Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 Review: A Halloween Episode That Was More Uplifting Than Scary

Critic’s Rating: 4.8 / 5.0

4.8

I usually hate Halloween episodes, but Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 can be forgiven for having one.

Despite how the promo video made it look, this was more or less a typical Med episode that happened to take place on Halloween.

After the opening scene, everyone changed out of their costumes and got to work on some of the more interesting cases of the season.

Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5’s Halloween Party Was A Cute Nod To The Holiday

Although I usually dislike Halloween episodes, I enjoy TV costume parties. It’s fun to see what everyone’s wearing and decide who has the best costume.

Hannah and Ripley’s Barbie and Ken cowboy outfits were adorable, and I liked Maggie’s hockey player get-up — could that have been a nod to NBC’s The Irrational, which had a mystery surrounding a hockey game death the night before this aired?

Dr. Charles’ outfit was the best, though. I’m a sucker for classic literature character outfits, and Sherlock Holmes fits him well.

In some ways, being a psychiatrist is similar to being a detective, only you’re searching for clues as to why someone is having the mental health issues they are instead of trying to determine who is guilty of wrongdoing.

The way Charles chewed on his Holmes pipe just before the trick-or-treaters arrived was a nice touch.

I’d love to know, though, how everyone changed into regular scrubs so quickly, though!

Hannah’s Story Was One Of The Few To Include A Non-Verbal Autistic Child

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about Hannah’s story.

When Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5’s logline included this plotline, I hoped that it would be handled better than most depictions of autism on TV.

TV rarely has non-verbal kids of any type, whether it’s due to autism, trauma, or other causes. Nowadays, autism on TV seems to be synonymous with “highly verbal but quirky.”

Autism exists on a spectrum, or more accurately, different autistic people have different skills and challenges. (Some people are highly verbal but struggle with communication or with meeting basic needs, so it’s not as cut-and-dry as the way it’s often described.)

However, depicting non-verbal autism accurately is difficult. People often assume that non-verbal means stupid or violent, and TV has too often reinforced that trope.

Leo was a kid who was scared because he was in the hospital with his mom, and he didn’t really have a way to express that.

I don’t know if he was fully non-verbal or had limited verbal skills. The only communicating he did was through screaming and rolling around on the floor.

That was a great way to display Lenox’s softer side. She laid down on the floor with him and spoke softly to him until he calmed down.

Later, she refused to discuss the incident, but it’s clear that she knows something about autism and understands what sensory overload is like.

Hannah: Dr. Lenox is a woman of mystery.

I wonder if Lenox has an autistic sibling. That would be a cool nod to Sarah Ramos’ role on Parenthood as Max’s older sister.

I was surprised that she was the only person on Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 who knew what to do.

I’d think that a charge nurse like Maggie would have received some training in dealing with autistic kids who might melt down in the ED. I’d imagine this situation occurs more frequently than it seemed from this episode.

Sharon’s Plans For The Future Were A Pleasant Plot Twist

Medical dramas often address the problems of for-profit health care.

If doctors aren’t trying to find a way to get around someone’s insurance restrictions to get them treatment vital to their survival, they’re dealing with important programs being axed for financial reasons.

Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 seemed headed in that direction.

Sharon had to step in to get Lenox to allow Hannah to see her patient in the prenatal clinic after hours, and the clinic’s existence was endangered by the fact that not enough people were using it to justify the cost.

I was so relieved when Sharon suggested a mobile unit so that women could get the care they need to avoid unnecessary complications. That was a great plot twist!

That ties into what April and Ethan left Gaffney to do, so this storyline also leaves the door open for a guest appearance.

I’m not sure how a mobile unit would have helped Eloise.

Her problem wasn’t lack of access to hospitals; the issue was that other doctors dismissed her symptoms, causing a situation where the problem wasn’t discovered until it was too late to save her.

Still, I like this idea. It’ll open new storyline possibilities and hopefully make a difference in the community around the hospital.

Is This Scully Story Ever Going Away?

Scully’s arrest should have been the end of his storyline. Ripley always turns into some obnoxious, unrecognizable person when he is involved with that guy and his family.

Hannah said that Ripley was “coming along” and that things were better between the two of them.

However, just as he was finally starting to become likable, Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 had to bring a tipsy Lynne into the hospital with the baby.

Ripley was so judgmental about her going to a Halloween party and leaving the baby with a sitter that I half expected the CPS lady to show up.

Lynne wasn’t being neglectful, as far as I could tell.

She didn’t think Nate’s cough was serious, made sure she left him with a sitter, and came to the hospital immediately when she learned he’d been admitted.

Does Ripley think being a parent means you are never allowed to leave your child with an adult you trust to watch them so that you can take some time for yourself?

Would he be as judgmental if it was his old friend Scully who had gone out partying for the night while Lynne was at home with a sick baby?

Ripley’s other story wasn’t much better.

I thought the nun was going to object on religious grounds to having a D&C to remove a fossilized fetus that had been there for years.

It’s not an abortion, but to a very religious Catholic, I could imagine that even removing a fetus in that condition could feel like ending a life.

Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 didn’t go there, instead choosing a weirder story about the nun’s near-psychic levels of intuition, which allowed her to act as a counselor for Ripley minutes before she went into surgery.

Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5 Had A Bizarre Story In Honor of Halloween

The story with the kid who was bitten by a bat and the weirdo who attacked Frost wasn’t scary. It was just strange.

I spent most of the episode expecting the kids to double over laughing at how they pulled one over on the pediatric resident. They all took shots, so it must have been real.

Still, what was with the psych patient who had the same name as the ghost in their “haunted house?” That seemed too coincidental.

Was the implication that this guy really was Kevin? That must have been the point of this story, but the whole thing seemed like a contrived teenage prank that was being taken too seriously.

Also, shouldn’t Frost get a rabies shot, or at least a tetanus shot, since the psych patient bit him?

At least Dr. Charles stayed away from that mess.

His conflict with Nurse Nelson seemed like it was there for the sake of drama, though their last scene, where she shared that she was sensitive about psychiatric patients because of her experience, almost made it worth it.

Sharon’s Stalker Is Unnecessary, But At Least There’s Movement

I don’t know why I dislike this Sharon stalker storyline so much.

I write novels that sometimes straddle the line between mystery and thriller and that’s my favorite genre to read, yet this storyline irritates the hell out of me.

I guess it seems unnecessary. I also dislike the tired TV trope of the woman alone who feels more and more helpless because someone keeps harassing her.

The scene at Sharon’s apartment was the worst part of this story so far. I can understand her being on edge, but in that case, why open the door at all?

People on TV are always letting violent criminals in by opening the door without bothering to see who’s there, and it’s annoying.

In Sharon’s case, it was worse because her “attacker” turned out to be a neighbor boy who was trick-or-treating, and she reactively pepper-sprayed him in the face.

That boy’s mother was awfully quick to forgive. I don’t know if I would have been, but at least it led to the revelation that someone IS stalking Sharon so we can get on with this story.

Over to you, Chicago Med fanatics. What did you think of Chicago Med Season 10 Episode 5?

Vote in our poll to rate the episode, and then hit the comments with your thoughts.

Chicago Med airs on NBC on Wednesdays at 8/7c and on Peacock on Thursdays.

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