‘The Resident’ Boss Says That Conrad & [Spoiler] Ending ‘Felt Like a Perfect Fall Finale Moment’

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Resident Season 6 Episode 10 “Family Day.”]

There were more lows than highs in The Resident fall finale, which left us quite worried about a few characters.

To recap, starting with the most harrowing: Billie (Jessica Lucas) is attacked by a patients’ sons after she dies following complications of a very risky surgery, but Conrad (Matt Czuchry) saves her. Padma (Aneesha Joshi) ends the episode standing on the edge of a bridge. Cade (Kaley Ronayne) isn’t sure whether to believe her father Ian (Andrew McCarthy) that he’ll make up to her what he’s done because of his addiction. And when Conrad brings Billie home at the end of the day, they kiss!

Showrunner Andrew Chapman breaks down that ending and teases what’s ahead.

Of course we have to start with that kiss. How did you decide when that would happen and how?

Andrew Chapman: That is a complicated question. We’ve always been playing with the idea that Billie and Conrad were secretly in love and just could never express it to anybody and that that was always going to be our love triangle between Billie, Conrad, and Cade. We played with when the timing was, but given that we only have 13 episodes, we thought that a kiss would be a really great way to end the fall season. It just sort of worked out perfectly, especially with the whole story of Cade going to the rehab with her dad and then lying about it, so there’s all this relationship tension happening between Cade and Conrad. It felt like a perfect fall finale moment, let’s put it that way.

It seemed like both were very much in the moment and not thinking about what’s next, but what is next for those two? Because there’s so much to consider: Cade, to a lesser extent James (Ian Anthony Dale), and Gigi…

Wouldn’t you like to know what is next? I can’t tell you totally what’s next because that would be giving it away, right? Let’s just say that Conrad and Cade are both hiding things from each other, right? And that the things that they are hiding will come to a head and will come out into the open immediately or very soon in Episode 11. When you come back after Christmas, the proverbial poop hits the fan and we see what’s gonna happen between all of our characters, specifically and particularly between Cade and Conrad and then Conrad and Billie, but also between Billie and Cade. There’s a real triangle going here.

Conrad had brought up the Nic (Emily VanCamp) was Billie’s best friend of it. How much does that come up for both of them going forward?

First of all, I’m not gonna give away which way this is all gonna go because that question a little bit says that Conrad and Billie are gonna end up with each other.

Tom Griscom/FOX

Not necessarily. The Nic of it could just not be a big part of it…

Yeah. Look, the thematic idea of the entire season has been for Conrad to emotionally move on from Nic. And whether he moves on emotionally from Nic with Cade or whether he moves on emotionally from Nic with Billie is the question to be answered. But what we are thinking about is how does somebody move on from grief and live their life again? That is sort of, in an underlying way, the emotional and thematic heart of the entire season, particularly for Conrad obviously.

Speaking of that you brought back Kyle. Corbin Bernsen is always so good and he was so good in this episode. Will we see more of him this season?

No, that’s it for Kyle. We really wanted to bring him back. We love Corbin. We think he’s such a great actor. He brings such depth. Given that it’s been a long time since he saw his granddaughter and it’s been so long since he saw Conrad, we just felt like this was a great moment to just give some closure to that story. We’re not gonna see him again in this season, given that we only have three more episodes, but we very well could see him in seasons moving forward.

Was Ian just using that charm Cade brought up or was he being at all sincere in their last conversation?

That’s a really interesting question and I think that there’s never a concrete answer when you’re dealing with addicts and addiction, right? It’s always so complicated, it’s always so confused. Andrew McCarthy, who I just think is so spectacular in this particular role, is very open about his own life with addiction and his own issues with addiction. He really took this whole part to heart so deeply and he always had notes about “this is what a real addict would do and this is how rehab sessions go” because he’s been in them and he’s been open about it. He wrote a book about it.

I think if the question is, is he using his charm or is he honest? The answer is yes, he’s both being honest and he’s using his charm because that’s what addicts do. And I think he plays that so well and in such a sort of nuanced way that your question is exactly the question. How do you trust this guy? Do you really believe him? I think that’s the problem that Cade has, too. She’s like, how can I trust this guy, even though he is my dad? How can I tell the difference? It’s just so hard.

And you can see exactly why she wants to think that she can believe even part of him.

Totally. As someone who has dealt with people with addiction in my life, you want to believe. You love these people. You want to give them second, third, 10th chances. That’s all you want to do because you love them and you want the best for them. But, oh my God, it’s so hard. It’s so hard to know what is your desire to forgive and be accepting and what is just you have to be hardheaded and not ever given to the temptation to trust people. Addiction is so complicated.

What will we see from Ian in terms of Chastain?

The Ian story will be huge coming forward. He’s been in rehab and he’s gonna get out of rehab and then he is going to play an enormous part in the last few episodes. He will play a huge part in the season finale, and it will all be about whether he can be trusted. Can he be a doctor at Chastain? Will he tell the truth? Will he be charming? And as the truth about what’s happened to him begins to leak out, all of our other doctors will have to make decisions about that very question that you asked. Is he telling the truth? Can we trust him? Can we move forward with him?

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And it seems like he’d be a liability in this fight against the governor.

Exactly. A liability in the fight against the governor. A liability in just keeping patients alive. You have to have faith in your doctors that when it’s crunch time, then you can believe and trust in them.

I have to say that that attack was brutal on Billie in the stairwell.

Wasn’t it? Yeah, it was totally brutal and about as violent as our show has ever gotten.

Yeah, that’s what jumped out at me.

Yeah. And in truth, we toned it down. The footage that was shot was even more brutal and we had to take it back a notch because it was so upsetting. It’s so upsetting to see men attack a woman. Men attack men, it’s still brutal and horrible, but there’s something so wrong about attacking a woman. And maybe that’s my old-fashionedness showing, but it can be so disturbing.

I’m worried about Billie going forward because there’s that, but then there’s also that moment of her saying she doesn’t know how she keeps doing this in the scrub room. How much is that all coming up for her?

That whole idea is taken from real-life incidents and the real-life burnout that doctors suffer in our current medical system when some patients, not all, can never be satisfied with their care, can never be satisfied with the outcome of what happens. That stress and that pressure builds up inside of doctors and takes its toll and the toll can be terrible and can cause doctors to quit being doctors. In the case of Billie, that’s the worry, right? She put her whole life, years and years of training, into this thing and a patient can just lose their nut about an outcome that isn’t her fault. That can really twist you and twist your enjoyment of the thing you do and the way you’ve led your life. That’s gonna be a big thing for Billie going forward.

The Resident, Winter Premiere, Tuesday, January 3, 8/7c, Fox