No, Dean, it isn’t okay.
On Chicago Med Season 6 Episode 9, Dean did far more than overstep once or twice, but Choi told him it was fine after his diagnosis turned out to be correct.
Every time Dean opens his mouth, I hope that it’s going to lead to this annoying character being fired, but so far, no luck.
To be clear, Choi isn’t exactly innocent himself.
He often puts his rigid adherence to the rules above what’s truly the right thing to do, and the situation with Nat and Marcel was no exception.
Choi didn’t believe that Nat’s relationship with Marcel was an issue at all but told her to report it to HR anyway because those were the rules… even though, as she pointed out, he never reported his relationship with April.
That was irritating enough. But then Choi proved himself to be even more of a hypocrite who was playing both sides by telling Dean that he had no issue with the relationship and that Dean was disingenuous.
He wasn’t wrong about the disingenuous part, but sheesh.
If Choi had been stronger about calling Dean out, I might have applauded him.
Choi: Hector is not your patient.
Dean: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought you said it was no big deal when Manning and Marcel did it to me.
Choi: I said it wasn’t a big deal that they were dating, not that they should go around other doctors’ decisions.
Dean: I see. It’s hard to know which rules to follow when they aren’t all enforced equally.
He was absolutely right about the disingenuousness. Dean wasn’t complaining for any reason other than that he resented Nat going behind his back to get a patient the treatment they needed.
If he really cared about ethics, he might have focused on the fact that Nat’s friendship with the woman might have been clouding her judgment, not that she asked a doctor who also happens to be her boyfriend for a consult.
And if he doesn’t want the hospital to risk malpractice lawsuits, he should put his ego aside and be grateful that Nat didn’t listen to him.
Ignoring obvious signs of gall bladder infection because the suggestion came from a different doctor was far riskier than Nat asking a surgeon she has a personal relationship with for his opinion.
We all know that if Nat and Marcel’s relationship WAS strictly professional, Dean would have responded the same way. He just wouldn’t have had any inside intel he could use to get revenge.
Vengeful people belong on soap operas, not in hospitals where time is of the essence, and a missed diagnosis can lead to serious problems later.
The only reason Dean is allowed to continue in his role with no consequences for his behavior is that he’s Choi’s friend, which is ironic considering Dean’s complaint about personal relationships interfering with objectivity.
And it also suggests that Choi still is not the right person for the ED director role.
As for what Nat did, doctors at Chicago Med do it all the time.
It may be disrespectful, but when time is of the essence, what choice do they have? And why should a doctor’s ego be more important than patient care?
As for Nat and Marcel, I somewhat understood Nat’s point about being forced into telling HR about their relationship.
While Marcel is right that there’s no reason to keep the relationship secret and that what other people think is not relevant, the bigger issue is that it should be up to the people involved to decide who to tell or not tell that they are seeing each other.
Yes, if a relationship affects your job — especially if other people’s lives are at stake — that needs to be dealt with. But that wasn’t what was happening here, really, and Nat was right not to want other people sticking their noses into it.
Plus, Choi was a hypocrite and too much of a stickler for the rules as usual, so Nat had every reason to be annoyed.
As for Choi’s conflict with Dean, that was a clear case of two guys who both wanted to be right.
Choi didn’t want to change his treatment plan because it was what he’d already decided on, and Dean didn’t want to let Choi be in charge.
That put Dean in the same position as Nat was in with the other case, and it would have been nice if Choi had pointed that out instead of getting sucked into the side argument about Nat and Marcel’s relationship.
An effective ED director would have put his own ego aside, pointed out that sometimes another doctor sees something you don’t, and explained that even though he doesn’t like anyone second-guessing the doctor in charge if it turns out to be in the patient’s best interest, you have to let it slide.
But instead, he forgave Dean for his controlling behavior, and life went on.
Meanwhile, Maggie’s befriending a pregnant woman led in some interesting directions.
I’m not sure how I feel about her talking Teyvon out of giving her baby up for adoption, though.
On the one hand, it’s a racist trope that Black women are poor mothers whose babies would be better off going to White families. So Maggie disrupted that nonsense by convincing Teyvon to keep her baby.
But on the other, it’s also an anti-adoption trope that birth mothers regret giving the child up forever and/or change their minds at the last minute.
So in some ways, I’d have preferred that Maggie consider an open adoption of this baby so that Teyvon could still be in the baby’s life and Maggie’s personal story could come full circle.
Either way, I hope Maggie and Teyvon stay friends. Teyvon could use a supportive figure in her life, especially since her poverty has interfered with her ability to get the help she needs.
The most interesting part of this story was the statement it made about our broken health care system.
Nat: Did your doctor tell you your placenta is low?
Teyon: I don’t get a doctor. I’ve got no insurance.
Because Teyvon was poor, she couldn’t afford health insurance (and even if she had insurance through the Affordable Care Act, the deductible might have been prohibitively expensive — something that wasn’t addressed.)
Because she couldn’t afford insurance, she didn’t get the prenatal care she needed, which might have led to her baby’s prematurity or his spina bifida.
And when the OBGYN said the baby needed to be in the NICU for several weeks, I could tell that Teyvon was thinking about the cost.
This needs to change, especially given that the racial wealth gap contributes to more Black women living in poverty than White women and thus contributes to higher incidents of babies dying or being born with serious issues among Black women.
I wish Chicago Med had addressed this more directly, but I appreciated that this story shed some light on some issues.
I’m also curious as to how Maggie’s attempt to reconnect with her daughter will go, though I have a feeling that Sharon is right and the woman may not have any interest in reconnecting with her birth mother.
Finally, Charles’ case was strange.
I wondered if he had tried to get Mona to switch her obsession to him on purpose. It was an awfully big coincidence that the security guard showed up outside the elevator to take Mona back to her room after she finished swooning over Charles.
I also wondered if this will be continued. Charles dealing with a stalker might be a compelling storyline, though chances are this was a one-time story, and we’ll never encounter Mona again.
As an aside, I’m glad that Will listened to Charles for once instead of doing things his own way and trying to get Mona treatment at Med that she didn’t want. The real issue would never have been discovered if he’d gone rogue on this one.
Speaking of Will, April had an interesting reaction to his news that the trial was closed.
She’s been using the work she’s doing with him to give her purpose now that she’s off the COVID ward, so the question is: what’s next for her?
Your turn, Chicago Med fanatics. Hit that big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know what you thought!
Want to refresh your memory first? Just watch Chicago Med online right here on TV Fanatic.
Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8 PM EST/PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on Twitter.