Brilliant Minds Pilot Episode Recap
Brilliant Minds Pilot Episode recap and analysis.
Dr. Wolf is a sexy rogue neurologist. He gets fired from his job for doing the most wonderful thing imaginable. He explains the periodic table of the elements poorly to children. Face blindness (prosopagnosia) is portrayed as seeing blurry faces, which is incorrect. Our medical mystery is instantly solvable by any Psych 101 student as well as people who have caught related episodes of Law and Order SVU, Scrubs, “New Amsterdam,” or “Chicago Med.” Dr. Wolf & Friends, however, are going to take quite a bit longer to figure it out.
Dr. Oliver Sacks vs. Dr. Oliver Wolf
The new NBC show, "Brilliant Minds," stars Zachary Quinto as Oliver Sacks -- or rather, as Oliver Wolf, a brilliant neurologist with prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness. This show is a lot like "House" except that the brilliant doctor isn't being an asshole on purpose, he's doing it because he can't tell people apart.
As a face blind science writer (who recently wrote a book on the topic), I will provide Oliver Sacks-like explanations of the neurological disorders depicted on the show, and discuss how close to reality each one is.
I'm also an expert on Oliver Sacks, having read almost everything written for and about him. (Sorry Uncle Tungsten, I'll get to you eventually.)