on the team and orders them to treat him like a consulting physician, he can be involved in all medical discussions, he can watch surgeries and even give him a fitness tracker. Salen leaves the room, but Shaun and Marcus follow her, both voicing their concerns, especially since he isn’t a doctor. Shaun and Marcus watch her walk away as he says he doesn’t like this at all but Marcus reminds him that she is their boss so they have to learn to love it.
Morgan finds Alex who are given times for the arrival of Jean’s lungs. Morgan feels for Jean, saying she has done a lot of good things in her life and can’t be punished for one mistake, also confused on why a mom should give up her entire life for her kids; Alex says dads should do it too; but Morgan asks if Alex did that when he gave up his son to do his residency there? He feels guilty about it but tried very hard to stay in his son’s life.
Walt sits with Marcus, Mateo and Shaun are in one of the meeting rooms trying to figure out a plan for his daughter Holly. Shaun is irritated with various things happening, especially when Walt keeps refusing any of their ideas and now Marcus agrees they go Walt’s way.
Morgan enters the OR to give Alex and Dr Audrey Lim (Christina Chang) the bad news that they found a cancerous leison in one of the donor’s lungs during retrieval.
Alex and Morgan meet with Henrick to tell him that his mother has reach severe pulmonary hypertension and in a few days she will no longer be a transplant candidate and realistically there will not be another lung available. Morgan tells Henrick that he could be a donor if he wanted to be as Alex explains the risks; Henrick asks for some time to think it over and walks away.
Mateo talks to Holly with her dad by her side. He explains about the pic line, saying it must be tough being sick all the time. When Holly asks if this medicine is her dad’s idea, Shaun says it is but it is not a good idea. Walt tells Holly that they know it is scary but she can trust her dad that it will all work out as Shaun adds in that if it doesn’t it could kill her; which frightens the girl.
Aaron is busy back in his garage working on the old classic car when Lea arrives. She wants Aaron to talk to Shaun to feel him out and see if she is wrong, but he thinks Shaun is doing just fine. Lea knows he is there for Shaun, but wants to know why he is not helping him.
Jean is being put in a bipap when her son comes in, saying he will do the living donor transplant. His mother refuses, not allowing him to hurt himself after what she did. She’d rather die; admitting she hated herself. She explains how the first week she brought him home he never latched and that panic never went away; but that loving him she used to never fall apart. She knew his father was a good man and he could love him in a way she never could. Henrick says she has no right to say he was okay. He prayed for her everyday to see her when he got home from school and she never was. As he is berating her, she goes into full respiratory failure; same with Holly as her father Walt says he was wrong!
Morgan explains how the machines are keeping Jean alive; she also tells him that since she is now unconscious he is her power of attorney and can make her medical decisions. Alex, upon hearing this, brings the problem to Dr Lim’s office, feeling Morgan is breaching her oath as their patient made it very clear that she didn’t want her son hurting himself. Lim tells them to do the transplant and it is her proxy who makes the decision and Morgan better hope that it works.
Back in the conference room, Walt feels the medical team needs to follow the plan that Shaun had suggested, but he said it will be far more extension now and it still could kill her. Walt keeps snapping his fingers which causes Shaun to have an episode. He finally shouts at Walt, saying they gave his daughter the medication he wanted and it made her sicker and asked why is Walt even there as he isn’t even a doctor. Shaun is told he is out of line and forced out of the room. Marcus apologizes for Shaun but says he was also right.
Alex and Morgan are discussing their case when she continues to be emotional and Alex demands to know what is going on with her. She tells him it has nothing to do with him, telling him to shut up. She takes a deep breath and says it is because she has been taking hormonal injections to freeze her eggs. She finally admits to him that she is not even sure she wants kids or if she would even make a decent mom. She does hope she would make better choices than others. Alex looks at her, but before he can say anything she quickly excuses herself out of the room.
