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Chicago Med

Chicago Med season 9

Credits

Cast

Network

Reviewer

Paul Asay
Emily Tsiao
Kristin Smith

TV Series Review

What makes drama …dramatic?

Is it the tangible tension? The murky mystery? The seat-squeezing suspense?

Well, whatever your answers to those questions, the halls of the ER at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center have plenty of drama that Just. Won’t. Quit.

A Cornucopia of Characters in Close Quarters

In any close-quartered working environment, crazy things are bound to happen. And in a frenetic Windy City hospital, things definitely happen—especially given this show’s epic ensemble cast.

Dr. Daniel Charles serves as the head of psychiatry and struggles with depression himself. But he butts heads with the ER’s new attending physician Dr. Mitch Ripley, whom Charles treated as a youth for anger management and impulse control problems.

Ripley hasn’t quite forgiven Charles for treating him with medications (many of which were more harmful than doctors realized at the time), and he makes it his business to ensure the hospital doesn’t continue to overmedicate.

Dr. Dean Archer feels unworthy to receive a kidney transplant from his son since he was a terrible father to the young man (resulting in his son becoming a drug addict). But Dr. Hannah Asher, who herself is a recovering addict, tries to help Archer understand how important it is for his son’s recovery to be allowed to do this good thing.

Marlyne Barrett holds the emergency room together as the charge nurse, directing staff to ensure that every patient receives the care they need. But at home, things are falling apart, and her husband wants a divorce.

Sharon Goodwin was a nurse at one time, and her patients were important to her. But now she’s running the hospital, navigating the challenges of owners who care more about the almighty dollar than patient care.

Now, in a normal drama, you might think that was enough characters to fuel years of conflict-filled episodes. But if you’ve ever watched a hospital show before—or even if you’ve seen this one–you know that these types of things like to cycle out old characters and replace them with new ones. And there’s probably plenty more to come.

Grit, Grime and Gore in the ER

Chicago Med may not be quite as saucy and provocative as we’ve seen in medical shows such as Grey’s Anatomy (a series that has outlived most of its patients by now). But that’s not to say Chicago Med receives a clean bill of health.

Language issues are our first pathogen here, including “d–n,” “a–” and an occasional s-word. With regard to sexual content, we hear verbal allusions to it, see couples kissing and occasionally glimpse scantily clad women in lingerie. LGBT characters also make an appearance, and extramarital affairs aren’t unheard of.

Perhaps more problematic, albeit in a different category, is how graphic this show is. The ER can be a bloody, gruesome place, and the camera spares little when it comes to showing us people’s injuries as well as giving us a front-row seat for wince-inducing surgical procedures. To top it off, the show also deals with tough, real-world issues, such as rape, suicide, assisted suicide, murder, schizophrenia and drug use.

So even if it’s not as salacious as some of its peers, Chicago Med can still be a pretty messy way to spend an evening.

Episode Reviews

Jan. 17, 2024 – S9, E1: “Row Row Row Your Boat on a Rocky Sea”

The doctors and nurses of Gaffney Chicago attempt to save the victims of a multi-car pileup.

Before and during surgeries and surgical procedures, we see quite a bit of blood, bruises and broken bones. An X-ray shows that a 10-year-old boy has been internally decapitated (ligaments connecting his skull to his spinal cord have been severed). Doctors patch up patients with bandages, stitches and more. Life-saving treatments, such as intubation and CPR, are employed. And intense moments of peril permeate the entire episode.

A woman passes away after scans fail to show an internal injury. We hear about the deaths of others who succumbed to their injuries before paramedics could arrive. One woman refuses treatment, claiming she deserves to die for causing the wreck (though a psychiatrist is able to convince her otherwise). A man must be sedated after a medication shift causes him to become chemically imbalanced and attack those around him. And we hear that when a doctor was young, he put another teenager in the hospital after a violent outburst.

In spite of all this chaos, staff members save lives and reassure frightened patients and family members. And a woman’s death, while sad, serves to save the life of a little girl as a kidney donor.

Dr. Archer, who is scheduled to receive a donor kidney from his son, feels unworthy of his son’s sacrifice and tries to have the surgery cancelled. By his own admission, he was a bad father, and he believes it led to his son’s drug addiction. However, Dr. Asher, a former addict herself, reassures Archer that allowing his son to do this will actually aid in his recovery, and it could mend the father and son’s relationship as well.

