The Good Doctor has flatlined
After seven seasons, the Freddie Highmore-led medical drama will end its residency on ABC
Aux News The Good Doctor
It looks like The Good Doctor couldn’t save itself in the end. After 116 episodes over more than half a decade, ABC has announced that it will be pulling the plug on the long-running medical procedural after its upcoming seventh (and now final) season. Let’s all join together in a moment of silence; thank you, Good Doctor, for everything… but mostly all the memes. You’ll always be a surgeon in our hearts.
The Good Doctor, anchored by a bombastic performance from Freddie Highmore, tells the story of a neurodivergent young surgeon named Shaun Murphy as he navigates the trials and tribulations of life at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. “Playing Dr. Shaun Murphy has been an immense privilege and one of the most remarkable and rewarding experiences of my life,” Highmore said in a statement on the show’s cancellation (via Deadline). “Caring deeply is what got us here. Thank you to Sony and ABC, and to everyone who has watched along at home. With love from Vancouver… tequila, stat!”
While on Twitter/X, it may seem like most people only engaged with The Good Doctor to pick apart its funniest bits, a whole lot of people actually sat down and watched it too. Last season, Good Doctor was the number one show among viewers ages 18-49 in the Monday 10 p.m. slot, and hit a season-high of 3.7 million viewers in April (per TVLine). For reference, only 2.9 million people tuned in to watch Succession’s series finale last year.
For its seventh and final season, the show will be moving to Tuesday nights at 10 p.m. In addition to Highmore, it also stars Richard Schiff, Fiona Gubelmann, Will Yun Lee, Christina Chang, Paige Spara, Bria Samoné Henderson, and Noah Galvin.
48 Comments
Jesus 7 seasons? I swear it doesn’t feel like Bates Motel ended all that long ago.
IKR. I was like “huh guess it kind of flopped huh, did it even get an S2… holy fuck what’s that now?”I don’t know if it’s getting older or covid or the Trump years or what but my ability to gauge time through pop culture milestones is just gone. Other week I was listening to Tom Petty thinking “dang I can’t believe he just died last year.”
THANK YOU. I was trying to figure out who that dude was. I also agree that it cannot have ended that long ago…
He’s also the young Charlie Bucket in the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But by far his best work and the best work of everyone involved was the 2017 HBO masterpiece Tour de Pharmacy.
Ok NOW I feel old.
Literally all I have seen of this show are the two clips that circulated on Twitter. One, where he freaks out and screams at a senior doctor, “I AM A SURGEON!” then melts down over whatever. Because autism, I guess? Non-autistic men never have meltdowns.
The other clip is an extremely stupid and misguided moment where he dead names a trans patient, because that’s what we need to see: a mainstream example of stubborn bigotry in positions of authority.Seems like this show’s ending is probably for the best.
That second one is actually the start of the episode, and the rest is all about him learning to not be transphobic, which the kind of people who post it always seem to leave out.
Ah yes just what we need, trans characters used as a crutch to educate cis characters with rather than having stories focus on them specifically
It’s cool that you pass judgment on a show, you haven’t watched, based on two clips with no context.
Yeah, you’re right, I hate it when people cynically misrepresent something that real people experience, for their own benefit.What the hell was I thinking, listening to my friends and loved one who are actually autistic that this show presents a reductive and regressive portrayal of their nuanced condition?!?
Sounds like you should have led with their opinions, rather than summarily judging a six-season show based on two brief clips.
Maybe if you had expressed that in your first post, instead of conveniently saving it to use as a defense against criticism of said post, you would have gotten your point across better. Now it just seems like you are playing gotcha.
My son has autism. Get over yourself. Its a tv show you f’ing crybaby.
Or, and stay with me now, you don’t have any autistic friends or family who told you that but instead believed what some people on the internet said and repeated it without bothering to find out if it was true. And now you’re backpedaling when called out for your laziness. This is the internet so the odds are at least 50-50.
Swear to God, it’s a “first day on the Internet and/or AVC” kinda week.
