‘The Good Doctor’ Season 3 Episode 7 hints Shaun Murphy has started to care about his relationship with Carly Lever
One of the things that we love about ‘The Good Doctor’ is that every single character and their stories feel important. Even if there are more pressing situations showcased in an episode, you cannot ignore even the smaller developments that happen with the other characters.
Take season 3 episode 7 for instance. The two patients and their surgeries took all the focus and attention. While one was a young woman with autoimmune deficiency, the other was a teenage boy who needs to undergo enucleation — or the surgical removal of the eye. As the audience, you cannot focus anywhere else when such intense situations are presented to you. But we did. We noticed Dr Shaun Murphy starting to pay more attention to his love life.
With Dr Carly Lever away at a conference out of town, Shaun faces a new challenge with texting. As someone with communication issues, nothing makes life more complicated than having to text message like the rest of the world. Shaun believes that he only needs to respond to Carly if she asks him a question. But she doesn’t. Like any other normal girlfriend, she shares her photos and does small talks, which Shaun finds irrelevant.
But when Carly replies to such aloofness with a ‘rolling eyes’ emoji, it confuses him. He reaches out to Lea, who explains Carly’s response and gives him some relationship advice.
However, it is not Lea’s take on the relationship that impacts Shaun but his patient’s. As surprising as it may seem, he ends up having a conversation with the young Tara who is suffering from the ‘Bubble Boy’ disease. The very fact that Shaun is discussing his relationship with his friend and even his patient goes to say that he is now finding himself at a stage where he wants to pay attention to the small details of the relationship.
Knowing who he is and how he functions, it would be unlikely for Shaun to consider the standard social behaviors (messaging for instance). But he does anyway.
While the stories of the two patients, Audrey, Neil, Aaron and Debbie are all important, these microscopic but valuable nuances of Shaun and Carly’s relationship hold ample importance and have long-term impact.