Characters discuss the stigma surrounding mental illness. Doctors debate whether a psychiatric patient needs to be medicated (and we learn that one of the doctors was previously overmedicated). Surgeons deliberate over whether to use an AI program: It has provided false information in the past, but it’s also a child’s only hope of survival.

There’s a passing reference to evolution. A doctor claims he has performed miracles in the operating room. A woman says her husband wants a divorce. We hear seven misuses of God’s name and one use of “h—.”

Feb. 27, 2019 – S4, E16: “Old Flames, New Sparks”

Connor finds a woman almost frozen to death in the snow, even as he wonders whether to move on from his relationship with a pediatrician named Natalie. A boy with leukemia needs a bone marrow transplant, and his parents say they’ve bred his little brother to be the perfect donor (making for an ethical dilemma for doctors Ethan and April). CeCe Charles, Dr. Daniel Charles’ first ex-wife and Robin’s mother, has cancer and a heart condition, and she has to fix the latter before she’ll qualify for an experimental cancer treatment. There’s just one problem: Fixing her heart will require a risky operation, and she might not survive it.

The woman who was nearly frozen to death was found wearing just her lacy nightgown, and she had an enormous amount of alcohol in her system. (Connor originally suspects that someone gave her a “date rape” drug, a suspicion that ultimately proves to be unfounded.) We learn that she was stalking her ex-wife and that woman’s new girlfriend. One of frozen woman’s hands—a bloody mess of decaying tissue—is severely affected by frostbite, and doctors say they’ll need to remove all five of her fingers.

We see a woman in surgery: Her chest cavity is open to reveal a beating, bloody heart. (These scenes showcasing the heart are long and graphic.) The boy with leukemia vomits on the hospital floor (which we don’t see, but hear), and his parents say he was throwing up earlier, too. We learn that he’s done fighting the disease, and that he stopped taking his cancer medication some time ago.

A man and woman kiss after dinner, and we see glasses of wine nearby. April, who used to date Ethan, advises him to take an orchid and a bottle of whiskey when he visits his new girlfriends’ parents. Characters say “d–n,” “h—” and misuse God’s name about five times. Doctors bicker and insult each other. We hear people speculate about same-sex relationships and affairs.

Dec. 5, 2017 – S3, E3: “Trust Your Gut”

Drama, both relational and situational, fills this episode. Dr. Rhodes continues to deal with Robin’s “hyper” tendencies (including hyper-sexuality and hyper-anxiety, according to those trying to diagnose and help her), which causes stress at home and tension at the hospital. Dr. Latham and Dr. Bekker continue to question Rhodes’s judgement as they perform cardiothoracic surgery on a patient.

Meanwhile, Dr. Charles and Sarah Reese grapple with a patient who believes he has something inside of him. They’re initially convinced that he’s delusional, a mindset that’s either caused by drugs or schizophrenia. But after he cuts himself open with a pen! lo and behold they can see that there is something unusual growing in his abdomen.

April is pulled by familial obligations to take care of her brother, Dr. Noah Sexton. For his part, Dr. Choi is concerned that April enables her brother; but he soon learns there is a difference between offering “a crutch and a helping hand” when he encounters a patient who needs help getting clean. Elsewhere, Maggie decides to trust an ex-boyfriend who was previously unfaithful. He insists that he is “not the same guy anymore.”

Another storyline deals with two doctors tending to a brain-damaged female patient on the verge of death. The woman’s brother and parents arrive at the hospital to see her, and it quickly becomes apparent that the parents favor their daughter when they call their son a “worthless drug addict.” Later, as Dr. Manning and Dr. Choi determine the cause of death to be genetic, the parents ask for their son’s forgiveness, as he carries the same genetic disorder that has caused him to be ill and self-medicate his entire life.

Two surgeries, one involving intestines and the other involving a heart operation, are drenched in graphic blood and gore. We hear references to drug addiction and methamphetamine. One scene shows doctors and nurses at a bar ordering a martini and beer. Profanity in this episode includes “h—” and “d–mit.”

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paul-asay
Paul Asay

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

Emily Tsiao

Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.

kristin-smith
Kristin Smith

Kristin Smith joined the Plugged In team in 2017. Formerly a Spanish and English teacher, Kristin loves reading literature and eating authentic Mexican tacos. She and her husband, Eddy, love raising their children Judah and Selah. Kristin also has a deep affection for coffee, music, her dog (Cali) and cat (Aslan).

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