‘Transplant’ Boss Explains That Major Development for Bash & Mags
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Transplant Season 3 premiere “Fracture.”]
Transplant has gone there.
The Canadian import surprised fans at the end of the Season 3 premiere by revealing that Bash (Hamza Haq) and Mags (Laurence Leboeuf) are together, with the two meeting for a date (to see the world outside her apartment) and sharing a kiss. (Season 2 ended with him showing up at her door and left viewers wondering if something would happen.) So why did they have the doctors take that step now?
“We felt that these two actors and characters have great chemistry. They’re so great at the will they/won’t they, and obviously you could kind of keep that going forever, but the more we wrote for them over two seasons, we just felt ourselves wanting to know what they’d be like as a couple,” creator Joseph Kay tells TV Insider. “One of the reasons their chemistry is so good is because their friction is so good, and we just really wanted to expand that friction and see how it led to a relationship. We just wanted to do it, and we’re always trying to not repeat ourselves. That was part of it, so we made the decision that Season 3 would explore them as a couple and to see how that’s going to work.”
As for the reveal being at the end of the premiere, “we thought, let’s try to have fun with that, wonder what happened, and try to hold it as long as we could, but we can’t hold it any longer than the end of the episode,” Kay explains. “We were very happy about the decision to let them be a couple right now as opposed to what the expectation might be, to keep withholding, because it let us get to places with both characters that we don’t feel we would’ve been able to otherwise get to because they have friction, they challenge each other, they’re vulnerable with each other through the way that they get along, but also through the way that they argue. We think over the season we tell a really interesting fun back and forth look at what a new relationship is as they’re feeling their way through it.”
The Transplant Season 3 premiere also shows how Theo (Jim Watson) is doing after surviving the helicopter crash (the pilot did not) and spending nine days in the woods cold and alone. He admits he doesn’t know how to feel anymore and ends the episode getting into an ice bath.
“It’s a tough ride for Theo,” Kay warns. “Over the first two seasons, you see a man sort of lose sight of who he is, make some decisions in his life that upend it. And then this helicopter crash for him is like a form of karmic punishment or a punctuation mark on having lost sight of who he is. He’s in active trauma, he’s in post-traumatic stress actively, and he’s heightened and he’s making some bad decisions.”
He continues, “So even though he’s been through this crash, he survived. He’s really lucky to be alive and to have survived and to have his job back and to be back at work and all that. But he’s not making some great decisions. While he’s trying to address his trauma and the mistakes he’s made in the past, he’s kind of digging himself into a hole. And certainly the trajectory we’re on with this character is introducing a guy who really seemed to have his life together and seeing it kind of fall apart and then hopefully watching him put it back together.”
At least Bash and Mags will be a bright light right now … we hope?
Transplant, Thursdays, 9/8c, NBC
