Spoilers ahead for episode 3 of Chicago Mediterranean Season 8, titled “Win the battle, but still lose the war”.
Chicago Mediterranean gave Dr. Charles a colleague to work closely with in season eight, but didn’t bring Sarah Reese back. Dr. Nellie Cuevas (played by Lilah Richcreek Estrada) is a psychologist who works alongside Charles, and after they gently clashed early in the new season, their disagreement over “Win the battle, but still lose the war” it has become a real conflict. . However, at the end of the hour, it seemed that the conflict could be good for both of them.
The stakes were high when the teen who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in the season 8 premiere (only for his parents who refused to let him treat) was returned to the emergency room and suffered more than ever. Her mother was finally willing to listen and let doctors try to help her, but helping her showed the stark differences between how Charles and Nellie approach psychiatry.
While experience taught Charles that sometimes the only way to build trust is to play around with disappointments, Nellie cited clinical evidence that made her want to do the exact opposite. She wasn’t thrilled, but the real fight didn’t start until she gave the young man strong drugs when he got nervous. For her, treating him was the right decision; for him, she destroyed his chances of establishing trust.
And all in all, perhaps conflict was inevitable due to the kind of doctor Nellie already was when she started working with him. Chicago Mediterranean Co-host Diane Frolov sat down with Gossipify before season 8 and talked about how Nellie fits into what used to be a well-oiled machine at ED:
She comes as a classmate, so she hasn’t just finished medical school like our residents. She is a full-fledged doctor and she has her own journey, which is a little different than what happened with Charles. And Charles has those years and those years of experience. You have a lot to learn even if you already know a lot. He combines what you know clinically with the learning of interaction with real clinical experience.
Co-showrunner Andrew Schneider added that he is “very adamant about what he knows and how he thinks patients should be approached,” which is the cause of the “conflict with Dr. Charles.” They did a little scene in the ER when Charles left after learning that she had ordered medications for her patient, and neither of them seemed ready to back down at that moment, so why a conflict between the two should be a good thing?
Well, Nellie may be adamant about what she knows and what she thinks, but the final scene of the episode showed that she is not completely adamant and reluctant to learn from decades of experience, from Charles’ experience in his field. She visited him in her study to tell him that she had talked to the boy’s mother to let him spend a few nights in the psychiatric ward so they could talk to him and get to know him before writing a prescription.
Even after Charles gave him the opportunity to acknowledge that the situation was chaotic when he ordered the drugs, he admitted that he probably switched to drugs too quickly and knew he relied heavily on literature and standards of care because he didn’t. . Trust your instincts 100%. Charles assured her that it had taken years and promised her that she could get to a point where she would trust herself to make the right decisions.
And this twist certainly wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t had their conflict early in the episode. Neither of them liked the argument (and probably wouldn’t have had it in the middle of the ER if calm prevailed), but they seem to be on better terms after their disagreement than before.
See if their new status quo as colleagues holds up to new episodes of Chicago Mediterranean Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, earlier Chicago fire at 21 and Chicago police at 10 p.m. PT when it premieres in 2022. Nick Gehlfuss recently shared something that will never happen to Will Halstead and supply shortages issues (which showrunners have been talking about) aren’t going anywhere, so make sure to continue recording in.
Source: Cinemablend
