The Resident Season 5 Episode 17 review: Decision time for the doctors of Chastain Memorial

3/5

Story: Devi is finally onboard Padma’s plan and will give her an egg to be artificially inseminated. But who will they use as donor? When Gigi’s playgroup friend Peter is taken to the ER, his condition deteriorates fast enough that Billie suggests cracking open his skull. Will Conrad find a way around it? Pravesh’s latest mission is to take a bunch of new interns to a senior living facility and introduce them to a possible future in geriatric medicine.

Review: The drama on this episode of The Resident felt a little forced, truth be told. ‘The Space Between’ can be split into three segments – Padma and Devi, Conrad, Billie and Gigi’s pal, and Kit’s mentor’s wife in the care of Devon, an intern and Randolph.

Let’s start with Padma and Devi. The latter, who is on a quest to become a double board-certified surgeon has no time or inclination to start a family with Pravesh yet. But she has come around to the idea of playing cool aunt, by donating one of her eggs to Padma, who will need a sperm donor for this dream to be fulfilled. A user who goes by the name of The Right Stuff catches her attention on a sperm bank site, but Devi warns her that users are only screened for disease and genetic markers, and that their credentials are not verified. So, Padma decides that a known devil is better than an unknown one, and approaches Austin with a request to have a little one like him. He hasn’t answered in the affirmative yet, but if he does, it is bound to have repercussions on Devi and Pravesh’s relationship, methinks.

Conrad’s big case this week was Gigi’s best bud Peter, a Chastain IT employee Spencer’s son. Peter has been having tummy issues, which are initially seen as a fallout of separation anxiety, given that his mother had left Spencer and him for new love. But when the tummy troubles escalate to double vision, Billie has to be called in. The little one’s intercranial pressure is on the rise leaving him at risk of brain damage and much as she doesn’t like cutting open a young child, it might be her only option. Unless, of course, Conrad can figure out a diagnosis and prevent Billie from drilling into the boy’s skull, which he does, with a little help from Gigi.

Meanwhile, Pravesh is not on a new clinical study. Instead, he, Kit and Randolph have taken a bunch of new interns to a senior living facility. One of Kit’s former mentors, Dr Kravitz and his wife Gloria live there. He’s got short-term memory loss, but she has even bigger issues, which the good doctors at Chastain try to find out when she loses consciousness during their visit at the centre.

Back at the hospital, Pravesh is astounded by the sheer number of medications Gloria is on, which began with arthritis. The first medication gave her new symptoms, so she got a new prescription to tackle that. With this came other troubles and each time she had a new symptom, she got add-on prescriptions. That explains the purse full of pills she was carrying around. Pravesh and one of the interns begin investigating if any of her medications were causing her more harm than good and look at eliminating some, but by then, she develops bowel perforation requiring urgent, but risky surgery. Gloria doesn’t make it off Randolph’s operating table, succumbing just before Pravesh and the intern figure out that she didn’t have arthritis to begin with. She had Whipple’s disease, which could have been treated with antibiotics. Instead, she was misdiagnosed and given too many drugs that she didn’t need and eventually cost her life.

Verdict: No ground-breaking developments here, so no harm if you skip this one.