The Resident Season 5 Episode 11 review: It’s bad news for Dr Bell, while Conrad races to save Nic’s heart

3.5/5

Story: Conrad’s secret mission to find out what’s going on with Dr Bell comes to a conclusion, and the diagnosis is not good. The recipient of Nic’s heart is in Chastain’s ER and it isn’t looking good for her.

Review: The Resident is back after a long break and boy, it is not going well for some of our favourite doctors. There’s bad news everywhere. We’ve known for a while that all is not well with Dr Bell; he’s been staying away from surgeries while he figures out what’s going on with him. Sadly, for him, the prognosis is not good – he’s got multiple sclerosis, and by the looks of his symptoms, the disease appears to be progressing fast and how! His kneejerk reaction to the diagnosis, though, is to up and leave; he doesn’t want Kit or anyone close to him to be saddled with what’s to come. Kit, of course, will have none of it, reassuring him in one of the episode’s best moments that just as he’s her great love, she’s his and that they are in it together.

The bigger issue, though, is that a patient who’s been brought in to Chastain was the recipient of Conrad’s late wife’s Nic’s heart and there’s trouble at that end. It’s an emotional moment for Conrad to hear Nic’s heart beating, but he must also race against time to figure out why the patient appears to be rejecting the transplant three years later. Several close calls later, AJ, Billie and Conrad do get to the bottom of it and save ‘her’ heart after all.

Kudos to AJ for being able to put on a brave face in the operation theatre, even as his mother doesn’t make it to Devon’s new clinical trial. Her lung cancer has progressed, and she does not make it to the minimum cut-off requirement to be on the trial by a small margin, which becomes a bone of contention for AJ and Devon, with the former alleging that Charlotte was being excluded for the sake of better statistics in the trial.

Verdict: All is not lost yet for Dr Bell; he’s got a strong support system. The hope is that Bruce Greenwood isn’t leaving the show just yet and that we’ll get to see more of him and Kit through this season. All the drama surrounding Nic’s heart apart, this was one of The Resident’s better episodes.