As if hospitals aren’t scary enough as it is, things are getting even more unsettling for the staff of NBC’s hit medical drama Brilliant Minds as spooky season checks in with a Halloween episode. And that is saying a lot for a show that regularly freaks us out with cases like face blindness, alien-hand syndrome, and mirror-touch synesthesia.
“Wait until Monday’s episode. We get weirder,” warns showrunner Michael Grassi with a laugh. “Bronx General is a very lively place on Halloween, as you can imagine.” He adds that we should expect to see some of the staff trading their lab coats for Spirit Halloween-wear. “There are costumes in this episode, and there’s one couple’s costume in particular that I think is really special ,” he teases. “I cannot wait for audiences to see it.”
Neurologist Oliver Wolf (Zachary Quinto) and his team will be dealing with the trickiest part of treating the unwell. And as usual, each situation is stranger than fiction. “We’re dealing with real topics and real medical matters, but we want to have a lot of fun on the show. That’s really, really important to us and our storytelling,” Grassi says.
Pief Weyman/NBC
The main vibe of the hour, Grassi continues, is “based on this real thing called ‘The Doctor’s Graveyard,’ where doctors are often haunted by patients that they’ve lost. It’s something that doctors do deal with, so we’re going to be leaning on our Halloween theme to explore all of the ways our doctors are haunted or cursed in various forms.”
That even extends to Oliver’s neuro-department interns, particularly Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop), who continues to struggle with the emotional fallout and trauma of watching a young woman perish in last year’s building collapse. “Ashleigh’s character in the Halloween episode has a really big story where she’s trying to help a patient, but also dealing with her own ghosts from last season as well,” Grassi offers. “She has a really big, really juicy story.”
Similarly, our favorite shrink Carol Pierce (Tamberla Perry), Grassi hints, “comes face-to-face with her worst nightmare,” and based on the photo above, we’re pretty sure it’s everyone’s. But it’s the main case that is going to give everyone at Bronx General the goosebumps. Given the fact that October 31 is the night when the veil between the living and the dead is the thinnest, Grassi has gleefully thrown in a case of someone who may have come back from the beyond. “I would say it’s our weirdest, the most unusual patient yet who has a medical event while doing a cold plunge in an ice bath.”
As for the season’s flashforwards to what seems to be Wolf’s own medical crisis, Grassi promises that this is no trick and that we will soon be treated to some answers. “We are building towards [that],” he says. “There’s so much happening this season that we’re really excited about, but one of the big storylines is that we find Wolf in this psychiatric facility. Every episode that we’re watching, sort of asking ourselves, ‘How does he end up there?’ ‘What’s going to be the thing that breaks Wolf?’ And I think there are a lot of elements that he’s dealing with this season, whether they’re romantic, whether they’re in his workplace, dealing with new residents, whether it’s his family situation that he’s dealing with. We’re sort of going to be wondering, ‘What’s the thing? Is it going to be a patient?’ So I think that’s one of the things that we’re going to be building to all season…towards our mid-season [when] it’s really going to come to a head.”
Actually, that sounds more chilling than the ice bath.
Brilliant Minds, Mondays, 10/9c, NBC
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