Dr. Shaun Murphy and other staff are seen in a flash forward.
The tearjerker that was The Good Doctor signed off Tuesday, after seven seasons and almost seven years, just as you would expect: with a poignant, heartfelt goodbye.
Viewers learn quickly that the brain cancer that Richard Schiff’s Dr. Aaron Glassman has is worse. He now has a terrifying outlook: 3 to 6 months.
Of course, star Freddie Highmore’s Dr. Shaun Murphy is devastated, as are his coworkers. He is the one who can’t let go, though, and won’t stop searching for a cure. He ignores Glassman’s insistence that he wants to spend his final days doing the things that make him happy, not undergoing brutal treatments that probably won’t save his life anyway.
At the same time, Dr. Claire Brown (Antonio Thomas), who recently returned to San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital, is facing an infection following her own cancer surgery. Shaun can’t stop searching for a way to treat that either, but, with the help of others, he eventually does. Except that the FDA says no to the plan.
“The FDA did not approve our treatment, but I am going to give it her anyway, and then I won’t be a doctor anymore,” he tells Glassman. “That’s okay.”
Not according to Glassman, who decides that he will carry out the plan for his mentee, but not before the men share a heartfelt moment and say they love each other.
Flash forward several years, and the audience gets a glimpse of Shaun, Lea (Paige Spara), and their two children, both big enough for their early days of school. Shaun is giving a TED Talk to a large audience, while the names of all 1,524 patients whose lives he helped save, which he credited to Glassman, too, since Glassman saved him, by having faith Shaun could do the job when others thought he could not.
He introduces himself as the chief of surgery.
“When he wanted the board to hire me, he said, ‘We will be a better hospital for hiring him. We will be better people for hiring him,'” Shaun says. “And then he slammed the desk with his hand, because that is how you communicate that you really mean what you are saying.”
He says that what Glassman wanted others to take from him was, “Don’t be an ass!”
And he pounded his fists on the table.
Shaun explains that he and Glassman together planned the new Dr. Aaron Glassman Foundation for Neurodiversity in Medicine, which he now runs — with Claire! She’s out in the audience, sitting with her on-again flame, Dr. Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu), who was instrumental in her having survived her health crisis. Their daughter is with them, too.
Another happy ending: Christina Chang’s Dr. Audrey Lim, who had been poised to either follow in Glassman’s footsteps or leave the hospital for another career opportunity that would bring her to Boston, is seen packing a suitcase, as many others with the logo “Surgeons for a Better World” sit by the door.
In The Good Doctor’s final moments onscreen, we see many more of the characters hugging each other after their reunion. Finally, Shaun walks away with his family and the memory of Glassman.
