Oh, so Joan Ridley is in her Villainess Era, eh?
For the record, when it comes to Doc, my number one mantra is: Always Trust Gina, and I will stand by that and her for infinity. And Gina doesn’t trust Joan as far as she can throw her.
After getting a feel for how this woman operates, as subtle as it’s been during Doc Season 2 Episode 2, I don’t trust her either!
The second episode struggled with pacing and editing in an odd way that sometimes threw me off. It felt like we were jumping from one plot or scene to the next, sometimes without proper transitions.
And it made the hour feel weirdly choppy in a way that I’m not accustomed to, so that was unfortunate.
The cases themselves lacked the bite and level of investment that the outside, personal drama brought throughout all of this.
Hiccup Guy had some great tattoos and one of the most annoying byproducts of a lipoma ever, but it was also one of those cases that I kept forgetting about until they showed him again.
And Jake and Sonya seemed to mostly be at a loss until the final back half of the hour, when Joan swooped in to perform a procedure to finally put that poor guy at ease after nearly two weeks straight of hiccups.
Meanwhile, the case involving Megan was wonderfully bizarre and took up most of the hour, as it pertained to cases. Still, it didn’t feel meaty enough considering we had some wild things going on, including a pregnancy she conjured up in her head, a tumor, and an actual cult.
It was fascinating to see how quickly Amy jumped onto Anne, overstepping her bounds and being problematic. Amy didn’t waste any time in assuming the worst — and she was definitely right.
I found it interesting that she was steadfast in it, and the series never took a moment, even to hint that this case was a red herring or tease the possibility that something may not have been what it seemed.
The cult angle was definitely fascinating, but it felt somewhat underdeveloped, and I wish it had received slightly more prominence.
We sped through the entire case rather quickly, with Amy popping up all over the hospital at any given moment to jump into almost every other plot, whether it was the moments with Michael, the awkwardness with Jake, and trying to track down TJ for a chat, or volleying back and forth between Joan and Gina.
For someone who was on her way home, she never did catch a break!
Meanwhile, TJ’s case, with him as the patient, was at least an essential follow-up to his shooting in the season premiere, and it lays the groundwork for his road to recovery and what his character may endure on his path back to his former self.
It was a sobering thing to hear that it would take six months for him to walk properly as he did before, and a year before he could resume some of his more strenuous activities.
He’s not someone who knows how to ask for help or even receive it, so he was a terrible patient and tough for others to deal with.
But Amy understood that better than most, and their particular dynamic remains endearing. He genuinely respects her like no one else, and she has a deep fondness for him. That affection oozes out whenever they share the screen.
Speaking of affection (or lack of it), Sonya is the Doc character with whom I still struggle greatly. I wish she had more dimension to her character than just hating Amy.
The unfortunate thing is that Sonya’s concerns and feelings, to some degree, are valid, but she often emerges as a jealous and mean-spirited person, and I want something more for her.
Amy came to her to apologize, and that was fair enough. While she wasn’t wrong about them not actually being friends, it was a harsh remark to make.
But a few days later, Sonya still has it burned into her, and she uses it as fuel to justify her hatred of Amy. If I rolled my eyes any harder during her telling Amy that SHE doesn’t belong at a hospital that she freaking cultivated and worked at for two decades, they probably would’ve fallen out of my head.
Because who is Sonya, really, to tell Amy any of this? I think Sonya’s positions would hold fast and read better if we know that they don’t come from a place of jealousy, too, because of Jake.
It was as if the second Jake showed her attention and didn’t immediately come to Amy’s defense, as usual, she took that as a green light and ran with it, laying into Amy, mostly unprompted, as if she was waiting for a chance to do it without Jake hating her for it.
And that reads as incredibly childish. It was also very cruel to lay all the blame on Amy that a disgruntled father shot TJ, hurt Jake, and held them hostage.
That’s something that could happen to literally any of them at any point in their careers, where they treat hundreds of thousands of people and may not recall every facet of everything that they’ve ever said or done.
I empathize with the character and her perspective, as it can be frustrating from her position when people bend over backward for Amy or tend to be Amy apologists without acknowledging whatever harm she causes. Still, Sonya just always takes it too far every time.
But presently, she’ll be content since she gets to bask in Jake’s attention for the moment, especially since Jake isn’t interested in hearing anything from Amy right now, since he cannot trust that she’s being honest with herself about her feelings for Michael or him.
Jake isn’t exactly wrong for his feelings. They were a large part of why it was dicey when they got together again. The first time, he could assume that the old version of her was completely done, but this time? He’s not so sure.
I think it’s still tough to lay all that blame on Amy when she’s been consistent in trying to figure things out. It’s not like she didn’t tell him directly at one point that she had feelings for Michael shortly after her accident.
Although I still find the friendship between Amy and Michael compelling, it’s through that relationship that we can understand the layers of their romantic relationship once upon a time.
