Chicago Med season 4 midseason report card: Hospital highs and lows

Chicago Med December 10, 2018

In this edition of our ongoing Midseason Report Card article series, we’re putting the focus entirely on Chicago Med. This is a show with great characters and interesting cases, but is there still something more that can be done in order to take the series to the next level?

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What Chicago Med is always going to succeed at is finding a way to bring in patients with unusual conditions and treatments than we’ve ever seen before. This is an enormous challenge for the writers but somehow, they manage to make it work and also somehow educate viewers along the way. Given how many medical shows are out there on the air, you’d think that we would have the knowledge of almost all of them. Yet, that’s not exactly the case — we still get a chance to learn a little bit more along the way with this show and there’s something exciting about that.

Then, there are the characters… – Let’s go ahead and get the biggest negative out of the way here: The Will / Natalie storyline didn’t entirely work. The issue for us wasn’t establishing conflict between the two characters. Instead, it was the concept behind it and the notion that Ray would be the thing to drive a huge divide between them. Will just doesn’t really seem like the sort of character who’s going to keep that sort of super-pertinent information from his fiancee, and we still think that he could have trusted her with it. There could’ve still been drama with this story even if she knew, such as her just resenting being in that position. The secret didn’t have to add to it.

Elsewhere, though, there are a few different character stories that are interesting. The writers have figured out some interesting material for Connor and Ava, even if their relationship trajectory felt a little bit predictable at first glance. Meanwhile, the relationship between Ethan and April has always been intriguing and complex because of everything that the two have been through. (Yaya DaCosta continues to do really good work here.) Even Dr. Charles has some interesting story as he tries to change his feelings towards interns and new residents after what happened with Dr. Reese and how invested he got in her. All of the characters on the series are interesting, even if we are missing people like Dr. Reese or Dr. Latham — the latter of whom will be returning later this season. (For more news, check out our recent interview with Diane Frolov and Andre Schneider.)

Midseason Verdict

For NBC, Chicago Med remains their unsung hero — the series continues to perform really well for them even though they do not tend to give it nearly enough credit for all of its contributions. While we didn’t love every storyline the writers presented, we do appreciate the risk-taking beyond typical medical stories and giving the characters interesting relationship dynamics to explore. Grade: B.

What do you think about Chicago Med season 4 to date? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments and stay tuned for some other news and information. (Photo: NBC.)

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