Abhiroop Das
Created by Barbie Kligman, season 3 ‘Doc’ picks back up the story of Dr. Amy Larsen, who is still piecing together her memory of the past 8 years. As she reorients herself back into the medical environment, the flickers of memories here and there complicate her life as much as they unravel a part of herself. These fragments become more important than ever now that Amy finds herself the Chief Resident, alongside Sonya, and Ben Grant returns, determined to take over Amy’s department. Something hints that he and Amy share a secret, of which Amy has no recollection. With Westside Hospital entering a new phase under these changes in administration, the show welcomes some new faces and stories in its first episode, titled ‘Wherefore Art Thou.’ SPOILERS AHEAD.
Amy Returns to Westside After a Brief But Needed Hiatus.
‘Doc’ season 3 begins with a student theater group practicing for their upcoming ‘Romeo and Juliet’ production, which swaps Juliet’s dagger in the climactic sequence for a prop gun. However, right after the sequence is completed, one of the leads, Tori, begins seizing uncontrollably, leaving the entire team shaken. Meanwhile, we return to Westside to find out that some time has passed since the events of the season 2 finale. With Joan Ridley’s passing away off-screen, a major gap has been left in the world of medicine, and especially in the hospital. Amy Larsen, of course, wants to get back in action as soon as possible, and with her most recent brain scans showing promise of improvement, both Michael and Gina give her the green light at last.
The morning also marks the first day of Westside’s new interns, as well as the first day for Dr. Benjamin, who has decided to join the hospital full-time. As the students buzz about Westside’s rather unique arrangement of having not one, but two chief residents, Amy and Sonya, we get to learn more about the interns themselves. There’s Graham Barker, whose father is among the hospital’s top donors, though that doesn’t seem to be what got him into medicine. Right alongside him, there’s Nikki De Silv, who, while talented, is still wound tight. Ruth Chen is smart, cheerful, but easy to overwhelm, and then there is Kyle Ferguson, a medical prodigy with not a lot of social experience owing to the fact that he was homeschooled.
The New Interns Have a Bad First Day at Work
As the day begins and the two chief residents share their words of wisdom, Ruth and Graham are tasked with tailing Amy, whereas Sonya takes hold of Nikki and Kyle. Tori, the theatre kid who had a seizure, turns out to be Amy’s first patient of the day, and from the very outset, her symptoms don’t seem to add up. Despite the ER’s early checks and Gina’s personal assessment, there doesn’t seem to be a readily apparent reason why Tori had a seizure, and it most certainly isn’t a stroke. However, right as Tori begins to recount the last things she remembers, she ends up seizing again, and both Ruth and Graham end up struggling to help Amy in time.
From the scene of the interns fumbling their first task, the story takes a detour to the day of Amy’s accident, and how particularly rude she was being to her patients and underlings alike that day. When one of her patients filed a complaint, Hamda had no choice but to bring Sonya in as a witness, who confirmed that Amy had disrespected a pregnant young woman and that her temperament had shown no signs of improvement. In the present, Amy cannot help but feel bad about how harsh she was on Sonya, and how it almost led to her quitting the job, but another thing catches Amy’s eye. Jake, as it turns out, is trying his hand at cardiology, but that proves to be challenging in its own way.
The Theatre Kids Turn Out to Have Mass Psychogenic Illness
As a CT scan reveals that Tori has an undiagnosed clot in her head, which may be triggering the symptoms, the story suddenly gets more complicated. The director of the play, Tori’s teacher, also seems to be down with a stroke, but unlike her, there isn’t even a brain clot that explains his symptoms. To make things even stranger, more and more students from the theatre group begin to arrive with similar symptoms, leading the doctors to consider a toxin or something similar at the stage. Amy, however, realizes that something different is at play, especially when she notices that the friends have a group chat where they have been getting worked up. That, coupled with the fact that their symptoms worsen as they learn more about others, leads Amy to believe that this is a case of mass psychogenic illness, or mass hysteria.
Amy’s hunch gets confirmed when it’s revealed that, for all the other patients, the effects are purely psychological. The explanation comes a bit later, when all the kids reveal that they have regularly been participating in lockdown drills to protect against potential school shootings. While none of them felt unusual about it at first, the image of a gun shooting seemingly triggered a shared trauma, hence the response. Thanks to this, however, Tori’s clot is discovered, and she is saved from future trouble. As the day comes to a close, Sonya comes down quite harshly on the new interns, almost reminding Amy of her older self, though she chooses to remain quiet. Meanwhile, Dr. Benjamin, who didn’t show up much this episode, turns out to have another dark, undisclosed secret with Amy, one that got suppressed after the accident erased her memories of them being together.
Read More: Doc Season 2 Finale Recap and Ending Explained: Does Amy Choose Michael or Jake?
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