I mean, I passed the judgment that it was going to be crap and I didn’t need to watch, and I did so based on literally zero clips.
Yep. The defense of a treacly show basically line-driven to the swath of middle America who still watches network TV (as in on an actual TV, using an actual cable box) is kinda wild.
It’s cool that you pass judgment on a show, you haven’t watched, based on two clips with no context. Please indicate where the harm is in an online rando doing this.Here, I’ll do one: I’ve seen a couple of clips of Vanderpump Rules, with no context. Vanderpump Rules sucks. Discuss. Or don’t.
Pretty crappy read on this unwatchable nursing-home show, but ok.
The trans episode She was nominated for an Outstanding Individual Episode award by those bigots over at…the GLAAD Awards?
It was still on?While on Twitter/X, it may seem like most people only engaged with The Good Doctor to pick apart its funniest bits, a whole lot of people actually sat down and watched it too.Huh. Almost as if Twitter/X isn’t real life…
Correct, that is the point they communicated
Which random Internetter was it who pointed out that older people support their fandoms by… watching the damn shows instead of spending all their time fighting about them online?
Far too many people are intoxicated by complaining about the qualities a thing doesn’t have than enjoying the ones it does.
That show was still on? Huh.Hopefully Fox’s equiv, The Resident, does come back.
I’m pretty sure I read that The Resident has been cancelled.
Oh. Well, my mom will be bummed about this.
Up there with Rain Man in the crappy autism representation hall of fame
I had wondered what happened to Fiona Gubelmann after “Wilfred”. I mean, I didn’t care enough to actually research the issue, so reading this article on a whim was very productive for me.
117 episodes of The Good Doctor. What was the AVClub saying about pining for episodic tv and long episode counts?
This is especially odd considering they greenlit a spinoff coming out soon.
The Better Doctor? The Less-Good Doctor? The Good Engineer? So many possibilities….
I think it’s called The Good Lawyer. It’s about a lawyer with OCD I think. If it sounds like I’m joking, I’m not.
So it’s Monk if he was a lawyer?
Monk if he was a hot redhead female lawyer played by the same actor who played Nancy Drew in the criminally underrated CW series.
“Objection! My client did not stab Mr. Fiocchi ‘over a hundred times’ as the prosecutor suggests! My client stabbed Mr. Fiocchi exactly one hundred and seventeen times!”“You’re really not helping your client’s case-”“MAKE HIM TELL IT RIGHT!!!”
The only spin-off I know of was cancelled: They did a backdoor pilot for The Good Lawyer, who uses her OCD as a superpower the way The Good Doctor uses his autism.
‘The Medium Doctor’, starring Mindy St. Clair.
Just prescribing cocaine for everything.
The Average Accountant.“Look, you claimed back the new work truck for Mr. Johnson, but you forgot to claim his house as a work space since he has an office there, so…it evens out, I guess.”
looks like that was axed:https://deadline.com/2023/11/the-good-lawyer-pilot-dead-good-doctor-spinoff-not-going-forward-abc-1235599137/
Doctor Han finally wins!
I love that Neil Simon/Anton Chekhov play….oh, this was the medical show?
I know TV shows used to go on for years upon years (and some, like ‘The Simpsons’, are still chugging along), but in most cases I’d say seven seasons is plenty. Chances are you’ve probably said all there is to say in that time anyway.
They were having a baby on this show, right? That is the surest sign that a show is in its death throes and has a DNR order tattooed on its chest.
Looking forward to the reboot in 3 years when The Good Doctor nostalgia kicks in, as well as its cancellation in 5 years and its rereboot in 9 years.
::reads comments; sees people taking up for treacly crap like The Good Doctor, as if random criticism (of a canceled show) in a comment section is going to impact a single fucking thing::FFS, fight about something even a LITTLE more worthwhile.
After the 1st few season this show was not led by Freddie Highmore the reason I watched this. I literally got annoyed how little he showed up in his own show. It felt like The rookie show all over imo. The main character seemed to be Antonia Thomas(Dr.Claire Browne) I think I stopped at e7 of season 4 since i barely saw the main character.