Warning: The following contains major spoilers from The Good Doctor fall finale.
The Good Doctor did not leave things in a good place with Monday’s midseason closer, which found Shaun and Dr. Glassman at a breaking point and one of the residents fired after assaulting his superior.
Let’s begin with Shaun. At the start of “Sacrifice,” he is paged by Dr. Glassman to come to his office. There he is confronted by a psychologist who Glassman has hired on his behalf to begin at-home therapy sessions. Shaun is vocal about his discomfort, but ultimately agrees to sit down with her. That’s until he meets our patient of the week, e-sports champ Bobby Otto (The Good Place‘s Manny Jacinto), who convinces him that he needs to stop letting people tell him what to do if he ever wants to be respected.
As for Bobby, he initially comes in for a minor surgery to repair torn ligaments in his left arm. After Shaun takes a stand against Melendez and recommends that Bobby get an MRI, they discover a malignant cancer, which is later found to have metastasized and spread to his brain. As it turns out, Bobby had already had cancer three years prior, but failed to disclose this during his consultation. Despite the risk it poses to his career, he agrees to let Glassman and Melendez proceed with a surgery to remove the current cancer, as well as part of his brain stem, that will result in partial paralysis. There’s an initial scare in the OR, but Bobby ultimately pulls through.
Shaun, who spends much of the hour avoiding going home so he doesn’t have to meet with the therapist, eventually confronts Glassman in the lobby of the hospital. He freaks out, calling Glassman stubborn and telling him that he’s not his father. He stresses that he wants to make his own decisions, then starts hitting himself on the head while mumbling incoherently. When Glassman approaches Shaun and tries to get a hold of him, Shaun turns around and hits him in the face before running off.
Later, when Glassman and the psychologist head over to Shaun’s apartment to see if he’s OK, they find that he’s packed up all of his belongings and left without notice. Not even Glassman knows where he might have gone.
