Chapter 4: The Blackout Bride
Grade: B-
Points for: an exciting main plot.
Demerits for: two boring subplots.
Establishing shot of a sparkling Manhattan skyline at night, and then we are zoomed in on a newlywed couple, happily dancing together. They are outside, talking about how happy they are -- never a good sign in these kinds of shows, and the bride says she wishes that the night could last forever. In response, the groom proffers a baggie of pills. “I know it’s not our thing, but when in Rome, right?” That doesn’t strike me as a great argument since I have no idea where they are. I thought they were at their own wedding? I later figure out that they are just at a trashy druggy dance club, having just eloped.
Quick note: I’ve been to several NYC elopements, and the wedding ceremony is in a courthouse during weekday office hours, so these two got hitched, napped, and then went out to a trashy club? Come to think of it, I kinda did this too. But I invited all my friends, so it was awesome. These two appear to be alone.
Wolf VOs that the first question every dying patient has is “How long do I have?” And he claims it means how long do I have to set things right. I don’t agree with him there -- not everyone is wracked with guilt. I’d be asking, how long do I have to enjoy life, see the great barrier reef, etc. Guilt, it seems, is going to be our theme this week.
Cut to Wolf (Zachary Quinto) hanging out with John Doe (Alex Ozerov-Meyer), a fern, and some music. He’s working on his social skills. A nurse says that John Doe is being transferred, and it wasn’t authorized by Wolf’s mom, but someone higher up.
Someone get this poor girl out of her bloody wedding dress. She's probably wearing Spanx. So unconfortable. (Photo credit: NBC/UNI)
Cut to all the interns scurrying in, because Wolf has called them in because they urgently must find a reason to keep John Doe in the hospital. Some of them complain and I am totally on their side. It’s Saturday night, let the poor kids rest!
Our bride Bridget (scream queen Samantha Hanratty) wanders into the hospital, interrupting the conversation, and she is looking worse for the wear -- but still sort of glam I must say. She’s covered in blood -- and it’s not hers! Call psych!
Cut to psych, aka Dr. Carol (Tamberla Perry) driving to the hospital, leaving her daughter a voice message saying that she missed curfew. Bridget says she doesn’t know what she took, Carol guesses it was Molly. All she remembers after that was that she was walking, a car came, picked her up and brought her to the hospital.
Wolf assures Bridget that they will find him and help her remember what happened. Wolf and Carol determine that she has dissociative amnesia which is where your mind protects you from something terrible that happened. (This is a real thing that can happen, but more commonly, your mind won’t let you forget trauma, and you end up with intrusive thoughts and memories.)
Dr. Wolf, gulping down the evidence. Medical procedure or snack break? (Photo credit: NBC/UNI
Police stride in. Wow, The Bronx PD is ON IT. They’ve already heard about the bloody bride and they know the blood isn’t hers somehow. The cops want to take her in, but Wolf and Carol argue that they can get answers faster and possibly save the groom Charlie (Elias Edraki), who must be bleeding out somewhere. The police are like, “OK sounds good,” and they leave the police work to the neurology team.
The interns hand Wolf a shiny square clutch -- apparently Bridget dropped it in the nurse’s station, and they wanted to give it to Wolf before giving it to the police. Inside are some pills. Time to run toxicology on them? No, that would take too long. Wolf gulps it down! (This seemed unrealistic to me at first, but then I re-read Oliver Sacks’s autobiography, and now I can totally imagine Sacks doing this.)
They decide to start with the hotel. No idea how they found out where she was staying. Everyone nominates Dana (Aury Krebs) to go with Wolf, which doesn’t make any particular sense. I’d assume the interns would be fighting over this opportunity.
Dr. Carol hypnotizes Bridget -- and Samantha Hanratty leaves no crumbs! Her eyelids flutter, her mouth twitches a little. Wow! Bridget recalls dancing in the sky, and we see a disco ball and a night sky. Intern Van almost passes out. Bridget recalls being hungry and a room like ice. We see breath condensing on a cold metal wall.
The real Dr. Wolf, Oliver Sacks, actually did (possibly) break a guy's nose once.
