‘The Good Doctor’ Finale: See Shaun’s Reaction to Glassman’s Diagnosis

The Good Doctor is poised for a heartbreaking season finale on Monday that will show Dr. Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) grappling with a diagnosis of brain cancer.

In a new clip from the episode, he sees how Dr. Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) is dealing with the news of his mentor’s illness.

By the looks of it, he’s struggling to deal with it.

The scene shows Shaun in an office with multiple dry erase boards and windows covered in equations and diagrams pertaining to brain disease. Glassman comes into the room to confront him about Shaun’s obsession with saving his life.

“There are many different explanations,” Shaun tells him.

Glassman replies, “You asked me to get a second opinion, I got a second opinion. You asked me to get more imagining, I got more imagining. Shaun, you have to accept this.”

After a bit of Shaun still going down the rabbit hole, Glassman cannot take any more. He blows up and is nearly pushed to tears in frustration.

“You’re not helping,” Glassman says. “I don’t need theories. I don’t need white boards. I don’t need doctors. I don’t want to think about the tumor. I don’t want to think about dying. You know what I want? What I actually want? I want to go on a long drive somewhere. I want to eat pancakes. I want to watch football.”

Shaun replies, “Do you mean you want to have fun?”

Glassman responds, “Yeah. I want to have fun. So you can keep fighting or you can come with me.”

It is unclear where the duo’s journey goes from there, but most of the episode is set to about Shaun grappling with the situation.

“Shaun’s journey is coming to terms with personal trauma and it’s that idea of not accepting [it] immediately,” Highmore told Entertainment Weekly at PaleyFest.

In the same EW piece, Schiff dished on what it was like to portray to deep emotions present in the season finale. Apparently it was less emotionally draining than one would think.

“It wasn’t exhausting,” said Schiff said. “In the old days when I had this kind of a challenging episode, it would take an enormous effort to maintain where I wanted to be. It might be because I have just been doing this a while now that I don’t feel the need to do that. So, I can actually be a normal human and then go in there and work. I think I’m just a lot faster at doing the work than I used to be and I trust it a little bit more. So it’s not as debilitating to the body.”

The Good Doctor airs Mondays at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.

Photo Credit: ABC / Eike Schrote