So today's touchbase is about the medical drama that nobody knows about, Brilliant Minds.
Most attention goes to medical shows like Grey's Anatomy, Chicago Med, Watson and The Pitt.
But churning away in it's own little corner of the NBC schedule, virtually unnoticed is Brilliant Minds.
Which is a damn shame.
As I've said before, Brilliant Minds is the formula for House turned on it's head. Zachary Quinto's Dr. Oliver Wolf is as brilliant and clever as Dr. Gregory House but the total polar opposite in terms of bed side manner.
Dr. Wolf is earnest and compassionate to the extreme. Which sometimes puts him at odds with hospital administration at Bronx General.
Up against a system that prioritizes a quick diagnosis and a quicker discharge, Wolf's insists on taking time and care in making sure each patient gets the maximum attention to arrive at the most perfect solution possible.
Some cases Dr. Wolf and his residents deal with seem impossible to solve.
Like the episode where two window washers plummet 38 stories and somehow don't die.
The odds of staying not dead are against them, their bodies completely shattered, organs crushed and bleeding. In a powerful episode, it's all hands on deck in a marathon push over 18 hours of surgery and treatment to keep these two men alive.
Ultimately those efforts come up short for one of the men.
The odds of the other one surviving are not good but by some miracle, he holds on.
But we're not done.
While Brilliant Minds is typically episodic in nature with a "case of the week" structure, the surviving man's continued care form a subplot through subsequent episodes as he continues to hang on the precipice of life and death.
Another power episode was about a firefighter named Matthew with ALS, a neurodegenerative disease that no doctor, not even Dr. Wolf, can cure. Wolf's tactics for this case shift from curing a disease to helping Matthew live with it.
Matthew insists on not involving his family because he doesn't want to be a burden. It's Wolf's objective to convince him his best chance of dealing with this disease is to involve his family.
The episode is especially poignant as the part of Matthew is played by Eric Dane, formerly in the cast of Grey's Anatomy. Earlier in 2025, Dane was diagnosed with ALS and his own struggles with accepting his diagnosis and what he had to do live this condition informs his role as Matthew.
The fall finale of Brilliant Minds that aired last week brought to a head a contentious relationship between Dr. Wolf and a new resident, Dr. Charlie Porter.
Porter arrived at Bronx General as a young, obnoxious upstart who tends to counter Wolf at every turn. Where Wolf would doggedly persue options that were against all odds to effect a cure, Porter tended to be more to the point and pragmatic, choosing realism over hope.
The fall finale reveals the Porter's animosity against Wolf is personal. When he was a child, Porter's mother was diagnosed with cancer. And a young resident by the name of Oliver Wolf encouraged her and her family to have hope of her survival and cure.
Porter's mother died and Porter still holds on to the bitterness that Dr. Wolf encouraged the family to have hope when the odds were clearly against her survival.
This revelation seems to tie into another subplot that takes place a few months into the future where Dr. Wolf is in the care of a sketchy mental health facility known as Hudson Oaks. The story of how Wolf will get there and why they won't let him leave has been an unfolding mystery this season.
Brilliant Minds is not a one man show. Dr. Wolf is surrounded by a supporting cast with their own dramas.
Principally among them is Dr. Ericka Kinley who is not quite dealing with the post traumatic fallout of barely surviving the collapse of her apartment building last season. Ericka's struggles have manifested itself in crippling anxiety and an unhealthy dependence on self-prescribed medication.
Erika is also single mindedly obsessed with saving the life of Sam, a homeless man with schizophrenia and a failing liver. In order to get Sam the liver transplant that can save his life, she has to reunite Sam with his family.
Brilliant Minds can be a bit pendantic and maudlin in it's message of compassion and empathy but it is a valueable counterpoint to the real world where the health care system can often seem impersonal and more concerned with stats than people's lives.
All in all, Brilliant Minds deserves a better fate than being ignored.
- Stranger Things and Peacemaker
Until next time, remember to be good to one another and try to keep it down in there, would ya? I'm trying to watch TV over here.
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