Dr. Wolf and Dana are in Bridget’s hotel room. It’s cold in there. Wolf drags his hand along the ceiling, picks up some charred meat that has been gnawed on, and investigates a glass display of macarons. If this were a police procedural instead of a medical procedural, they would be contaminating evidence left and right!
Dr. Dana Dang gets a phone call with the message that Bridget recalls a cold room and dancing in the sky. Since they are already in the cold room, “that leaves dancing in the sky,” Wolf says. Wolf wears a fantastic creepy unhinged smile as he says this to Dana.
At the nightclub on the roof of the hotel, Dana and Wolf enter to find the police are already there. (And they didn’t even have to take MDMA, Dana observes.) Since Wolf is faceblind, he doesn’t like crowds, according to Dana. I don’t think that’s true of all prosopagnosiacs. I, for instance, don’t mind crowds in general -- I only dislike them if I fear that there are people there who I know and am going to blow off by accident. But a crowd of strangers is no problem.
Anyway, the toxicology report comes back on Bridget, and apparently the Molly was laced with PCP. As Van reads a list of PCP’s effects from the internet (paranoia, heavy sweating, flashbacks) we see Wolf losing it on the dancefloor. Then a flashback. He’s with his dad, visiting an unresponsive patient, bringing her a little radio playing the same Bach violin concerto as we heard before. Someone kicks Wolf Dad out of the hospital -- he’s been fired. He just wanted to check in on his patients, he says. This actually happened to Oliver Sacks -- I don’t know if he tried to sneak in to see his patients after being fired from the “Awakenings” hospital, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he had.
Wolf’s parents are getting divorced, we discover. Wolf Dad (Gray Powell) invites Wolf to live with him instead of his mom.
A douchey looking guy (Liam Kinahan, actually credited as “Douchbag”) tries to dance with Dana, and she says “No, very No.” “Come on loosen up,” he says, grabbing her ass. Wolf grabs his nose and comes back with a handful of blood! This is something that Oliver Sacks once did when a car driver dried to run him off the road -- he reached into the window and twisted the guy’s nose as hard as he could. And he wasn’t on PCP!
Wolf is hungry.
Interns Jacob (Spence Moore II) and Kinney (Ashleigh LaThrop) argue about the boring subplot, aka John Doe. Jacob tries to nap, Kinney yells at him, and so he decides to go check on John Doe’s lab results. (I totally would do the same thing.)
Dana and Wolf are in some kind of industrial kitchen area, no clue why. Wolf is off his rocker, musing on the melodiousness of the word rhinoplasty, worrying about the nose of the libertine in the club. Dana says she thinks that Wolf takes drugs to escape. Wolf says that Dana does the same thing and that needing to escape your own darkness is part of the human experience.
Wolf feels like he is burning up and wants to go into the freezer. And so they do, and voila! They find the groom, half frozen but still breathing.
Dr. Carol gets a call from another boring subplot, I mean, her estranged husband. He has not heard from Maya either. He was at a work dinner, suspiciously late in the evening. Maya calls on the other line. She’s at Sydney’s house, she wants to spend the night. Dr. Carol gives her a stern talking to. BORING!
Cut to Wolf jogging beside the frozen groom on a gurney. “Prep a banana bag for me,” he says. Apparently a banana bag is an IV with fluids, electrolytes, and vitamins.
He briefs Dr. Nichols (Teddy Sears) about Charlie’s penetrating abdominal wound. Nichols is there why? “I got a call about a possible head trauma.” OK, whatever. Anyway, he notices that Wolf is on drugs and is aghast. “Are you high?”
“That is absurd!” Wolf replies. Then he touches his head and reconsiders. “Yeah,” he says mildly. (Love those surprising choices Quinto Beans!)
Kinney finds Jacob canoodling with Porcia in a closet. She is not pleased.
Carol finds Wolf on the banana bag. He admits to having taken the pills. Carol is upset, and makes oblique reference to Wolf’s past problems with drugs. (Sacks also got addicted to drugs at some point, and quit at the age of 33.)
