‘The Resident’ Co-Creator Warns of ‘Complications’ After Conrad & Nic’s Happy News
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 4, Episode 2 of The Resident, “Mina’s Kangaroo Court.”]
Congratulations, Conrad (Matt Czuchry) and Nic (Emily VanCamp)!
The newlyweds are having a baby, Nic reveals to Conrad in the January 19 episode. (“How?” he asks. We love it.) In unhappier parental news, Bell (Bruce Greenwood) reaches out to his estranged stepson, Jake (Conrad Ricamora), after realizing how alone he is. It doesn’t go well.
Meanwhile, new couple AJ (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) and Mina (Shaunette Renée Wilson) hit a snag at work when a patient of Cain’s (Morris Chestnut) comes in with complications from an elective surgery — and she tells the wife what led to it.
“Part of what makes the season so exciting [is] we have our signature amazing medical cases but we have some really deep and spectacular character stories for everybody,” co-creator Amy Holden Jones tells TV Insider.
Here, she previews what’s next for CoNic, Mina and Cain, and Bell and Jake.
What conversations are we going to see from parents-to-be Conrad and Nic?
Amy Holden Jones: They’re pretty joyous about it all. It’s still very much taking place at the hospital. There’s a big issue that comes up in Episode 5. There will be complications and questions about the pregnancy and Nic’s health that play through the season, so that is their focus: her health and the health of the baby and getting to the point of a happy delivery, we hope, at the end of the season.
The pregnancy and the threats to the pregnancy for Conrad and Nic [are] never a threat to the relationship. My conception of these characters — which is one I really had to fight for — was I wanted a good, not unrealistic, couple at the heart of the show that we could really root for, who would have ups and downs and we would see over time how they survive, instead of “here’s the new third party so we can set up another triangle.” There’s a real love story here, and let’s see how they face life together. They’ll have some very big challenges to face together this season.
(Guy D’Alema/FOX)
How are we going to continue to see Mina and AJ’s professional conflicts bleeding over into their personal life?
The conflict [of Episode 2] won’t last terribly long. It’s part of what leads to the problems that threaten Mina: She did what she conceived as the right thing and it puts her in jeopardy from Cain when he wants revenge for what she did.
That leads to a fascinating arc of who Cain is. One of the big stories of the season is the animosity and the tension that build between AJ and Cain and this duality that happens with doctors: You have a great surgeon who is not a great person. Wouldn’t you rather have the great surgeon operate on you than the really nice person who’s not a great surgeon? AJ has to struggle with that, as the hospital does because keeping Cain is part of helping them survive. Cain has a crucial patient relationship and a relationship with AJ which ultimately affects his own feelings about who he wants to be. He’s never going to turn into Mr. Nice Guy, but people have the capacity to learn, grow, and change.
You see that with how Bell changed from the pilot. Part of that is an adjustment you make as you go along to the cast. Bruce has great capacity for comedy and warmth as well as to be a bad guy, and not to have used it would’ve been a terrible shame.
There’s degrees in [redemption], and that’s part of what you’ll see with Cain. He doesn’t have that humor, that warmth that was under there in Bell. But he has brains and quality and he is able to learn from experience and he has his own suffering from the past to dig into to try to overcome some of the limitations of who he’s become as a man. One of the great stories of the season is the Cain-Raptor-Mina conflict and how that ends up affecting the Mina-Raptor relationship — their future, how they can be together — and who Cain is and what he can become as a doctor.
(Guy D’Alema/FOX)
What’s it going to take for Jake to see that warmth in Bell?
Bell’s going to have to come through for Jake in a crisis, and he’s going to do that and hopefully Jake’s going to learn forgiveness matters. Can he and will he and will they have that kind of relationship? What happens if Bell becomes a grandfather through Jake? What happens if his family really expands? Jake is gay so there’s also the conflicts that he will have vis-à-vis his efforts to have a family and to adopt in the south.
The Resident, Tuesdays, 8/7c, Fox
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