Brilliant Minds Recap Chapter 5: The Haunted Marine

Brilliant Minds Chapter 5: The Haunted Marine

Grade: C

Demerits for: Pacing, losing the same patient twice in a row, code blue to commercial.

Points for: Sexy shooting practice.

We open with a scene of people jogging in NYC. In voiceover, Wolf talks about coping mechanisms. Intern Jock (for he has no other character traits) jogs and hits on some lady joggers. Wolf seeks solitude by hanging out with John Doe. A random nurse cries. Drug-doing Dana obsesses over a TV show. Kiss-up Kenny pretends to listen to Dana while researching Intern Jock. On her computer screen, we see a terribly written news article about how Intern Jock, a major college football star, blew out his knee in a game. (His knee? I thought he had a concussion.) 

Wolf in voiceover says that some people’s ghosts are visible only to themselves -- you know, as compared to the ghosts that we all can see. We zoom into a black guy in the hospital waiting room sitting next to a spooky white guy in a military uniform. Gunshot noises alert us to the fact that he is having flashbacks. Also, are we listening to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra playing Bach’s toccata and fugue?

Woohoo, anyone in there? (photo credit NBC/UNI)

Wolf and his pack (the interns) consider John Doe. Wolf has diagnosed him with Locked In Syndrome, a terrifying thing that can happen where people become paralyzed but still have higher cognitive function. They can communicate only through vertical eye movements. “If we’re right John Doe has been in a very lonely place for a very long time.” 

We see John Doe in a very lonely place, sort of a hole or a cave underground with a shaft of light coming from an unreachable entrance. He looks very cold.

I’m in a hole… (photo credit NBC/UNI)

Wolf makes a point of asking intern Van if he has any special observations to add. OK, I’ll accept that mirror neuron synesthesia is a real thing, but it doesn’t mean he’s psychic. It just means he feels other peoples’ movements as if he made them himself -- and John Doe can barely move his eyeballs.

Dr. Carol taps in Wolf and asks him to chat with our titular Haunted Marine, Steve (Joshua Echebiri). Steve’s pregnant wife shows up at the same time as Wolf, and Steve is no longer willing to talk about the ghosts he’s seeing. He does, however, mention that he just buried his comrade, Aiden (Theo Vandergraaf). Noticing his discomfort, Dr. Carol deftly changes the subject by asking the wife about her pregnancy.

Dr. Carol thinks it’s PTSD -- well, obviously. I don’t think you needed to break the chalkboard out for this one, guys. “People live in the present and the past at same time -- kinda like someone I know,” she says, waggling her eyebrows in the direction of Wolf. 

Guys, have you ever heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? (NBC/Uni)

Wolf says that PTSD doesn’t account for the ghosts and wonders if there’s an underlying neurological issue. “We need more data,” Wolf says, before asking the pack to look into his military history and find out more about Aiden. Notably he does not order an MRI.

Intern Van walks down the hall with a Russian lady Mrs. Petrov (​​Elena Ouspenskaia, chewing scenery), who wants to set him up with her granddaughter, “a Russian Megan Fox.” Van demures. “Your generation doesn’t know how to have fun anymore,” she says, while tapping a box of cigarettes on her palm. In her one appearance this episode, Nurse Portia pops in to tell her not to smoke.

Mrs. Petrov’s daughter is the Russian Megan Fox. So she’s.. Russian Curler Anastasia Bryzgalova? (NBC/Uni)

Dana sidles up to Van and asks why he’s Dr. Wolf’s new favorite. “You’re sleeping with Wolf!” she guesses. Van protests, and says no, it’s just that Wolf diagnosed him with Mirror Neuron Synesthesia, which means he can feel other people’s pain. Dana is very excited by this, but she promises not to tell anyone. 

Wolf leaves through a binder that Steve, the marine, left behind. It has some conspiracy theory newsletters and disturbing drawings. Wait -- how is it that Bigfoot Bulletin has the budget to print paper issues, and Entertainment Weekly doesn’t?

Wolf walks into a library or perhaps it’s a museum because there’s a security guard there. I’m faceblind, so I do not recognize that the security guard is none other than Steve the (former) Marine. If Steve wasn’t paranoid before, he sure is now! What kind of doctor shows up unannounced at the place where you work? Wolf says he’s returning Steve’s binder, and asks whether Steve wants to tell him anything he wasn’t able to share with his wife present. Steve says that “They already came for Aiden and they’re coming for me next.”

Steve then flips open the binder to a particular page and says, see? Nanchips. They were developed by DARTA.” No that’s not a typo, he definitely says DARTA, not DARPA. That’s the Department of Absurdly Ridiculous Theories and Anomalies. (BM isn’t afraid of name checking the VA, but apparently they are a’scared of DARPA?)

Steve says that the microchip is malfunctioning and causing him to see things, and asks Dr. Wolf to take it out.

Steve is in the MRI machine. Wolf says for the interns to admit him and keep his trust. “I’ve seen what paranoia does to people.”

Guess what time it is? Flashback time! We see Wolf Cub hiking in a forest with Wolf Dad. Wolf Cub is a nature nerd and wants to collect crystals. Wolf Dad wants to teach the cub to shoot varmints with grandpa’s rifle. Wolf dad hears hikers and thinks they are following them.

