Warning: spoilers ahead for the Season 8 winter premiere of Chicago Med, called “A Little Change Might Do You Some Good.”
Chicago Med is officially back for Season 8 in the 2023 TV schedule with a winter premiere to pick up where the fall finale left off with Ethan getting his happy ending with April and the big reveal that Jack Dayton had bought Gaffney Med. “A Little Change Might Do You Some Good” packed a lot into an hour. As a departure from the norm, however, Dean sent two doctors out of the ED in a move that he might not have made earlier in the series, which fits with what showrunners Andrew Schneider and Diane Frolov said about opening him up to show “new sides."
A brutal car accident turned out to be even worse than it initially seemed, when Dean and Dr. Lieu learned that their patient’s pregnant wife was missing in the woods where they’d crashed. Lieu managed to convince Dean that his search and rescue experience meant that he should join responders in trying to find her, and Dean decided that Hannah should go with him to help the pregnant woman. It’s hard to imagine Dean trusting Hannah nearly enough to send her out into the field once upon a time, as he previously wasn’t shy about disapproving of Goodwin allowing her to return to the hospital after her drug issues.
Sending her with Dr. Lieu may seem like a small show of faith, but it showed how very far he has come from the man who came to the hospital with a lot of baggage and poor communication skills. Now the ED Chief, he and Hannah have been bonding throughout Season 8 since performing some surgeries together and Dean letting her in on the secret of his kidney problems. When Chicago Med showrunners Andrew Schneider and Diane Frolov previously spoke with CinemaBlend, they weighed in on what led to teaming the two doctors up in Season 8:
A lot of it has to do with what we wanted to do with Dean. He started out as a pretty negative character, and we wanted to open him up and to see new sides of him, and to discover more about his life and his past. She was kind of a perfect way to do it, being in recovery herself and Dean having had a son who had drug issues.
The character who was best able to open Dean up prior to Season 8 was Ethan, but that wasn’t going to be possible in the long run with actor Brian Tee deciding to leave the show. By giving him another character to open up to, he could continue to develop past his negative traits and show more positive new sides. Sure, he’s still blunt with his opinions, but he’s not harsh in the way that he once was.
Andrew Schneider went on to say that Steven Weber and Jessy Schram are “great together,” and Diane Frolov elaborated:
We just also have to say we like seeing the two of them together. We think they work together, and that's one of the wonderful things that happens on series for writers, is we get to see these relationships develop on screen.
It remains to be seen if Archer will form stronger bonds with characters other than Hannah to continue showing new sides. She and Dr. Lieu worked well together on their search and rescue mission, so it should be interesting to see if Med has more of them in store. The NBC description for the next episode that airs on January 11 reveals that Hannah and Dean will use the new opiate abuse A.I. program.
See what happens with new episodes of Chicago Med on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, ahead of Chicago Fire at 9 p.m. and Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. You can also revisit past episodes streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
