Doc Season 2 Preview: 'Desperate' Amy Deals With 'A Lot Of Mysteries' (And A 'Pretty Good' Love Triangle)
Westside Hospital staffers can relax: As we previously reported, Doc's Amy won't revert to her icy, pre-accident norm in Season 2 — despite the disconcerting behavior she displayed in the Season 1 finale. However, that doesn't mean that Amy can relax, given the detective work she'll have to do as her past slowly resurfaces in coming episodes.
TVLine's Fall TV Preview gave you a glimpse at how the new season will go for Molly Parker's Dr. Amy Larsen. Read on as we delve deeper with executive producer Hank Steinberg.
TVLINE | How much time has passed since the events of the finale?
Well, we left the audiences with a pretty good cliffhanger, so it's going to be an almost immediate pick-up. We have a clever way of getting into that.
TVLINE | Yes, the trailer seems to suggest Amy will be getting fragments of specific memories from her missing years.
Exactly, and each one is hard for her to decipher what it means and why she's getting it and what's triggering them, but they all will have an import to them, which we felt really creates a great hook and is actually what would — or could — happen to a person in her condition.
TVLINE | In the finale, more than one person remarked to her, "Whoa, that was the old Amy coming out." Does hearing that make Amy concerned, or actually a bit relieved?
You know, we always talk about how there's "old Amy," there's "new Amy," there's "missing Amy," but they're all part of Amy. What happened during the years that she doesn't remember after she lost her [son Danny] is that like any of us, we have good qualities, bad qualities, and, and it's kind of a question of when they come out and how they manifest, right? During that time that she doesn't remember after the grief of her son, some of her coping mechanisms that are naturally already in her came out and were heightened, so there really is one Amy, but she's wrestling with, "What did that version of Amy do? And how do I not repeat some of those things?" But ironically, we will also start to uncover that there were some parts of that Amy that were worth keeping. She became an incredible doctor and now she's lost those eight years of memories — 30,000 hours of knowledge and expertise is now lost, so she feels that she's not as strong a doctor. She wants to get that back for many reasons, including being able to do the best she can for her patients.
Jake, who's a really good guy, fell in love with that version of Amy, and one of the things he says to her in the season premiere is, "You know, people didn't like that Amy, but once you got through to the underneath, she was pretty great." That's me paraphrasing — it's written more elegantly than that! — but that's an interesting thing for us to explore and for her to grapple with.
TVLINE | Well, that brings me to my next question. Who has more to look forward to when the season opens, those on #TeamJake or those on #TeamMichael?
It's a pretty good triangle, and there are some very unlikely things happening and alliances happening. I don't know how much you've seen in the trailer so far....
TVLINE | Is Jake not going to go down without a fight?
Jake's not going down without a fight. Also, things may not necessarily be what they look like or how they seem, as well.
TVLINE | One of the finale moments that most affected me was the terse quarrel between Gina (Amirah Vann), whose pain didn't feel seen, and Amy. What does their friendship look like moving forward?
That's great that you hooked into that because that's one of the key things in Amy wanting to step up. In the first season, she was just trying to get her bearings as she's in the middle of an episode of Black Mirror, and right herself, and she's going to discover that there are things to be repaired — and Gina's a big part of that. Gina's been her rock and Amy will come to realize that she let Gina down in a number of ways over those years that she doesn't remember, and it's going to be very important to her to step up and be there for Gina when she needs her. And Gina's going to be having her own troubles — especially after what happened in the finale where one of her patients caused this accident that hurt a lot of people. Gina's going to be carrying a lot ,and there will be big opportunities for Amy to make up for the things that she didn't do, when she wasn't there for Gina, in the past.
TVLINE | What in the world is Dr. Miller up to? [Showrunner] Barb [Kligman] told me we have not seen the last of Scott Wolf.
We haven't seen the last of him, and we have a clever way of reintroducing him, but it's a 22-episode season, so people will just have to be patient.
TVLINE | What are your plans for TJ now that Patrick Walker has been promoted to series regular?
We love Patrick; he's so charismatic. There is that mentor-mentee relationship with Amy, but we'll be moving past that this season, and he will very much be coming into his own. He's at the end of his first year as an intern, he's learned a lot... There will also be some pretty good love-interest stuff for him.
TVLINE | What about Sonya (Anya Banerjee)?
Sonya's wrestling with, "Does she like Amy? Does she not like Amy?" Amy helped her out last year big time, but there's still something kind of chemical between them that doesn't fit. And of course, she's in love with Jake and she's going to have to contend with, "Where's that going to go?" Does she keep pining or pursuing it, or does she decide to move on if she figures out that he's really not interested? There will be reasons for her and Amy to have some newfound antagonism, which is fun and juicy for the show.
TVLINE | Yeah, I'd told Barbara that if this was just regular ol' Grey's Anatomy, Jake would have run downstairs and hooked up with Sonya at the end of the finale.
Right, right, exactly. We are trying to go at a slower burn on some of that stuff and you know have it not be musical chairs-but-with-beds.
TVLINE | Felicity Huffman joined the cast as Dr. Joan Ridley, Amy's mentor and the new chief of medicine. Because you cast a heavy hitter like Felicity, I wonder if this might be a case of "be careful what you wish for" if you're Amy, that Dr. Ridley might be an unexpected fly in the ointment.
Richard's gone and somebody has to come in and be the new chief, and we wanted it to be a completely different flavor. We wanted it to be a woman, and we thought it would be very cool to flesh out Amy's backstory, to bring in someone who knows her. She's her mentor, she was her teacher at medical school and they're close, but – and it's not as heavy-handed as [the 2014 film] Whiplash — there's the question of what happens when the student starts to eclipse the teacher? And is the teacher really in it to be benevolent to the student, or is there something kind of codependent in there?
TVLINE | So, Amy's not getting a "free pass" now that she has an ally in that job.
That's what's interesting — she thinks maybe she is, and Joan has other ideas... On the contrary, she's coming in thinking it's time to whip this whole department into shape after it's been in disarray. So, that's going to be really interesting.
TVLINE | Any other new characters to meet? Maybe Jake's ex?
The fun thing about having 22 [episodes] is you can really fill out the supporting cast, people's lives. We'll be meeting Sonya's dad, we'll be meeting Jake's daughter and ex-wife, and we have a new intern named Hannah (played by Emma Fitzer Price) who has a bit of a history with Amy.
Doc Season 2 premieres Sunday, Sept. 14, at 8/7c on Fox (following an NFL double-header); the episode will air again, in its regular time slot, on Tuesday, Sept. 23 at 9 pm. Are you planning to watch? Let us know in the comments!