Binge Watch Review: The Good Doctor Season 4

Season four of The Good Doctor opens with a two-part episode centered around the Covid epidemic. Lives are lost, and doctors struggle to keep up with the lack of beds and wall-to-wall patients.

At the beginning of the third episode, the series adds several new resident candidates, and it's up to the fourth year residents to decide who stays and who goes. It's difficult to keep up with these new characters' stories as well as the rest of the cast. Two of the candidates are gone within the first episodes, but we still have four new residents to get accustomed to and no new attending doctor to replace Dr. Neil Melendez who died at the end of season three.

I'll have to admit that this didn't make sense to me. Instead of hiring another attending, the hospital struggles to find places for the new residents, and several cases end up with five residents and one attending.

There were some good parts to the season as Shaun and Lea are officially a couple. And some extremely sad parts such as the loss of their baby and Lea's difficulty recovering.

In the meantime, Dr. Glassman's marriage implodes, and Debbie walks out on him while Dr. Park and Dr. Resnick finally give into their feelings for one another. Honestly, their relationship is as fun to watch as Shaun and Lea's is. They are oil and water, and the actors make it work. And Park and Resnick continue to snipe at each other while at work. They do break up briefly, but by the end of the season, they both admit their love for one another.

The season wrap up comes as the team heads to Guatemala to help with urgent surgeries and a lack of surgeons. Dr. Lim finds a brief romance, we get to hear Freddie Highmore's excellent command of the Spanish language, and Lea finally confronts her grief over the loss of her baby.

In the end, Dr. Claire Browne is offered a position in Guatemala, and Dr. Lim encourages her to stay. She decides to take it and leave her team from San Jose. But before the plane can take off to return the team home, Lea proposes to Shaun, and he happily accepts.

As you can see, a lot happened this season, but, honestly, I struggled to get into it almost midway through the twenty episodes. It wasn't that I liked the characters any less, but the cases were getting to be a bit too redundant, and even though Shaun is a savant, it was a bit annoying at times that only he could solve these difficult cases, leaving little room for the spotlight to shine on others.

One of the biggest cons of the season, though, was the almost complete lack of acknowledgement of the loss of Dr. Melendez by the residents. This is the surgeon who mentored them through the first three years of their residency, and no one talks about him. Though Dr. Lim and Dr. Browne share some connection because of their love for him, we don't hear much from Dr. Park, Dr. Murphy, or Dr. Glassman. It's as though the guy just moved away rather than died. I thought there should have at least been a conversation with the residents talking about Melendex or Dr. Lim talking with them about him.

The Good Doctor often hits the mark for good television, but this season just wasn't the strongest for me. There were certainly some good plot lines, but I personally think the ball was dropped on several occasions. Overall, I'd rate this season a six out of ten. The ending made me look forward to season five so that earned it an extra point.

The Good Doctor is streaming now on Hulu.