Brilliant Minds Season 2 Premiere: Zachary Quinto Drops Hints About What Leads To Oliver's Mental-Health Crisis — Plus, Read Recap
So much for father-son bonding.
Brilliant Minds' Season 2 premiere finds Zachary Quinto's Dr. Oliver Wolf withstanding another emotional blow, courtesy of his estranged father, Noah: The elder Wolf takes off without saying goodbye, despite showing up in the Season 1 finale and begging Oliver to help figure out his mystery illness.
Might that have something to do with the episode's cold open, which finds Oliver in the middle of a mental-health crisis at a longterm care facility? Maybe, series star/producer Zachary Quinto tells TVLine. Read on for the highlights of the episode, then make sure to keep scrolling to see Quinto's teases about the rest of the season.
OLIVER ISN'T OK | It's nighttime at a healthcare facility, and in the quiet, a nurse goes room to room, handing out meds. Oliver comes by and grabs her keycard off the cart; when she realizes, she alerts security. Turns out, Olliver isn't a physician at this institution, he's a patient. He's apprehended in a stairwell, where guards take him down — he fights them — and he's swiftly injected with a sedative while a woman's voice reassures him that there's nowhere to go and no one will hurt him.
SIX MONTHS EARLIER... | Then we jump back six months in time. Jacob is now working in the emergency room alongside Dr. Anthony Thorne (played by Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist's John Clarence Stewart), and they're on duty when EMT Katie brings in an MMA fighter who inexplicably began hitting himself while training. As Jacob calls for a consult, we get caught up with Wolf's interns. Ericka went to Tulum for vacation; the time off seems to have agreed with her. Van still has the ability to tell what people are feeling. Dana and Katie are hot and heavy together. And neuro has a new second-year resident: Dr. Charlie Porter, a snobby jerk (played by Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin's Brian Altemus).
While all this is going on, Oliver is with Muriel, explaining what he's learned about the mystery condition his father, Noah, is experiencing. "Dad says his body becomes rigid and then he can't move, as if he's turning to stone," he explains, though he hasn't seen one of these episodes firsthand, despite the fact that Noah is living with him. Muriel susses out that Oliver isn't spending a lot of time at home, but that's about as far as she gets before the interns (and Porter) bust in, asking Dr. Wolf to accompany them to the ER. Of note: Within moments of meeting him, Oliver instantly thinks that Porter is there to spy on him for Muriel.
Wolf and his minons head downstairs to examine the boxer, whose name is Tommy and who winds up punching Oliver when he tries to stop him from leaving without a neuro exam.
And that brings us to Wolf and Nichols' first interaction this season which is, I'll say it: bitchy. Josh notices Oliver icing his eye and comments on the shiner. "You should see the other guy," Oliver says, noting that Nichols looks rather tan. "Weekend in the Hamptons," Nichols shoots back. "You should see the other guy." Ooooh.
The boxer's dad/coach and "doctor" (though I use that term loosely; the guy is shady) say nothing's wrong with their guy. So Oliver backs down and agrees to discharge him — if he'll go see the psychiatrist he recommends: Carol.
WHERE'S CAROL? | Carol is still on leave from Bronx General, seeing whiny-yet-rich private clients like Bitsy (played by The Real Housewives of Atlanta's Porsha Williams). So she's delighted for a meatier case.
Tommy's session with Carol goes well until they start talking about how fighting is the connection between his close relationship with his dad. As they start to discuss how he's been losing bouts lately, Tommy punches the wall with little warning. Later, Carol tells Oliver that she doesn't think Tommy's got anger issues — the punch seemed to come out of nowhere — and she thinks it's odd that though he's a lefty, his self-inflicted injuries are from his right side. "What if Tommy has no control over his own arm?" Wolf wonders.
Wolf's right (of course!). "It's called alien-hand syndrome," he later explains to his interns... but what larger problem does it indicate? When Wolf goes to the gym to try to get Tommy to agree to more testing, Tommy's dad throws him out. But his symptoms eventually worsen, leading Tommy's panicked wife to rush him to the hospital. They learn that he has a form of Parkinson's Disease — and that sham doctor of his never told him. What's worse is, Tommy's father controls all of his supplements and appears to have been medicating his son for the disease for some time.
SEE YA, NOAH | Tommy's father arrives, incensed and threatening Wolf, who won't hand his son over to him. "Lay one hand on him, and you're leaving here on a stretcher," Nichols says, stepping in to protect his kinda-boyfriend. Wolf is touched but points out that they both took an oath to do no harm. (But they're very much not reunited: Wolf says he needs to get his "house in order" before he can pursue anything more with Josh, and Nichols understands but also indicates that he can't wait forever.) "I didn't sign no oath," Tommy says, walking up to his father and cold-cocking him.
That said, Tommy really wants one more win before her retires. Wolf urges him not to, but when he realizes Tommy's going to do it regardless, he tries to help Tommy retrain his brain. And he's successful! Tommy wins his last fight, with Oliver, Carol and the interns in attendance, and a happy Oliver decides that it's time to face up to Noah by returning to his home.
When he goes to the house, though, Oliver finds the place empty. Noah has left a letter addressed to his son on the kitchen island, but the senior Wolf is gone.
WELCOME TO HUDSON OAKS | The episode ends with a return to the present, where Oliver has just been sedated in the stairwell of the mental-health facility. We get a better look at the administrator who was assuring him that he had nothing to fear, and it's Dr. Amelia Frederick (Scandal's Bellamy Young). At the end of the hour, we realize that Oliver is a patient in a facility called Hudson Oaks.
ALSO OF NOTE | Ericka appears to be doing OK, but the trauma she suffered when the building collapsed last season has her popping pills in secret. She lets Jacob know that she's not looking for a romantic relationship, and he takes it in stride... Carol visits the ER and is flirty with Dr. Thorne, who is flirty right back... Dana and Katie are living together, and Ericka moves in at the end of the episode.
Now that you're caught up, here's what Quinto had to say about the episode.
TVLINE | So at the end, Oliver comes home, he's ready, he's done a little work, he's like, 'Let's do this. I have Thai food,'... and Dad is gone. Do you think there's any part of him that was worried about that happening all along?
ZACHARY QUINTO | Yes. He was doing everything he could to believe and have faith that this was not fueled by some kind of self-interested ulterior motive. But, you know, as evidenced in the scene between Muriel and Oliver in the first episode, where she really cautions him against fully trusting Noah, I think there's always a little bit of a kernel that that could happen. But in the face of that, Wolf just went so far in the other direction but at the same time felt this awkwardness and discomfort around being reunited with his father, in a way. It is a very complicated situation, and I think he did his best to show up. And yeah, in the end, it wasn't enough to keep Noah there. But is that the worst outcome? I'm not sure.
TVLINE | I also wonder, because Oliver is so task-oriented and worked so hard to crack that case, how much that weighs on him as we move into the season?
If I'm honest, in the aftermath of Noah's departure, there is a part of Oliver that just slams the door on that part of his emotional experience. And if we're tying that into the opening of the second season and where we see Oliver end up six months from now, I think we can start to maybe add some things up, in terms of what happens to somebody when they try to dissociate essentially from an emotional trauma. Thats a little bit of what we're seeing. He pours himself back into his work, to his other patients, to his relationships at the hospital — and what is the long-term effect of that? We're gonna find out, eventually.