SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the Season 2 premiere of NBC‘s Brilliant Minds.
Brilliant Minds returned for its second season Monday night with a case that had Dr. Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) reexamining his own relationships when a boxer is admitted to Bronx General for being unable to control his own arm.
Oliver is immediately intrigued by the case of the boxer with alien hand syndrome, even as the case begins to hit a lot closer to home than he could’ve predicted when the patient’s relationship with his father begins to mirror Oliver’s own. Remember, Oliver was stunned at the end of Season 1 to learn that his father was not only still alive but was recruiting his help to solve his memory issues…or so he thought.
As Wolf’s team begins to unravel the case-of-the-week, they diagnose the boxer with a rare neurodegenerative disorder called corticobasal degeneration — and he needs to stop boxing before it gets worse. It turns out, the boxer’s father knew of the diagnosis and had been hiding it from his so that his son would continue with the sport. It’s an insidious betrayal that, compounded with Muriel’s (Donna Murphy) thoughts that Oliver’s father may be holding back information, make Oliver begin to question whether his own father is telling him the truth.
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“We were really excited to do a father-son story, and that’s where [the idea for the episode] started,” showrunner Michael Grassi tells Deadline. “This idea of this MMA fighter who his father is lying to him, I think, really reflects Wolf’s story, whose father has come back and is saying he’s sick. But I think Wolf, through his conversations with Muriel, is starting to doubt that his father is actually sick…Was that his excuse to get his son back into his life?”
Oliver avoids his father at all costs for much of the first episode. Dr. Noah Wolf (Mandy Patinkin) has been staying at his son’s house while Oliver seeks answers about his dad’s memory loss, prompting Oliver to sleep mostly in his office at the hospital.
Considering he thought his father was dead for most of his life, Oliver is working through a great deal of familial trauma in the first episode and seeks advice from many of his confidants to try to figure out how to handle the situation.
“I think at the thrust of that relationship is an element of trust that has been corrupted. Oliver treating the patient and dealing with the father, it’s such a reflection back at him of what he’s going through in his own life, right? How can you rebuild trust that has been so dramatically eroded?” Quinto mused.
Eventually, Oliver does make the decision to go home and confront his father in the hopes of moving through the interpersonal trauma and building a new foundation for a relationship. However, when he gets there, his father is gone again.
Adds Quinto: “I think it’s just this merry-go-round of unexpected emotional trauma. How is he gonna metabolize that, and how is he gonna get keep his head in the game and stay focused on his patients? I think those are the questions that we start to really unravel as the season unfolds.”
All of this is set against the backdrop of multiple other story threads that will certainly provide intrigue throughout the season. The biggest is the flash forwards that bookend the episode, showing Oliver at an inpatient psychiatric facility not as a doctor, but as a patient, seemingly against his will. The scenes bring up more than a few questions about how he got there, why he’s in there, and whether he’ll get out by the end of Season 2.
Quinto says that seeing Oliver in “a place that we never expect to find him” will present “a tremendous mystery” to unfold over the course of the season.
“I think, within the framework of that first episode, you have a big question that’s presented, and then you start to get the glimpses of an answer at the end, which is this yo-yo of abandonment that he’s dealt with since his childhood and has done so much work on himself to try to integrate and reconcile,” Quinto said. “I think just this upheaval, this sense of emotional instability that he has no control over, and these things just keep happening to him and happening to him. As the season unfolds, we’re going to understand how those things add up to maybe a bit more of a catastrophic event that leads Oliver to the situation that we find at the beginning of the season.”
On that note, Grassi promises: “As the season goes on, we’ll continue to unravel the onion, and there are a few twists and turns and surprises within the story, but we’re really excited to explore this new world that Oliver finds himself in, and clearly is not happy to be there when we see him.”
Funnily enough, these two major story threads only scratch the tip of the iceberg in the Season 2 premiere. Audiences are also introduced to two new characters, Brian Altemus’ mysterious resident Dr. Charlie Porter and John Clarence Stewart’s cynical ER physician Dr. Anthony Thorne, neither of whom seem to be getting along quite well with Dr. Wolf.
Both are sure to shake things up in the second season, particularly Dr. Porter, who is the first resident to join Oliver’s team, just as he was finally beginning to develop a rapport with his interns. Charlie’s motives are still a bit unclear, and the way he spars with Oliver certainly raises some questions, but he does reveal at the end of the episode that he specifically asked to be assigned to Wolf’s team. No telling yet whether that’s a sign of good will or an indication of something nefarious at play.
“I don’t think Oliver is used to meeting other people who are so confident in their perspective on things,” Quinto said. “I think Oliver sees in Charlie something that he doesn’t like. Maybe it’s because it’s something that people might think of Oliver. But, there seems to be something just slightly off about Charlie…and then I think we’re going to come to learn more about that as the season unfolds.”
As for Oliver and Anthony, who have presumably been colleagues for some time since Dr. Thorne is a mid-career doctor (even though we were just introduced to him), Grassi says that much of the tension in their relationship will revolve around their differing philosophies on an age-old medical question: “Do we do a little for a lot, or a lot for few?”
We also can’t forget about Dr. Nichols (Teddy Sears), who is seemingly on the outs with Oliver still after he bailed on their date to have dinner with his dad, though there are some glimmers of a potential rekindling in the premiere, especially after Josh defends Oliver when the boxer’s dad threatens to lay hands on him toward the end of the episode.
“These are two really complicated, good guys. I think they jumped into things last season, and I think they have a lot to figure out, and there are some surprises coming in terms of big shifts in their dynamic,” Grassi teased. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but the one thing I will say is that and something that will be very clear in the storytelling and the scene work, and while these two continue to have friction, as neurologists and neurosurgeons tend to have in hospitals, there is a lot of respect there and admiration. It’s going to be a rocky road.”
There is no doubt that the Season 2 premiere has set up quite a few storylines to dive into. Luckily, Brilliant Minds has 22 episodes this season to stick the landing, up from 13 in Season 1.
As for what to expect from the expanded season, Grassi says: “I think this allows us to get to know patients for a little bit longer. We’re doing a little bit more serialized storylines with our patients, as well as our big a case of the week.”
Brilliant Minds airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.