‘Doc’: Jon Ecker Breaks Down Jake and Amy Getting Back Together

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Doc Season 2 Episode 9 “Kaddish.”]

“All I care about in this moment is, do you want to be with me?” With that question, Amy (Molly Parker) and Jake’s (Jon Ecker) future together, at least for now, is sealed on Doc. The fall finale ends with the two back together.

That comes after Amy’s there for Jake while he buries his father, even having a memory flash and telling him that his dad was proud of him. But this also comes just as Hannah (Emma Pfitzer Price) and her brother (Daniel Gravelle) have struck again, this time sending a recording from Amy’s therapy session about kissing Michael (Omar Metwally) to his wife and Jake. Uh-oh!

Below, Jon Ecker breaks down the midseason finale, why it seems like Jake and Amy think they can make their romance work this time, that decision in the flashbacks, and more. (Plus, read what executive producer Hank Steinberg had to say about the fall finale and what’s next here.)

How is he doing with his dad’s death at the end of the episode? It feels like there’s still so much unresolved, but then he had that nice moment of Amy telling him how proud he was to have him as his son when she had the memory flash.

Jon Ecker: Yeah, I think it’s a lot to deal with. I think anytime you lose anybody, it’s a lot to deal with, on top of it, a parent, and I lost my mother when I was younger, so basically losing my dad, I’m now alone. So that’s a lot on its own. I think always if you ever lose anybody close to you, you always feel like you wish you had more time and you said more, but especially for Jake, that it was such an unexpected death, that they weren’t as close as he would’ve liked for them to have been and not to get to say a lot of things, I think just made it a lot harder. And so for Amy to have that flashback and at least hear that he was proud of me as a dad, it doesn’t take away from the loss, but I think it definitely makes him feel a little bit better about where the relationship was left off, that he was proud of his son when he left.

John Medland/Fox

Jake then makes that decision about Amy while he’s still dealing with that, which you could argue isn’t the best time to do so. So, how they feel about each other aside, because that’s not in question, is Jake in the right mindset to make the decision to move forward like they are?

Yeah, no, I think it is definitely questionable. Any time there’s any romantic re-encounters after a traumatic loss like that, you have to question the intentions because inherently, you’re going to want to go find comfort. And for Jake, Amy’s pretty much the only person he has. It’s her and the ex-wife [Samantha Massell], and that’s kind of the only emotional attachments he has besides his sister, but that’s a different relationship. So it’s definitely questionable, but I think for Jake, more than just wanting to have somebody to lean on, it’s him — he’s kind of put his career first and I think he’ll always put being a good doctor and helping his patients first.

But as far as his actual professional livelihood in the hospital, that’s been one of the obstacles with Amy because they work together. And so I think having this newfound fear of his own mortality after his dad dies definitely causes him to have a realignment of priorities and say, you know what? I can’t keep putting my emotional life on hold for my professional life. I need to follow that because our days are numbered. So I think, yeah, on Amy’s end, you could definitely question, why is he seeking me out? But I think for Jake, it’s just like, I don’t want to waste any more time on this. Even if it’s going to mess up, it’s going to be a problem with HR at the hospital, we’ll take that risk. It’s worth it.

I do like that Jake, after hearing that recording, immediately thinks someone’s trying to destroy Amy, that’s where his head goes.

Well, yeah, I think the first thing is obviously, it hurts. You don’t want to hear about the person you love kissing somebody else, and especially talking about how good it was. But he also understands the history between her and Michael, and her losing eight years of her memory makes the whole situation different. But I think he knows, obviously, she didn’t send him that recording. So, I think he’s always put Amy’s wellbeing — both her professional and emotional and mental care wellbeing — ahead of their relationship.

I think that’s the number one thing, is like, “Hey, somebody’s trying to mess with your life here and doing this and causing the hack.” And so regardless of what was in the email and the voice recording, we need to deal with that. And then on top of it, it’s one of those things, it’s like you know the person that you’re with has had a past with other people. You don’t want to hear about it. That sucks, but unless you met in grade school, they have a past. So just kind of turn a blind eye to that.

Does he suspect it’s Hannah at all? Because then there’s also the matter of him being the one to select Hannah, and I wonder how he’s going to feel about it when it is revealed that she’s behind this.

I’m sure he is going to want to take some responsibility because, like you said, he hired her, but at the same time, I don’t think there were any indicators at the time that she would cause a problem. And there weren’t. It wasn’t like Hannah came into that job to get back at Amy. The past between Amy and her father was discovered throughout her tenure at the hospital. So, of course, you’re going to be like, maybe I should have seen something, and I made the decision, but it was through no fault of his own.

