RECAP: ‘Brilliant Minds’ Season 2 Episode 11 — “The Boy Who Feels Everything”

Is this goodbye for Jacob (Spence Moore II) and Van (Alex MacNicoll)? Their presence throughout Brilliant Minds Season 2 noticeably diminished as the season progressed. In the midseason finale, Jacob finally returned to the neuro team but admitted he had a job offer in sports medicine in Dallas. Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11, titled “The Boy Who Feels Everything,” goes back and forth on whether Jacob is staying or not.

Wolf (Zachary Quinto) tries to convince him, as do the other interns, but it’s ultimately to no avail. It’s especially cruel to bring the whole team back together during one of the more emotionally charged episodes, and then send not just one of them away for good, but two.

Perhaps the lessened screen time for both Jacob and Van should have been a clue that their time was coming to an end. Their lack of screen time put them in boxes. Van reconnects with his ex, Michelle (Stacey Farber), who also helps on a few cases this season.

Just before the two officially get back together, Michelle ends up in a car accident to close out the midseason finale. Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11 sends the team off on a mission to save her, but it’s determined pretty early on that she’s brain-dead.

It’s nice to see the team rally around Van, a reminder of what Brilliant Minds used to be in Season 1.

Van tries to negotiate his way out of what’s in front of him in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11, turning to possible loopholes to give Michelle a chance to wake up. This at least offers MacNicoll something to do in his final episode. Plus, he decks Charlie (Brian Altemus) in the face right at the moment I wanted to reach through the screen and do it myself.

It’s nice to see the team rally around Van, a reminder of what Brilliant Minds used to be in Season 1. They also pull stunts that Wolf would be proud of (taking Katie’s ambulance to drive Michelle across state lines, where a religious loophole could give her time to wake up), even if he scolds them once it’s all over.

But with Michelle gone, Van has to think of his son, Liam. He ultimately decides he needs to take some time away to take care of him. A parting shot at Wolf makes it seem like he’s gone for good (“I’m not you, Wolf. I need time for myself and my family.”)

Jacob provides invaluable input to Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11’s case, but still decides to leave the team.

As for Jacob, he’s had even less to do this season. A rotation in the emergency department kept him away from the neuro team, only crossing paths when the ED needed a consult. To be fair, that happened quite a lot. But Jacob wasn’t always present in the ED. His notable scenes were with Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop): he was there for her when she admitted to her pill addiction, and in the midseason finale, the two shared a kiss that had been building for one and a half seasons.

Even as Jacob provides invaluable input to the episode’s case (the driver who hit Michelle having a neurological disorder), and Carol (Tamberla Perry) and Wolf singing his praises, he ultimately decides to leave. Ericka acknowledges that you can’t keep someone from their calling. And that’s that. Jacob tells Wolf he’s leaving in the same conversation with Van, also saying he’s going to help Van get settled with his kid before taking off to Texas.

It’s hard not to see this as a nail in the coffin for Brilliant Minds. Maybe not the final one, but a contributing factor. Brilliant Minds Season 1 had such a specific formula that made it succeed and stand out from other medical dramas. The chemistry between the interns and Wolf brought so much heart to the show.

The revelations from the midseason finale get left behind in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11.

While Season 2’s changes and new characters have been welcome, why did it have to come at the cost of losing two of Season 1’s main characters? You know the old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”? Where was the damage that needed repairing? The crack in the armor that needed polishing? The soured milk that needed to be thrown out? It was clear skies ahead.

With Michelle’s fate the focus of Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11 taking center stage, the revelations from the midseason finale get left behind in the pool of lackluster plot twists from whence they came. Charlie’s revenge against Wolf for giving him and his mother false hope hangs pathetically in the air, losing tension with every second.

Wolf’s break-in into the house, his father supposedly has been at this whole time, just leads to another mystery in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11, and no Mandy Patinkin. Instead, a woman named Sofia (Sarah Steele) appears, knowing who Wolf is. Despite the house being covered in photos of Wolf and his family, Noah is nowhere to be found. In a preview from Deadline, Sofia is described as a recurring character, a patient suffering from a medical mystery that Wolf struggles to crack (which sounds familiar to his father, but I digress).

There’s a frustrating lack of development with Wolf in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11.

Michelle obviously has the more dire case in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11, but there’s a frustrating lack of development with Wolf. A lot of Brilliant Minds Season 2 centers around the mystery of how he ends up as a patient at Hudson Oaks. The first real cracks started to show in the midseason finale, and Carol and Josh (Teddy Sears) started to notice as well. There’s more of that concern for Wolf present in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11, but with the number of mysteries already present, this slow progress with Wolf is starting to grate.

The actual case in Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11 revolves around the driver who hit Michelle, who can’t stop laughing at the fact that Michelle isn’t going to make it. Jacob’s knowledge of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker provides an answer to his condition: pseudobulbar affect, which essentially means that his emotions are out of sync with what he’s feeling. When he laughs, he’s actually sad, and when he cries, he’s actually happy. But this particular case gets lost in the larger story surrounding Michelle and the interns.

With Jacob and Van seemingly gone for good, Brilliant Minds feels a lot less bright already. Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 11 bends under the weight of that loss, and ends up a disappointing return for the show, and a less-than-acceptable send-off for two characters who deserved better.

Brilliant Minds Season 2 airs new episodes on Monday nights on NBC and is available to stream the next day on Peacock.

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