RECAP: ‘Brilliant Minds’ Season 2 Episode 6 — “The Doctor’s Graveyard”

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6, titled “The Doctor’s Graveyard,” dives into some Halloween fun in a pretty okay episode. The holiday aspect allows for some of the characters to confront fears they have, but it’s really only effective for Ericka. The others toil in disconnected themes and shallow, confusing catharsis. 

Once again, Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 begins in the emergency room, when a patient arrives seemingly dead, having passed in an ice bath. Moments later, he gasps awake. This setup introduces the idea of bio hacking, a way to maximize human performance by hacking biology. Think Bryan Johnson, the tech CEO searching for immortality by stealing his son’s blood. 

Cyrus, despite meticulous attention paid to his health, can’t explain why he passed out in an ice bath and was unresponsive for 30 minutes. Among the Bronx General staff, talk of immortality and death begins to circulate. This only adds to the general genre flair of Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6. Not to mention, there’s a curse about, or at least, Josh’s (Teddy Sears) strong denial of the curse put on him by Ana in the last episode. 

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 tries to make a point about Halloween that doesn’t fully work.

Everyone’s haunted by something. Josh still can’t get Benny out of his head, and it seeps into his worry about Jorge, who’s still unconscious. He’s avoiding doing surgeries, too caught up in his other work, and his fear that he’s not at his best at the moment. 

But not everything in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 works with the Halloween theme. The episode starts off with Charlie, Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop), Dana (Aury Krebs), Van, and Jacob (Spence Moore II) visiting an asylum-themed haunted house. They complain about how the character actors are dressed as psychiatric patients, and how Halloween in general tends to treat those with severe mental illnesses as something to be scared of. Yet throughout the episode, horror elements are used to demonize their patients.

Wolf (Zachary Quinto) keeps seeing a woman in the corners of rooms and in reflections. Her presence is ghost-like, haunting Wolf about something. It could explain why he ends up at Hudson Oaks. Suddenly, Wolf is seeing people who aren’t there. But he eventually tells Carol (Tamberla Perry) that the woman he’s seeing around is an old patient from when he was a junior resident. Someone he couldn’t save.

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 tries to bring some levity to the show with some horror elements.

Despite the horror film techniques, this insight into Wolf works well enough as a throughline with Cyrus’s case. Fear of death can cause people to take drastic measures, but as someone who sees death often, Wolf isn’t scared of his own. He’s scared of losing patients. 

However, the horror elements don’t play as well in Carol’s circumstance. She’s called to the ER for a psych consult, but refuses to go in because the man is dressed as a clown and experiencing a mental health crisis. Carol requests Van’s assistance, but they both get scared of the man’s demeanor and appearance.

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 seems to be going for some sort of levity here, but it rings hollow and disrespectful considering the episode starts with the intern crowd pointing out the problematic nature of viewing their patients are people to be scared of. It just feels very at odds with the thesis of this show, that it’s their jobs to make the world see their patients differently when they usually would be written off by larger society. 

Ericka is the highlight of Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6.

Where the episode shines is with Ericka. Still haunted by the building collapse, she encounters Sam in the emergency room again. The two have great chemistry. Ericka’s soft yet understanding second approach to Sam this time around allows the two to meet each other on more solid ground. Sam agrees to stay on the psych floor for 48 hours for a proper assessment. But when the two get on the elevator, both of Sam’s and Ericka’s triggers collide.

This leads to Ericka admitting to Jacob that she’s been swiping pills from Dana, and in Mexico, she got benzos from a pharmacy and has been taking them every day. It’s such a wonderful moment, and it’s so good to see Jacob in a bigger capacity in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 than just as someone who’s occasionally in the ER now. 

Charlie’s back, and he seems to have mellowed out a bit. He’s actually pretty useful during Cyrus’ case, even giving Thomas, Cyrus’ assistant, a good pep talk about living his own life. He’s also just always around whenever Wolf sees the woman from his past, which wasn’t suspicious at first, but the ending to Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 is quite perplexing. 

The mystery of Wolf’s placement at Hudson Oaks continues.

It’s probably one of the first endings to an episode of Brilliant Minds that’s left me a bit speechless, but in more of a “Huh?” way than a “Wow, that was amazing” way. At the end of their shift, Charlie makes a plan with his friends over the phone, but when he opens his locker door, the woman from Wolf’s hallucinations is in the mirror. He jumps a little and then turns to look at presumably where she would be standing if she were actually in the room. 

Cut to four months later at Hudson Oaks. Wolf’s narration about how having a support system and holding onto the wins quickly turns to how sometimes that just doesn’t work. In the future, Charlie walks into Hudson Oaks as Wolf’s narration says, “Some mistakes, some patients, haunt us forever.” Charlie sits down across from a spooked Wolf and calls him “mugwhump,” the term of endearment his mother calls him. 

It’s all very perplexing, but equally intriguing. The mystery surrounding Wolf’s placement at Hudson Oaks is definitely driving the season. Hopefully, we’ll get some answers soon.

It’s nice to see the intern group back together.

It was nice seeing the whole intern group back together. They even got to reminisce about the old false pregnancy case from Brilliant Minds Season 1 after the family of the teenager decides to sue the hospital. 

The story surrounding Josh’s inability to get himself back in the surgery room felt inadequately delivered. For such a harrowing last episode, Josh regaining his confidence was a bit anticlimactic, though it was nice to see Wolf having so much faith in Josh. 

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 misses the mark on its larger theme, but still allows for some decent character introspection.

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 6 is streaming now on Peacock, with new episodes on Monday nights on NBC, available to stream the next day on Peacock.

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