Bridget is still in her bloody wedding dress -- I hope she’s not wearing spanx under that! Charlie is in surgery. Wolf asks her to try to remember what happened, to help Charlie(?). Girlfriend should not be talking to anyone without a lawyer!
She can’t remember. Police arrive. They found a bloody icepick and they want to take her in. Bridget has a seizure and she remembers what happened. She stabbed Charlie! Surprise! (Not really, for anyone who saw that this episode was originally titled “The Killer Bride.”)
Bridget comes to. She confesses.
(In “On the Move,” Sacks writes about a similar case, a man who killed his wife while he was on PCP and the man didn’t remember doing it.)
Nash and Wolf watch as Bridget goes into the MRI.
Nash says sarcastically “you’re setting a great example for your interns.” Wolf misses the sarcasm, he’s proud of his work tonight.
The scans come back in real time, and Wolf notice that Bridget has cerebral edema -- a swelling in the brain -- and she doesn’t have brain bleed or stroke or a tumor so it must be metabolic, Nichols says. Could it be liver failure? No her liver tests are normal. Nash and Wolf note that their last two cases of mysterious cerebral edema were dead within hours.
Kenny and Jacob argue over John Doe. This is really just an opportunity to establish their one and only character traits: Kenny is a try-hard, Jacob is a washed-up jock.
Charlie is conscious. Did the drugs I give her make her do it? Wolf says no! I mean, how can he say that? Anyway, Charlie continues, saying that she’s been stressed out planning the wedding, trying to please everyone… but then when we decided to elope, it was like, we were finally free.”
OK, was anyone else thinking this was her motive? She killed her husband because he made her elope after she’d spent months and months planning the wedding and going on a crash diet to fit into her dress! I honestly thought this was the key for a second.
The police want to talk to Charlie.
Wolf flashes back to hanging out in the hospital with his dad and hitting a vending machine to get free candy bars. (Do not recommend. Those things crush people all the time!)
Wolf gives a candy bar to Dang. Wolf apologizes to Dana asking her what she was suppressing.
Dana finds his vows. “You are my pancake. You smell like vermont in the morning. You’ve never been sweeter than these last few weeks.” Wolf criticizes his syntax. I don’t see anything wrong with it. These are all perfectly valid sentences, and rather poetic and…
Dana’s found the clue we needed to solve the case! Obligatory running through the hospital corridors! Bridget has maple syrup urine syndrome. MSUS is real, but it’s usually diagnosed in infancy. So the medical mystery of the week is plausible, but very unlikely.
Once again, an incidental finding saves a patients’ life! “What happened tonight saved your life.” “The only reason we were able to save you was because he woke up and told us all about you,” Wolf says, which is not true as far as we’ve seen.
“I stabbed him on his wedding night, he’s never going to forgive me.”
Wolf says that she can’t control that, but that she can forgive herself.
Kenny and Jacob take John Doe outside for some fresh air. He wiggles his toe. At first, Kenny thinks Jacob is grabbing her butt! Lots of unwanted groping in this episode.
Who needs medical equipment when you have a nice breeze?. (Photo credit NBC/UNI)
Wolf is taking Bridget to see Charlie and finally! Bridget is in a hospital gown. Dana lurks in the shadows. Charlie died in surgery!
Cut to Carol and Wolf talking to Bridget, trying to make her feel better. Camera pans down to show that she is in handcuffs. She wants to see him one more time to tell him she’s sorry. I assumed that she meant she’d like to see him ALIVE one more time, but guess not, because in the next scene they are in the morgue. Bridget ugly cries.
Wolf VOs that the hardest person to forgive is ourself. Heartbreaking flashback to him opting to stay with his mom and not move in with his dad.
Random thought: The real Dr. Wolf, Oliver Sacks, wrote that he did harbor some guilt over not being there more for his brother who had schizophrenia. So maybe that’s what the screenwriters are doing here -- transferring Dr. Sack’s brother-guilt to Wolf’s father. (It doesn’t seem like Sacks’s guilt affected him that much, though. Also, his parents’ mental health and marriage were fine.)