Aaron finds Shaun in the cafeteria, who reveals he has his face on a billboard and he has been kicked off a case so he isn’t doing very well. Aaron tells him he spoke to Dr Andrews who says there won’t be a note in his file or anything like that but Shaun explains what Salen asked him to do and he has 30 bullet points; Aaron offering to work with that to shortening the list. Shaun zones out, saying he knows he was right about that girl’s treatment but everything he said to her father just made him mad and she just got sicker. He knew he was right that the billboard was a mistake but he doesn’t think he can convince Salen of that either. He keeps feeling he is right but can’t change anyone’s mind.
Aaron goes to find Salen, saying there is no justification for exposing an employee’s medical record and she needs to take the billboard down. She mocks him for coddling Shaun as no one made excuses for her ADHD, making her smarter and more resourceful. Aaron makes a deal that he will do the interviews as long as Salen will listen to Shaun’s points and remove the billboard; she agrees.
Walt sits with Holly, explaining what happened while her mother was pregnant with her and that is why she is so sick now. Nothing is clear as to what will happen medically after all the procedures. Holly cries that her father promised her he would fix this, forcing him to admit that he has failed her, hugging her and sobbing.
Shaun is at the nurses’ station when Holly being taken past in the gurney, she told Shaun that it was her that chose him after she saw the billboard because he was different, like her. She needed someone who thought different and they needed that.
Walt sits in the observation area as Holly’s surgery happens. Shaun goes to see Lea, admitting he was wrong about the billboard. When he saw it, he thought it was dumb and it wouldn’t inspire anyone but it did. It inspired the very first case and if he was wrong about that, maybe he was wrong about the case, allowing emotions to get in the way. Lea feels he was fair as Shaun says he yelled at him when he was talking about the pressure in her colon and it has to make sense somehow, even if at the time it didn’t. Shaun suddenly visualizes something and races through the hospital to the OR.
Shaun joins Walk, interrupting the surgery, telling them to insert a feeding tube into the intestines, so it will strengthen the muscles. Walt quickly agrees to Dr Murphy scrubbing in as it is the perfect plan.
Holly has woken up, there is no bleeding, no bruising and no signs of infection. Walt thanks both Shaun and Marcus; but Dr Andrews makes sure that Walt is given the credit too. Holly smiles at Dr Murphy who isn’t sure if her dad would make a great doctor as he had some great ideas and some bad ones but he is a wonderful father though and one of the best he has met.
Jean begins to wake up from her surgery to see her son Henrick sitting in a hospital gown and in a wheelchair. He tells her that he didn’t want her to die. She feels she doesn’t deserve to be happy and that he shouldn’t love her. He begins to tell her what it was like when she left them, acting out and his dad saying he will love him no matter who he was and what he did because he was his dad. He says he is going to love her like his dad because she is his mom; the two hold hands as Morgan and Alex watch her call him, “my baby boy!”
Aaron is at home, talking about his fitness tracker and how the different hospital that is going to be very inspiring. He ends the call, saying they will do this another time. Aaron grabs his keys and sees the billboard of Shaun still up. He confronts Salen who reveals it was Shaun who asked her to keep it up. When Aaron didn’t believe it she shows him Shaun’s email, his only stipulation was to fix the image so his part was on the right side. She says Shaun fixed this on his own and he is better off because of it. Aaron leaves.
Morgan finds her injection in the refrigeration, Alex catching her doing it. He says he didn’t choose any of this but he is going to do whatever it takes to make this relationship work. She asks him to prove it, handing him the syringe and he tells her to “buckle up” and injects her. He tries to tell her that she would be a great mom but she tells him, “not right now.”
Lea and Shaun enjoy the billboard a little more before heading home from work. Meanwhile, Aaron goes into his garage to see the car done, there is a note attached, “Glassy… I cleaned the jets and a couple other things.. Lea.” He climbs inside, turns the keys and it starts no problem, He quickly goes back into the house, packs his suitcases inside and leaves for the open road.
THE END
