CHICAGO MED: Allen MacDonald Teases the Season-Opening Emergency, Fallout From the Ripley Cliffhanger, and the New Doctors

When new CHICAGO MED showrunner Allen MacDonald joined the long-running NBC series—ahead of its upcoming tenth season—he took his research very seriously.

“This is a show that, in order to prepare for this job, I sat down and I watched 176 episodes,” MacDonald tells Give Me My Remote. “I had seen some episodes before then, but I really needed to start from scratch. That’s obviously a big job! I just was very taken with the high level of emotional storytelling that the previous showrunners had done for nine seasons. I just felt that that was something that I wanted to build upon with my own kind of storytelling.”

“I watched ER; I’ve always had a love for medical shows,” he continues. “I did not think that I was ever going to necessarily get an opportunity to write on one because my career started on CSI. But once I did get this opportunity, I went back and revisited some of my previous medical show loves. I realized the thing that I really love is making people cry. And if I can, if they’re sad, if I’ve really devastated them, then my job is done, thank you. But I also love making them laugh.”

MacDonald notes he’s “not a comedy guy; I don’t do jokes,” but he is adding some humor into MED. “I don’t like it to be a joke, joke, joke; I like it to be something that is funny because it’s recognizably human,” he says. “And people at home watching go, ‘Oh my god, I have felt that way before.’ They laugh because they identify with it, because it’s things in our life that we all have to deal with. And I just think that helps with the drama as well.”

The season starts off with a lot of drama as the ED deals with a large-scale emergency. “The whole foundation of the episode is that there is this commuter ship that has capsized at Navy Pier, and it happened very quickly,” MacDonald previews. “There are a lot of people that escaped right away. A lot of people were seriously injured, some people [were] trapped in the hull. But that’s sort of the backdrop of all the other things that we’re dealing with. It’s a mass casualty event, so the pace of it will be very fast. There will be a lot of intakes. There will be a lot of chaos, basically, going on. But the best kind of chaos.”

CHICAGO MED ended last season with a cliffhanger, as Ripley (Luke Mitchell) was accused of attacking Pawel (Kristof Konrad), a patient who sued the doctor for malpractice. In the season premiere, “we jump forward a month in time [and] see that there is definitely a huge strain going on between [Jessy Schram‘s] Hannah and Ripley,” MacDonald teases. “We find out as the episode progresses the reason for that is that he has not been transparent about what happened. He has refused to answer that question, and she does not stand for that. If he’s not going to communicate with her, she can’t be in a relationship with him. So we will find out by the end of the season premiere what actually happened that night, but the repercussions to that relationship will be felt for episodes after that.”

There will also be consequences for Pawel’s sister, Liliana (Alet Taylor), and her relationship with Dr. Charles (Oliver Platt). “What I can tease about that is that things are also not going well between Liliana and Charles and you will see Liliana in the premiere,” MacDonald says.

In the midst of the chaos, the series introduces two new doctors: Dr. Caitlin Lenox (Sarah Ramos) and Dr. John Frost (Darren Barnet).

“I love [Steven Weber’s] Dr. Archer character, and I love when he’s angry and agitated and P.O-ed, for lack of a better word,” MacDonald says. “So I wanted to bring someone in who was all those things, but more so. Someone who was stricter, more extreme, also had a military background, but was more into discipline than he is. Someone that would be constantly over his shoulder questioning him, and someone he would be forced to share power with, no matter how much he doesn’t want to do that. And that’s where the conception of Dr. Caitlin Lenox came in.” 

“She’s beautifully played by Sarah Ramos, who most recently has been on THE BEAR and was on PARENTHOOD,” he continues. “Sarah is so good in this role—you can just tell in the way that she moves that [Lennox] was in the military. She’s all about efficiency and making things move as quickly as possible. She’s a great doctor. She wants to help people, that’s why she got into this gig. But she believes the best way to help people is to move them out as quickly as possible because then you can help more people. She is not unkind to patients, but she doesn’t want to get too involved, because that slows down the train and then that means some people are not getting help. So she basically is going to rattle the cage of the ED. And the way she talks to people infuriates them, gets under their skin. And it’s just going to be a lot of fun.” 

It may take a beat before viewers get any significant backstory on her, though. “She’s a bit of a mystery as the season begins,” MacDonald previews. “But as [the] season goes on, we will get little bits and pieces, bite-sized nuggets of her background [of] what makes her tick and a little bit of her family background. But I like to dole those things out in small doses because I want the audience to feel very complicated about Caitlin.”

Causing fewer waves is new pediatrician Dr. Frost. “That’s Darren Barnet, who I loved watching on NEVER HAVE I EVER,” MacDonald says. “And even though I’ve worked in TV a long time, when I first saw him on Zoom, I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Paxton.’ And then I got [that out of my head] and [had] a mature conversation. But he is such a talented actor. He’s such a talented actor. And when I was on set [for] the first scene he did, and…for the first scene that Sarah did, and I got chills, for real. I just felt so good about the decisions we had made to bring them on. I think they really pop, for lack of a better word, and they’re really going to add a wonderful dynamic to [the] already-strong dynamic with the ED.”

CHICAGO MED, Season Premiere, Wednesday, September 25, 8/7c, NBC

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