‘The Resident’: Do You Want Conrad to Be With Billie or Cade? (POLL)
After that fall finale, it looks like The Resident has reached a turn in two doctors’ lives that has been pretty much inevitable since a love triangle was introduced in Season 5.
Following Nic Nevin’s (Emily VanCamp) death, the Fox drama jumped forward a few years, and by the end of Season 5, it had set up a new love triangle for her husband, Dr. Conrad Hawkins (Matt Czuchry). There was Nic’s best friend, Dr. Billie Sutton (Jessica Lucas), to whom he had become close as well, and new doc Cade Sullivan (Kaley Ronayne), with whom he’d been working side-by-side in and (with the Go Team) out of the hospital. When Season 6 began, we learned he’d chosen Cade, though he also didn’t know that Billie was even an option at that point.
But for every time we saw Conrad and Cade as a couple (and for all the times they spoke about having dinner) in Season 6, there was a moment shared between him and Billie. In fact, the most romantic scenes didn’t feature Conrad and Cade, but rather Conrad and Billie: their dance at Dr. Kit Voss (Jane Leeves) and Dr. Randolph Bell’s (Bruce Greenwood) wedding and their kiss near the end of the fall finale. Besides those, you could also argue the most emotional moment came between those two as well, in the elevator as Conrad wondered if Nic would approve of Cade. “I just want you to be happy, whoever you’re with. So would Nic,” Billie told him.
And then with the fall finale came the big moment for Conrad and Billie, just as Cade was pulling away from and lying to him — her father, Dr. Ian Sullivan (Andrew McCarthy), agreed to go to rehab for his addiction if she told no one, including her boyfriend. Family members of a patient who died attacked Billie, and Conrad came to her rescue then was the one to bring her home. (Billie’s new love interest, Ian Anthony Dale’s Dr. James Yamada, was essentially dismissed by Malcolm-Jamal Warner’s Dr. AJ Austin, a.k.a. the biggest Conrad/Billie shipper on the show.) And after he walked her to her door, the two kissed. But then she went inside, and he left, so we’ll have to wait until the series returns on January 3, 2023, to see what’s next for the two.
When TV Insider spoke with showrunner Andrew Chapman about the fall finale, he refused to say that Conrad and Billie will end up together (though it looks to be heading in that direction) but did promise,“His choice will be settled by the end of [Episode] 13 [which is the Season 6 finale], and we will see him living with the choices he made and whether he’s happy or sad about them. I’m not gonna give it away, but we’ll definitely have closure on that.”
As for the kiss itself, “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,” he explained. “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.”
So we’re now heading into the final episodes of Season 6 with the question of who Conrad will choose up in the air. While it seems obvious the season will end with Conrad and Billie together, we’re asking you in the poll below to vote for who you want him to be with, not necessarily who you think he will end up with.
The Resident, Winter Premiere, Tuesday, January 3, 2023, 8/7c, Fox
