Brilliant Minds Season Finale Recap

BRILLIANT MINDS -- "The Man Who Can't See Faces" Episode 113

Pastor Thomas mistakes a fire hydrant for a small child — just like the patient in Oliver Sack’s famous case study, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.”

We open with new roommates, Dana and Ericka, getting ready for work. Ericka is scared to take the elevator -- and she flashes back to the previous episode where watched another young woman fall to her death in an elevator, and nearly died herself. Oliver Wolf VOs that the fear response manifests in the amygdala. Dana offers to take the stairs with her.

Now we see Van driving somewhere while his kid throws a tantrum in the back seat. Wolf helpfully explains that the prefrontal cortex helps us regulate our emotions. We see Carol and her daughter packing up Morris’s things, and Wolf continues, “The hippocampus stores our memories, the bad and the good.” This is not true, the hippocampus is tiny, it could never store all of our memories! It tags the sensory elements of our memories and coordinates their replay. 

“And yet for all we do know about the brain it can still leave us completely mystified,” Wolf VOs, and this strikes me as very bad writing. I mean, you started out by saying that the brain is a mystery. And that’s certainly true. We have barely begun to understand how those 800 million neurons work together to create the human experience, the human mind. 

Drs. Wolf and Nichols are in the kitchen, and Nichols cutely shows Wolf that he’s bought him a tux. It’s for a gala, where he’s won an award, and he wants Wolf to come as his date. Cute! Nichols says, “I think I’m falling for you.”

Mama Wolf (Miriam) talks to Papa Wolf (Noah) and tries to convince him to go back into exile. She points out that he hasn’t seen Oliver since he was 14. “He’s so happy,” she says. “We can’t take that away from him.” Apparently, the two of them told Oliver that his dad died in the woods. Noah wants to tell him the truth now, and Mama Wolf disagrees.

The wolf pack descends on a church, and Dana says she’s excited to see the best choir in all of NYC sing. “What can I say? The christian to queer pipeline is cannon.” This sounds like it might make sense, but upon closer inspection, it is word salad. Also, later, we see the choir sing and they are nothing special. My high school choir was better. I’m not being snobby, I just think the writers had planned to get in a spectacular choir and for some reason it didn’t pan out.

Cute new roomies: Aury Krebs as Dr. Dana Dang, Ashleigh LaThrop as Dr. Ericka Kinney. (Photo by: Rafy/NBC)

The Wolf pack fans out to do neurological evaluations on the building collapse survivors. Ericka sees the grandpa she was stuck in the elevator with and goes bug eyed. Grandpa tells Oliver Wolf and Carol that the pastor of the church has visions, cuing the violas of curiosity. 

“I bet she has epilepsy,” I said to my husband. (I’m wrong!)

Wolf beelines to Pastor Thomas, a middle aged woman in pastels, to talk about her visions. She started having them recently, she says. Then she grabs her husband’s head because she thinks it’s a hat. We see her perspective, and we see her looking out at the people in the pews, and they are all hats too! Later, we see her talking to a fire hydrant as if it was a small child. These two scenes are, of course, inspired by Oliver Sacks’s famous case study, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” In that story, however, the patient is an elderly man, a musician, and he doesn’t see all heads as hats. He has visual agnosia, which means that he is just taking guesses as to what any particular object is. And interestingly, as soon as he touches the thing, or hears it, he knows just what it is. 

Wolf has a special kind of visual agnosia known as prosopagnosia, where all faces look the same to him. But he can still tell faces from other kinds of objects. With general visual agnosia, you can’t tell anything apart! You can’t categorize anything, even though your vision is fine. He described a glove as a curious object with “outpatchings.” But when Oliver Sacks put on the glove, he recognized it immediately. So, again, the cinematographers attempt to represent the world of someone with a perceptual disorder comes off as clunky, overly literal and inaccurate. But points for trying!

In the next scene, Wolf (incorrectly!) explains visual agnosia as a problem with her parietal cortex. But it’s actually your temporal lobe, which is above your ears, that deals with object recognition. A lesion in the parietal cortex would more commonly cause spatial awareness issues. 

The Wolf pack goes to get on the elevator, and Ericka balks. Dana explains that the interns are going to help her get over her new fear of elevators through densensitization. The first step is to watch your loved ones do whatever it is you’re scared of. When Dana steps on the elevator, Ericka yelps and begs her to get off. What does that mean? “I’m her favorite,” Dana says. Cute!

“What’s your relationship with your father like,” is my new favorite conversation opener. Pictured: (l-r) Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf, Spence Moore II as Dr. Jacob Nash, Alex MacNicoll as Dr. Van Markus. (Photo by: Rafy/NBC)

Sexy EMT arrives for her physical therapy, and Dana tells her it’s her last session because she’s healing up great. Any questions? Yes, the EMT says. When are you going to stop being my doctor and kiss me? Dana demures and says that she loved Grey’s Anatomy but it’s unprofessional. 

Speaking of unprofessional, for no good reason, Mama Wolf tells Carol that Oliver’s dad, Noah, actually didn’t die and he’s back in town. She wants Carol to talk Noah into going back into hiding. Carol tells her to tell Oliver the truth, and Mama Wolf says that she needs Carol to be there to help her.

