Marcel wasn’t kidding when he said Archer was no choir boy.
When he first arrived at Gaffney, Archer purposely let a patient lose consciousness so that he could claim an emergency need to do a procedure the patient didn’t consent to—and that was the least of his ethical lapses.
But on Chicago Med Season 9 Episode 4, he berated Zola and Maggie for doing an end-run around an insurance company’s denial of service to save a patient’s life. Seriously?
His stance would have been reasonable if only he hadn’t had the past he had. At the very least, he should have referenced it.
Maybe we’re supposed to think that now that he’s the head of the ED, he has a different perspective or that he’s grown and changed. But he acted high-and-mighty when he’s done far worse, and that weakened any point he might have had.
Sentencing Zola to an ethics course is better than firing her, but it seemed silly.
Zola took a moral stance — maybe not the one the hospital board wanted her to take, but ethical nonetheless.
His preventative care insurance was preventing him from getting care.
Zola
In doing so, she won Crockett Marcel’s respect, which is no easy feat. Marcel didn’t like her at first either; now he thinks she’s a good doctor, and Archer should understand why she did what she did.
That’s a significant win.
Of course, there’s another, more charitable way to interpret Archer’s actions. The ethics course could have been a way of “punishing” Zola that amounted to absolutely nothing.
But it certainly didn’t come off that way! Archer was being his usual, cantankerous self and making it clear he wasn’t tolerating Zola’s misbehavior.
Zola’s impulsive and often annoying, even if her heart is in the right place. There were plenty of times when she deserved a dressing down. But this wasn’t one of them.
Zola and Maggie were doing their best to get Floyd proper care. Maggie vetoed Zola’s idea about defrauding the hospital by listing Floyd under a fake name but went behind the insurance company’s back herself to get him the tests.
Archer didn’t do anything about that except make a snarky comment while focusing on Zola’s alleged ethical lapse. That didn’t seem fair; if anything, he had it out for Zola since learning about her previous record and took action the second she stepped out of line.
Ultimately, Zola and Maggie saved Floyd’s life, even if they seemed to fit in better on New Amsterdam than on Chicago Med.
The way insurance interferes with patients getting needed care is a seriously broken aspect of the American health insurance system. Maggie and Zola were left with few choices as a result.
Marcel is working with the board to try to change some of the mess caused by insurance, but those changes wouldn’t have helped Floyd even if they had been instituted already.
Of course, once he became violently ill, his condition was enough of an emergency for his insurance to cover the surgery. So maybe the women should have kept him a few more hours for observation — but his insurance might not have covered that either.
Marcel’s discovery of the bristle brush in Floyd’s stomach was bizarre. Wouldn’t a foreign object in the stomach have shown up on the CT scan that Zola secretly ordered?
Across the hospital, the Bert story set up one of Chicago Med’s saddest storylines.
Dementia storylines never fail to make me cry. My grandfather died of vascular dementia, and I always think of him when someone on TV suffers from any kind of cognitive decline.
Bert is a relatively minor character, so his decline won’t be as heartbreaking as Rebecca’s on This Is Us, but the scene where Sharon had to face Bert’s problems was heartbreaking.
Sharon spent most of the hour in denial, insisting that Bert had always been like this. It didn’t seem to disturb her that he called Isaiah by Michael’s name or didn’t know which foot he drives with.
Some of that could have looked similar enough to personal quirks that Sharon honestly didn’t think anything of it. But it seemed more likely that she didn’t want to face the truth: Bert was not as sharp as he used to be.
Tara was right to be searching for someone to take over nanny duties. Even if she had been mistaken about Bert’s condition, she must feel comfortable leaving her son with anyone.
If she didn’t feel Bert was capable anymore, it was better to bring someone else in to care for Isaiah, even if it would upset Bert; Isaiah’s safety had to come first.
Thankfully, Sharon and Dennis didn’t split for the sake of drama after Dennis walked in on Sharon squeezing Bert’s hand.
There was nothing romantic between them, but a large part of Chicago Med Season 7 revolved around Ben insisting Maggie was still in love with her ex when that was platonic on her part, which was one of the catalysts for an unnecessary divorce.
So Dennis could have gone the same way, but instead, it led to an honest conversation about how he wished he knew how to support Sharon through this.
Good for them!
As for Maggie, I’m with Marcel on this: it’s too soon for her and Dr. Johnson to start anything.
Of course, I may be biased since I’m holding out hope for Maggie and Ben to reconcile.
But I hate the idea of the writers breaking them up to put her with a guy who’s been a minor part of the scene until now.
If Maggie does end up with Johnson, I hope he’s on the up-and-up. I don’t want to repeat that horrible Philip/Natalie/Will story.
Your turn, Chicago Med fanatics.
Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and tell us what you think about this episode.
Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8/7c.
New episodes drop on Peacock the day after they air.
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Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.
