Brilliant Minds Season Two Premier Recap
Mini recap: There a new member of the Wolf Pack, and he’s there to spy for Mama Wolf. Oliver decides to try to reconnect with Papa Wolf, who is living with him, and solve his mystery disease. But then Papa Wolf ghosts. The neurological curiosity of the week is alien hand syndrome.
And… we’re back for season two! I have to admit that I did not expect this show to get renewed. Ratings were meh, and I’d assumed that the uneven writing failed to attract an obsessive fanbase. But I was wrong! And, after watching the first two episodes of this season, I am excited for the rest. It seems like the heavy handedness is gone, and the writers are not taking themselves so seriously. It really is starting to seem like House MD meets golden-era Grey’s Anatomy. They have brought back showing the world from the patients’ perspective, which adds some visual flair to all that hospital blue. They are also not trying as hard to explain neuroscience, which is probably for the best.
One problem with having a medical procedural drama based on neurology is that, while you get all sorts of fascinating issues, the resolutions are unsatisfying: there’s no dramatic cure, just symptom management. (Brain science is at its infancy — and just as we are on the cusp of some breakthroughs, some big dummies are cutting research funding.)
So far, we have seen two solutions to this dramatic problem:
Have the interesting neurological issue be the result of a VERY URGENT underlying problem, like a fast growing brian tumor.
The patient has an unrelated, very urgent problem.
Sorry for all the preamble. Let’s get into it:
We open with a flash forward: Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) attempting to escape an locked psych ward by snatching someone’s coat and key card and pretending to be a doctor. He gets cornered in a stairwell and is sedated by a creepy looking lady.
Opening credits. We are in a boxing ring. A fighter named Tommy (Duke Davis Roberts) knocks out his sparing partner, and his dad urges him to punch the poor guy while he’s flat on his face in the ring. Instead of hitting his opponent, Brian starts punching himself — again and again, with the same hand. (hint, hint)
Tommy is transported to Bronx General where he is treated by new character Dr. Anthony Thorne (John Clarence Stewart), an ER doctor who makes the point I keep making: The neurology department is way overstaffed, as they spend several days on a single patient. He’s lucky to get a few minutes with a patient. Glad to see that at least one department at Bronx General exists in something like our actual reality.
Intern Jacob Nash (Spence Moore II) pitches in and contemplates defecting to Tony’s team.
Dr. Kenny appears (in a nice dress, for no clear reason) and she’s traded her curly bob for long hair. I preferred the bob, personally. Dr. Dana Dang (Aurey Krebs) makes out with the hot EMT in a closet. Hot EMT mentions that her shoulder is sore and Dana starts to give her a back massage but is interrupted by a page. (Why was the neurology intern doing physical therapy?)
Kenny, Dana and Van (Alex MacNicoll) walk into Wolf’s office, and the chair turns and it’s … not Wolf! It’s a hot preppy guy. He’s Dr. Charlie Portera (Brian Altemus) second year resident, and he’s been recruited by Mama Wolf to join the already overstaffed neurology service. Portera wants to join the wolf pack — he literally says “wolf pack” later in the episode! For the record, I have been calling them that since the pilot, so someone owes me royalties. (JK it’s not exactly that original.)
You can’t tell me that the two white guys with brown hair aren’t twins, basically.
Faceblind note: Wolf recognizes everyone immediately despite their nice new hair and tan, etc. Meanwhile I, a real person with prosopagnosia, have been confused twice in the episode. I did not recognize Van (and I keep not recognizing him in scene after scene.) He’s so expendable! And now there’s a new hot white guy around, why even is he there?
Also, Van’s mirror touch has fully turned into ESP. We get a scene where he looks at people and tells them what they are feeling — emotions and even itchyness! Mirror touch is about your motor neurons reflecting other people’s motor neurons — so you have to see someone move, and you actually feel it in your body like you’re moving. I can imagine making a case for a MT person being especially sensitive to subtle facial movements, but unless someone us actively scratching a particular part of their body, you should not be able to tell they are feeling itchy.
I kept mixing up Van and the new guy, Portera. And I thought, at first, that the boxer was Dr. Oliver Wolf. Writers, if you are reading this, throw your faceblind viewers a bone and give one of these identical white guys a mustache or something.
Wolf is working on his dad’s medical mystery, and he wants a special kind of brain scan for his dad that his mom will not authorize. Our boxer wants to leave the ER prematurely — his dad (lots of dads in this episode!) wants him to get back to training before the Big Fight. Wolf tries to intercede, and he ends up getting punched.
Later, when Wolf runs into his former flame Dr. Josh Nichols (Teddy Sears), they have a fun exchange.
Nichols: Nice shiner
Wolf: You should have seen the other guy.
Wolf: Nice tan.
Nichols: I spent the weekend in the Hamptons. You should have seen the other guy.
SNAP!
Apparently everyone on the Komen foundation board thinks Dr. Pierce was fired for making her husband’s mistress attempt suicide.
Catching up with Dr. Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry). She is on leave from the hospital, as they are going to fire her for treating the gal her husband was cheating on her with. Honestly, she is lucky they don’t take her license! As it is, she is now in private practice and she is listening to a rich lady carp about her neighbors leaving their shoes in the hall of their expensive building. It’s very boring, and so — in a reversal of what happens in the pilot episode — Oliver shows up and dangles an interesting case in front of her as bait to get her back to Bronx General — the boxer.
Now that Pierce is on the case, they figure it out really quickly. Our boxer has alien hand syndrome. It’s a real thing, very very rare, where one feels like their hand or arm doesn’t belong to them, and like it has a mind of its own. They don’t bother explaining this strange syndrome — if you want to learn more, check out “Phantoms in the Brain,” by Vilayanur S. Ramachandran. Not to name drop, but I interviewed him once and he told me about a patient who had phantom foot orgasms after an amputation! This makes sense if you know about the weird organization of the sensory cortex, where feet neurons are right next to genital neurons.
Speaking of Ramachandran, Dr. Oliver Wolf uses — and takes credit for inventing — Ramachandran’s mirror-box method for helping our boxer regain conscious control of his hands. The way it works is that you move both your arms together while looking in a mirror that makes it seem like the paralyzed or misbehaving hand is moving normally — one won’t move, of course, but you trick your brain into thinking it does. That simple illusion of being able to move your arm normally helps the patient regain actual control. It works by providing congruent visual feedback to the motor system, which re-engages brain networks for agency and suppresses disinhibited motor programs.
Anyway, Wolf tells his patient not to keep boxing because it will be bad for his brain. Also the underlying cause of his alien hand syndrome turns out to be Parkinson’s — His dad was keeping the diagnosis from the boxer in order to keep him in the ring.
Wolf’s patient wants to keep boxing anyway, even if it kills him. So Wolf becomes his boxing trainer and the whole extended Wolf Pack watch the big fight! Right beforehand we meet the boxer’s cute kids, and he talks about his future plans (to start a gym to help people with Parkinson’s.) This, to me is a death sentence for an expendable character. But amazingly, he wins the fight and doesn’t die! And then he reconciles with his dad.
Speaking of dads: Mandy Patinkin must have been too expensive to have on as a series regular, because his character, Papa Wolf, ghosts his son — again! Wolf is devastated. This is not going to be good for his attachment issues.
Inspired by the boxer, Dr. Pierce decides to fight to get her job back at Bronx General.
Also: Kinney is taking benzos on the sly, after adamantly saying that she is handling her anxiety issues naturally and doesn’t need meds.
So, there we go! What a great start to Season 2. I’m excited to see more!