Oliver is at home. His dad knocks at his door, and Oliver doesn’t recognize him but he says that he remembers his voice. “You’re the man from the collapsed building.” Noah breaks it to him that he’s his dad. 

Now, if you’re wondering if it’s plausible for someone with prosopagnosia to fail to recognize their own parent, it is! It happened to me once, and it also happened to the original prosopagnosiac as described by Jochim Bodamer: A Nazi solider, who became face blind due to brain injury, passed his mom by in a train station without realizing it. Additionally, the guy who came up with the colloquial term for faceblind, Bill Choisser, passed his mom on the street without recognizing her, and she never forgave him for it! 

Just because your dad returns from the dead after 30 years doesn’t mean it’s ok to ghost your boyfriend who is getting a neurosurgery award! Teddy Sears as Dr. Josh Nichols, Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf -- (Photo by: Rafy/NBC)

Dr. Carol and Mama Wolf arrive, and Oliver is reeling. “What you’re experiencing right now is shock,” Carol says. “Oh is it?” Wolf says, incredulous. “Thank you Dr. Pierce.” Funny!

He tells everyone he’s leaving and that he wants them all out of his house when he returns.

Oliver is in his office putting papers into a box. Clearly he plans on quitting. Dr. Nichols comes in with the Pastor Thomas images, “printed out, just the way you like them.” And they are not good. “Butterfly lesion in the occipital lobe,” Oliver narrates. Glioblastoma. She has 3 months to live. “Of course there are no miracles, just lies we tell ourselves.”

Oliver is quitting his job, and then he says something about lies, and how neuroplasticity gets blunted. Every lie matters less. 

“Does this have anything to do with what I told you? That I'm falling for you?” Nichols says.

“How could you be falling for me? You don’t know anything about me,” Wolf replies. Ouch!

Van’s baby mama shows up at word to give him a dressing down about how he yelled at their kid. “When kids get dysregulated it's our job to stay regulated. Why is that so difficult for you?” She says. Guess Van hasn’t told her about the fact that he has mirror touch.

Wolf sulks into the intern area. Dr. Jock asks if there’s anything he can do to help. “Got a cure for glioblastoma? No?” He invites the male interns to go get drunk with him. (In the middle of the shift??)

At the bar, Wolf says that he knows that both Dr. Jock and Van have a thing for Ericka. He also says his dad has/had bipolar disorder, and asks Van and Dr. Jock about their relationships with their respective dads. Van’s dad was no bueno. Dr. Jock takes the opportunity to mention once again that he used to play football. Writers, give this guy another character trait!

Oliver gives Pastor Thomas her diagnosis and prognosis. She says that she needs to keep her diagnosis a secret. 

When absentee parents randomly pop back into your life, you gotta know they want something from you. In this case: a lifesaving diagnosis. Mandy Patinkin as Dr. Noah Wolf, Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf.

Ericka and Dana are climbing stairs. Ericka is talking about her new fear of elevators and Dana suggests she see a psychiatrist and maybe get some meds. “I’m not the medication type,” Ericka says. Dana is like, wtf? Who is the medication type then? Weak people? Then she says she’s taking the elevator!

Wolf goes on a motorcycle ride and flashes back to moments when his dad was depressed and suicidal. Then he almost hits an actual wolf! We get a nice clear look at this wolf, and guys, there are no wolves in Queens. (There are, however, coyote-wolf hybrids.) 

Ericka gets in the elevator with the other interns, and says she’s been working on her reassurance mantras. She also says that’s just what works for her, and she doesn’t look down on meds that work for Dana. Then she says that she loves her team and that she needs everyone to admit that she’s the quarterback. Honestly we haven’t seen her shining more than the others, have we? And aren’t they all supposed to be equals? I think this was a clunky callback to the pilot.

Wolf and his mom chat, and she explains that it wasn’t her idea to send Noah away, it was his idea. He didn’t feel like Oliver was safe with him around. That is so heartbreaking!

Mama Wolf apologies to Oliver and we see him at every age and it is so heartbreaking! 

“That illness ruined our family,” mama wolf says. Wolf replies that actually what ruined our family is lies.

There was some good writing right there!

Oliver takes his own advice and discloses his family drama to his interns. 

Pastor Thomas gives a homily on loss and discloses her cancer to her congregation. Then the suposdily best choir in NYC, which consists of about two dozen middle-school agedm kids in purple tee shirts sings Coldplay’s “The Scientist.” It is so treacly! Also, they are singing in unison! Not a harmony in sight.

The Wolf Pack toasts each other, despite tepid ratings. I am rooting for them, though!

Van tells his family that he has mirror touch.

Dana kisses the hot EMT. Yay! 

Mama Wolf puts Dr. Carol on administrative leave because she got an ethics board complaint about how she saw her husband’s side-chick as a patient, and kept seeing her even after she found out. Who snitched! I bet it was the side-chick, whatever her name was. Dr. Carol does not take this well.

The interns hang out. Dr. Jock apologizes for treating Ericka as a prize to be won instead of an actual person. 

Wolf stands up Dr. Nichols, leaving him to go to his gala alone and meets up with his dad in a diner instead. Papa Wolf admits that he is back for a reason: He’s sick with a mysterious disease and he wants Wolf to cure him. 

So what’s in store for season 2? Will there be a season 2? Share your thoughts in the comments.