Nothing’s more fun than camping with your floridly paranoid dad! (NBC/Uni)

Someone from the VA wants to talk to Wolf about Steve. A woman in a nice suit (Nicki Burke) tells Wolf that Steve was an exemplary officer but came back from deployment shattered. She says he also didn’t see any combat -- and what he did do is left in question. Sounds sketchy! Steve was dishonorably discharged after threatening to expose military secrets online.

Dana and Van bring John Doe a big see-through plate of plexiglass with Yes and No written on it. (I suppose a whiteboard would be unphotogenic.) They ask him some questions -- can you hear me? Are you in pain? Do you know where you are? and he answers consistently. Someone’s in there!

Dr. Josh Nichols makes his first appearance this episode to tell us that he talked to an old military buddy and got more intel on Steve. Apparently, Steve served in an artillery unit that bombarded “the enemy” from a distance. Also: More than half his unit died after returning home, by suicide and also drug overdose. 

Nichols and Wolf brainstorm, and come to the conclusion that Steve is suffering from CTE, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. This is an incurable neurodegenerative disease that has reportedly been observed in boxers and football players. Everyone in this episode knows what CTE is -- but they don’t seem to know that it’s a questionable diagnosis. (Among the most damning evidence: People without any history of head trauma have signs of CTE at the same rate as people who have sustained head traumas.)

Anyway, Wolf floats CTE but isn’t sure how being in an artillery unit could result in chronic head trauma. 

Time for a field trip! Nichols and Wolf go to a gunshot range, so that Wolf can experience firsthand the concept of recoil. Seems like you could have just told him, but I’m not going to knock Nichols’s plan, because it results in some sexy moments when the neurosurgeon shows the neurologist how to aim a gun, from behind. (Neither are wearing ear protection, despite conspicuous signage.) 

The premise for the shooting range field trip is thin, and I do not care.

Dr. Carol and Wolf visit Aiden’s parents to convince them to dig up their son so that they can autopsy his brain to see if he had CTE. 

It’s time for a commercial break, and you know what that means: CODE GREEN! Steve has barricaded himself into a room and is brandishing a scalpel. He says he is going to remove the chip himself. Wolf talks him down by getting him to do some math and think about his unborn son. He also tells Steve to think of his amygdala as the “chip” which is causing him to act irrationally and to activate his prefrontal cortex in order to get himself under control. Questionable metaphor -- maybe the amygdala is giving Steve the panic signals, but his paranoia and plan to deal with the chip are coming mostly from his prefrontal cortex.

Autopsy results are in, and they are conclusive: Aiden, Steve’s comrade, died of CTE. 

Pregnant wife wanders in and asks where Steve is. He’s under observation, Wolf says. Apparently he’s not being observed very closely because he’s missing -- again!

Van and Dana try to chat with John Doe, but he’s unresponsive. Mrs. Petrov is speaking loudly in the hallway, in Russian, and John perks up. Maybe he’s Russian! Dana offers to let her smoke (in the hospital?!) in exchange for translation services.

Good thing John Doe knows at least a little English.

Wolf shows up at the museum with an egg sandwich for Steve, who says he slept in the reading room. Wolf gives him his diagnosis, which is sort of a death sentence. (If CTE really exists. It’s possible we are telling people they have a progressive, fatal disease when they actually have treatable things, like depression, PTSD or Parkinsons.) Steve frets that he won’t be able to support his wife and baby. Wolf says he’s going to make the VA do that for him.

Demo time! Wolf talks to a panel from the VA and demonstrates how repeated concussion can damage brain tissue by handing out rubber bands and telling the panel to stretch them repeatedly. Two rubber bands obligingly break. 

Dana and Van do the blink procedure with John Doe using the Russian alphabet, asking him to blink when they reach the letter he wants. Mrs. Petrov reads the message and says (in Russian) “You’ve been alone all this time?” then in English, “Poor boy.” What is the message? We can’t find out until we see another flashback.

Wolf Cub and Dad are in the woods, and Wolf Dad tells Wolf cub he will be the best doctor in the world and also the messiah. “Don’t leave me,” Wolf Cub says. “I never will,” his dad responds, clearly about to stalk off because he’s still paranoid about the hikers following them.

And that’s John Doe’s message: Don’t leave me.

Dr. Jock shows up at Dr. Kenny’s apartment, drunk and looking for a hookup. He’s stressed that he might have gotten CTE from college football. Confusingly, he says he quit to avoid that fate, and also that he regrets quitting. Kenny puts him to bed on her couch. Smart gal!

Code Green! Again! (NBC/UNI)

The interns are all talking about Van’s Mirror Neuron Synesthesia. Guess Dana told! Van walks in on them and Dana apologizes. Vans like, that’s why I told you, so you would tell everyone for me. “I underestimated you,” Dana whispers. Cute!

Final scene: Wolf VO’s something or other. Steve goes to the VA to give a talk about CTE, presumably. He sees the Aiden ghost and dispels him with some math. Wolf and Dr. Carol are there to coach him through it for some reason. The interns do exercise bikes with him. Guys, I think we may have missed a schizophrenia diagnosis… 

Wait, this episode isn’t over yet? It has more endings than the Lord of the Ring! Wolf chats with Dr. Nichols and says that he wants him to implant a microchip -- for real! In John Doe’s brain. It’s experimental but it just might work.