Spoilers ahead for the first half of The Good Doctor's Season 3 finale two-parter, called "Hurt."
The Good Doctor's Season 3 finale event kicked off with the first half of a two-parter, which saw San Jose rocked by an earthquake that required all hands on deck from the St. Bonaventure doctors and nurses. Glassman, Lea, and Melendez were all at a charity event when the quake struck, and most of the main characters came to the rescue while Andrews and Morgan tried to stay on top of the chaos at the hospital.
It was an intense hour, and the stakes were already raised since last week's finale promo revealed somebody is going to die before the end of the season, but that may have been a mistake.
I wanted to be on the edge of my seat, worried about the characters and if they would die rather than wondering when a character is going to die. I watched Glassman and Melendez escape the rubble within the first few minutes, seemingly fine. Lea turned up just fine too, and I doubt The Good Doctor has many people believing that the titular good doctor is going to be killed off.
Once it was clear that all three endangered major characters had survived the initial crisis, I immediately started waiting for one of them to collapse or seize or vomit to prove that they actually weren't fine and something had been going wrong in their body all along. So, the twist at the end of the episode that Dr. Melendez had presumably been bleeding internally a lot more severely than what Claire spotted with his bruise wasn't all that twisty.
The Good Doctor is killing somebody off in the two-part finale, after all, so of course Part 1 would end with a cliffhanger of somebody's life in danger and of course it was the doctor with the bruise who just saved a life in time to collapse into the arms of the long-suffering woman who secretly loves him. Melendez's collapse didn't pack a punch or shock me, and that's because The Good Doctor very dramatically advertised that somebody is going to die.
Admittedly, Shaun's life is in much more evident danger than any other major character's as of the end of "Hurt," as he was left trapped under rubble with an injured woman while water poured in around them. If he was any other character, I might worry about death, but he's the good doctor of The Good Doctor. I'll eat my words if Shaun does die in the second half of the finale or the death is a shocker, but for now I just wish I hadn't known it was coming no matter who it is.
It is possible that The Good Doctor will do a bait-and-switch for the second time in the two-parter and have a different seemingly healthy person die while Melendez miraculously recovers, but at this point I'm expecting Melendez to be the one passing away.
The second half of the finale is called "I Love You," which leads me to speculate that Claire will drop those three little words to Melendez before he dies, although I could be way off base. ABC held back on revealing much of anything in the episode description:
In the second episode of the two-part finale, our doctors work against time and their own personal safety to save the lives of those around them on the season finale of The Good Doctor.
Hopefully The Good Doctor Season 3 will end on a strong note that will make me rue the day that I dared suggest ABC and the show made a mistake in revealing a death is coming ahead of time. Unlike many other shows affected by the coronavirus pandemic, The Good Doctor already finished production by the time studios began shutting down.
The Good Doctor also became one of several hospital shows to donate its personal protection equipment to real-life hospitals in need during this pandemic. The show has already been renewed for Season 4; any affect it feels from the coronavirus may simply relate to when it can begin production. For now, fans can look forward to the conclusion of The Good Doctor's Season 3 finale, airing Monday, March 30 at 10 p.m. ET on ABC.
