Binge Watch Review: The Good Doctor Season 5

This series has its ups and downs, and it was really proven in season five. The first ten episodes were painful to watch, in my opinion because of the addition of Salen Morrison (Rachel Bay Jones). Salen was one of the most obnoxious television characters, and adding her to the cast reminded me a lot of The Resident when it, too, brought in a power-hungry overlord type to manage the hospital.

Jones' character was so bad for me that I started fastforwarding through her scenes. And that's never a good sign for a series. I get it that the intention was for viewers to dislike Salen, but I think the writers went overboard in developing her personality. That led to my inability to watch her onscreen.

Also, bringing in a character to act as a "bad guy," so to speak, especially when there was no mention of the hospital being for sale or in that kind of financial danger, is a bit of a straw grasp. Almost like the writers were running out of ideas so it was time to introduce a villain into the series to reunite the team.

There were some really good episodes this season like Potluck where most of the doctors unknowingly ingets hallucinogens. This one brought a lot of humor, especially with Dr. Alex Park and Dr. Asher Wolke dancing on a table top.

This was also the season where Shaun and Lea "made it official" and got married. But it stomped on Dr. Aaron Glassman one more time and had him humiliating himself at a party for the couple where he tells everyone his wife has left him. Seriously, how much more did the writers have to put that man through?

Dr. Glassman lost his 19-year-old daughter, his first marriage, then was diagnosed with a brain tumor, lost his job as the hospital's president, went through radiation and chemotherapy which was brutal, and then his second wife walked out on him. That's not everything that's happened to him, but that's already a lot for five seasons. Could the writers not have given this man some happiness that actually lasted? What was the point of breaking up his marriage?

At any rate, toward the end of the season, we learn that one of the nurses, Nurse Villanueva (Elfina Luk) is in a domestic violence situation with her boyfriend. This was only introduced so that the final episode could have her and Dr. Lim getting stabbed by Villaneueva's boyfriend. The finale episode ends with the two of them lying in separate pools of blood in the breakroom.

At the point, I was really struggling to continue with the show. It would have made a lot more sense had Villanueva been having problems with her boyfriend, Owen, throughout the course of the season. Instead, they use a few episodes to introduce the problem because they need a convenient villain to cause the trauma in the final episode.

Grey's Anatomy did this much better when they had the husband of a patient who died attack the hospital, shooting Dr. Derek Shepard (Patrick Dempsey). There was no lead-up needed, and the episodes and the aftermath were excellent.

Unfortunately, Shaun and Lea didn't even get their happy ending as the stabbings happened right after their wedding. So there was a lot crammed into the last eight episodes of the season after Salen's departure, and I really believe the season would have been stronger to give us more with the regular cast than to introduce an unlikeable character who's only around for ten episodes.

I'm giving this season a six out of ten as well. At ths point, the first three seasons still remain the strongest of the series, in my opinion.