They’re still each other’s “person” in ways, and that’s hard to navigate now that Michael has his own family. More than anything, it’s clear that they’re both struggling to figure out their “new normal.”
I’m still waiting for some other shoe to drop with this baby storyline. And it’s bound to get messy in some capacity or another because Nora point-blank asked Michael if he still loves Amy, and he neither agreed nor denied it, just pivoted to saying that he loves her and their family.
It’s all she cared to hear, but it doesn’t resolve their issues. Nevertheless, my heart still ached for him as a parent who lost one child, trying to be comfortable with this new one.
He was so terrified that something might be wrong with their son, and it’s a rational fear of his, given how things had happened with Danny. I still cannot imagine having your child actually die in your arms like that, and it’s still something that haunts him.
But Amy had the encouragement he needed, and it was coming from her, which meant more. His loving baby Simon didn’t mean he didn’t still love Danny. He has room in his heart to love them both fully.
I can understand how he may fear the idea of feeling as though he’s replacing one son with another, but the fact that he even has that fear at all shows that’s not what he’s doing.
He’ll enjoy his paternity leave, but clearly, there’s more brewing with the board, and I don’t foresee things going smoothly when he returns to work.
It won’t blow over, and if anyone will ensure that it doesn’t, it’s Joan.
Her addition was interesting because I expected a more formal introduction. But she just kind of appeared, with this established history, and she’s apparently been at the hospital already and settled in with our main players.
She has a quirkiness to her that’s definitely deceptive. But it’s the manipulation that I clocked early on.
Her interaction with Michael the first time was particularly telling because it was clear that she wanted that Chief of Internal Medicine gig based on how she shot down every single one of his suggestions.
She was laying the groundwork for him to reevaluate asking her so she could lay out her terms, and all while making it seem like it was his idea and not her machinations.
It was also fascinating to see her dismiss Amy’s question about that dinner she was having flashes of, and those two moments alone let me know that Joan is a woman with an agenda.
I’m excited about Amy having all these new flashes and memories, but I’m intrigued that it’s Joan who is prompting some of them right now. And perhaps that’s because Joan may be a significant factor in the catalyst for the version of Amy that people struggled with in the past.
We saw that Michael was genuinely trying to keep their marriage going, trying to get her into couples counseling, grieving together, trying to reconnect, and it was not working.
Amy threw herself into work, and she didn’t seem to care who she stepped on to get where she needed professionally. Her assertive approach with the other doctor in the flashback was enough to make Michael cringe, and the berating was the type of thing that others had historically not handled well.
Amy didn’t feel properly challenged and didn’t feel like she was among her peers. It makes sense, though, that Joan, her mentor who shaped and molded her, would love to push Amy even further into those achievements because it’s an extension of her own.
Amy’s ambition isn’t a problem, but Joan clearly encouraged ambition without balance — that either/or mentality that high-demanding jobs like to push, where you can’t be both great professionally and personally at the same time.
My jaw dropped when Michael appealed to Joan as a family friend, and Joan took that as an opportunity to push for Amy to leave Michael altogether.
Instead of encouraging Amy to work out some of her grief or find a pathway toward not blaming her husband for the death of her son, she encouraged it, and that’s a special kind of diabolical, given the subject matter.
It makes you think about how this also extended to Gina. It’s evident that Gina does not like Joan at all, and it’s likely because she sees the hold and influence that this woman has on Amy — and she pushes her into directions that may not be beneficial to her as a full person.
Additionally, Joan’s dismissive attitude toward psychology, given that Gina is also a psychiatrist, likely doesn’t help matters.
I enjoyed seeing Amy and Gina share a moment where they got to talk a bit more about what happened between them. Gina admitted that it wasn’t one big thing that Amy did, per se; it was “Death by 1000 cuts,” so to speak, where all these little things built up and caused deep pain.
And we keep hearing that Amy wasn’t there for Gina when she needed he most and didn’t show up for her. Since we know Gina did for Amy, it was probably a hard pill to swallow.
Sadly, Amy was just never the same after Danny died. And the hard part about that is, as Gina displayed, it’s hard to feel like you have a right to be upset with someone when you’re comparing what you’re going through to what they’re going through and feel like it’s small potatoes.
It shouldn’t be like that, though, and sadly, all that ever does is build resentment. But their talk and Amy kissing her forehead after reassuring her that she’d make it right is one of my favorite scenes.
All the messiness aside (or, perhaps, because of it), I really love how deeply you feel the love and sense of family among Amy, Gina, and Michael.
You can tell that in their best moments, they were everything to each other and got each other through a lot, and that’s so endearing as a dynamic.
It’s just too bad that Joan is coming in to shake things up. Too bad Michael never knew what Joan did; otherwise, he wouldn’t have handed her everything she ever wanted and more power than she should have in this deal. Oof!
Over to you, Doc Fanatics.
If you read this whole thing — we appreciate you! Now, it’s not just us, right? Joan is a PROBLEM!
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