Going back to Jake and Amy, because they have decided to move forward, you talked about the HR component of it. What are we going to see there when it comes to their personal relationship, but then also what they have to deal with at work? Because there’s Joan (Felicity Huffman) also…

We’re going to follow this thing through. We’re not going to be making out in the hallways and let everybody know. But I’m sure at some point people are going to find out and what happens when they find out?

Given how things have gone in the past with these two trying to make a relationship work, why does it feel like they can do it this time?

I think they’re both aware that it’s not going to be smooth sailing. They work together. Both of their exes are very much in their lives, both because of their careers and also because they share children. So I think they’re aware of that. It’s not like this is going to be easy sailing from here, but I think for Jake, he has the idea of, OK, I’m not going to put my career first. She’s going to have a healthier work-life balance, and hopefully, we can just work through the HR thing. And they’ve kind of moved past — at least we think each person has kind of moved past their history with their exes, and so that hopefully won’t be an issue moving forward, that I understand that she had a little bit of emotional ties to Michael because she forgot about the eight years where they fell out of love. But I guess Jake just has the hope that that’s behind us.

Talk about filming Jake’s dad’s funeral and that eulogy.

I don’t know how to describe that. Being at a cemetery is not my favorite place to be in general. It was a beautiful cemetery, and it was a beautiful day. So I’m imagining that it turned out nicely. But to have to give a page-long eulogy for your father around not only the people you normally work with, but I don’t know how many people were there, 50 or 70 other strangers… But it was great, and I’m hoping it turned out well. I think it was a really important storyline for Jake and just him moving forward in the second half of the season. So I tried to do it justice. They made it easy by us really having a cemetery, and standing over an empty hole with a coffin, it makes it as real as possible. That was an interesting day of filming.

In the flashbacks, we see Jake make the decision not to move. When Rachel finds out about their relationship, she accuses Jacob of not moving because of Amy. At that point in early 2020, how much had it been about Amy, not necessarily romantically, but what he was seeing in her as a doctor, that led to that decision for Jake?

My interpretation of it is, and I’m hoping that in the future we do get even more flashbacks to kind of bridge that gap between when I decided to stay and us actually developing a romantic relationship — But I think the main thing at that point for Jake was yes, she was really hard to deal with, but we have that whole flashback dealing with COVID and stuff, and I think Jake just really realized that it’s a great hospital, she’s a great mentor and a doctor to learn from. So, even though she’s really hard to deal with and be around because of how she treats everybody else, it didn’t really bother me so much how she treats me and that it’s really going to benefit me over the long term as a doctor to be around such a knowledgeable, professional person and that she’s also starting to give me authority and that she respects me as a resident, and so that’s just going to be a good place for me to be. I think that’s the priority. That’s the main deciding factor, at least at this point, to stay at the hospital in those flashbacks.

Yeah, because Jake impressed Amy. He doesn’t know what he’s going to get elsewhere at that point.

And I don’t think he expected to get it from her. When I’m having the conversation in the car with my ex-wife about quitting, I don’t think he was expecting that she saw in me what I hope she would see in me and give me that level of respect and authority and responsibility. So, when she does, it’s like, oh, OK, she sees me in a completely different light. It might be worthwhile staying here. I have a future here.

John Medland/Fox

At the end of the episode, we see Charlie’s making the deepfake of Amy’s voice. I’m curious how much Jake is going to continue to be caught up in this because we already seeing it.

Yeah, now it’s really affecting Amy, and we’re aware that it’s happening and there’s a third party out there doing this, so he’s obviously going to get involved to whatever extent he can. Jake doesn’t have a background in computer coding and hacking, and AI, so there’s only so much he can do, but he’s definitely going to take an interest in it.

I enjoyed the Jake and Michael stuff we got earlier this season.

Yeah, it’s great. Omar’s great to work with, so we always have fun. It’s obviously a task to try to keep from cracking up with him because I know he seems so serious, but he is really not real life. I have a lot of fun working with him, just being in between the scenes and then also doing the actual scenes, so that’s great. And I think it makes sense that they both can bond over their interest in Amy and beyond their emotional attachment to her, they both have her best interest at heart, getting her healthy mentally and emotionally and professionally. So they have that common goal. And they’re both good guys who want to be good doctors and look out for Amy. So it kind of makes sense that they can bond over that once they can get over the fact that they both have a past with the same woman.

Because even though there have been moments, it’s like neither one of them is the bad guy in this triangle, because it’s such a complicated situation.

I think that’s what makes the whole triangle interesting, is that both of them are good guys. Both of them have genuine interest in Amy. Both of them are probably good for her. So it makes it a hard argument whether you’re team Michael or team Jake.

Doc, Midseason Return, Tuesday, January 6, 2026, 9/8c, Fox