The Good Physician is at the moment airing its closing season within the 2024 TV schedule, with huge adjustments proper off the bat for Shaun and Lea after the delivery of their son. ABC did not cancel the hit medical drama till work had already begun on Season 7 with Shaun as a brand new mother or father. Co-showrunner and government producer Liz Friedman spoke with CinemaBlend about how (and why) the unique plan for the sequence finale modified.
For the reason that Good Physician staff did not know the present can be cancelled when the Season 6 finale aired, that episode wasn’t deliberate to arrange the ultimate season. So, I requested Liz Friedman if she would have modified something from the sixth season finale if she’d recognized that was finish was nigh. The co-showrunner mirrored all the best way again to the start of her collaboration with showrunner/developer David Shore in her reply, saying:
I actually do not assume so. Going into Season 6, the one factor I knew on the very starting of that season was that the tip was the newborn. And a part of the rationale for that’s that when David [Shore] and I had initially talked, after I first got here on the present working for him, I knew he noticed that as the tip of the present. After which we talked about it.
The delivery of a wholesome Child Steve on the finish of Season 6 would have been a cheerful ending for Shaun and Lea, particularly after their miscarriage and being pregnant struggles earlier on. There have been nonetheless some unresolved points, significantly with the feud with Dr. Glassman, which remains to be persevering with in Season 7 regardless of his breakthrough within the premiere. However the plan for the present to finish with the delivery of Shaun’s little one had modified a very long time in the past, as Liz Friedman continued:
I assumed [about it] and sat down, and he and I talked about it. I mentioned, ‘You already know, I feel there actually are tales past that. There’s tales of Shaun as a mother or father.’ And he instantly went, ‘Yeah, that is proper.’ So we knew that very early on, and I am so glad that we have gotten to inform a few of these tales and present the methods by which Shaun is a extremely good mother or father. There are challenges for him, which we see even beginning within the first episode, however I hope he continues to shock and delight us all.
The Good Physician is already exhibiting that Shaun’s journey can proceed on display with him as a dad, even when the cancellation signifies that his journey will not go an excessive amount of longer. He and Lea are nonetheless determining the early phases of parenthood, however are very a lot a staff. All in all, it will have been onerous to think about seven years in the past that Shaun may have constructed this life for himself. Liz Friedman opened up about watching this development over the course of the sequence:
That is what’s nice about attending to do a present that runs seven years and doing a present on a broadcast community, the place every a kind of years is eighteen or twenty episodes. It has been a extremely gradual evolution. I hope that it feels actual and earned and plausible, that we have seen Shaun simply studying how you can work with folks and be a resident, after which beginning to date and dwelling on his personal, after which rising up by means of the ranks as a resident, transferring into being an attending who has different folks reporting to him. He is simply been challenged alongside the best way, and what we have at all times tried to do is present that there are actual struggles there. And in addition that there are actual victories, and a few of them are in areas that you just simply would not anticipate.
It appears protected to say that Shaun nonetheless has his share of struggles forward, not the least of which is rebuilding his relationship with Dr. Glassman after what went down in Season 6. (You may revisit the sixth season streaming with a Hulu subscription now.) There are many different tales unfolding for the opposite characters as properly. The deliberate spinoff starring Nancy Drew‘s Kennedy McMann is not transferring ahead, and it stays to be seen if The Good Physician intends to tie up these semi-loose ends earlier than the ultimate credit roll.
For now, preserve tuning in to ABC on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET for brand spanking new episodes of The Good Physician as Shaun’s closing journey as mother or father, husband, and father continues.
