BRILLIANT MINDS — Pictured: (l-r) Ashleigh LaThrop as Dr. Ericka Kinney, Aury Krebs as Dr. Dana Dang, Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf, John Clarence Stewart as Dr. Anthony Thorne, Duke Davis Roberts as Tommy.
(Photo by: Pief Weyman/NBC)
“We love our medical mysteries. We love leaning into those. We love the humor and wit, and then the third thing that’s really important to us is showing people feeling their emotions,” says Michael Grassi, creator and showrunner of Brilliant Minds, as he talks about season two of the series.
Brilliant Minds follows Dr. Oliver Wolf, an eccentric but incredibly gifted neurologist who suffers from a rare condition who leads a team of interns as they explore the human mind, while also struggling with their own relationships and mental health.
Zachary Quinto headlines the series as Dr. Wolf, which also stars Tamberla Perry, Teddy Sears, and Donna Murphy.
“Last season, was focused on Wolf’s past and his relationship with his father and his mother, and how that contributed to making him the doctor he is today, and that was so valuable, because we really got a window into his life and why he practices medicine the way he does.,” says Grassi.
“This season, we wanted to really continue that story, but in a brand new way, using ‘flash forward’ scenes, in which we see Oliver in this very specific situation where he’s in a psychiatric facility, and we’re really excited to tell a nuanced story about what it’s like to enter one of these facilities and get care, whether you want to be there or not.”
Grassi has just touched on one of the mysteries that will be explored this season on the series, as the opening scene finds Dr. Wolf not working as a physician but rather as a patient struggling with his caregivers.
How this prologue sets the stage for the unfolding narrative, Grassi reveals, “This device it’s really propulsive in that we’re building and building tension as we ask the question in every episode, ‘what’s going to be the thing that breaks Dr Wolf? What’s going to be the thing that sends Oliver to this place six months from now?’”
Grassi says that this leads to a lot of ‘twists and developments and peeling back of the onion of Wolf and this facility.’
He also confirms that, “we will catch up to the present within this season, and all questions will be answered…. but they might not be exactly what you expect them to be.”
In addition to this overarching mystery, each week there will continue to be a patient suffering from ambiguous illness that the team must diagnose, which, with intertwining storylines, could make for some complicated episodes. But, as Grassi explains, “Yeah, it’s a lot, but our audience is so sophisticated and so smart, and I think that they love to follow along with whatever our characters are deciphering. And, that’s such a big part of our storytelling and we love using our super unique lens to navigating these aspects of the show.”
Grassi goes on to say, “One of the opportunities with season two is that our hospital, Bronx General, is a really big place with lots of doctors, and we get to crack open our world and meet other doctors and see how they approach medicine, which is very different from the way Dr. Wolf works. He spends days with his patients. He goes on field trips with them. He takes his time to get to know every single aspect of their life. Meanwhile, that’s something that’s literally not possible to do in an emergency department. So we have a new emergency room doctor who represents a really interesting counterpoint to that.”
In a time which has seen a resurgence of the medical drama on television, Grassi feels that what sets Brilliant Minds apart from the rest of the field is, “we really focus on the brain. We focus on neurology, psychiatry, but also mental health in general, and that’s really our lens. For years and years and years, we’ve seen so many depictions of mental health care that have been scary, like the old trope of the asylum and their padded rooms and the straight jackets and the wailing patients. There’s so much stigma and fear around mental health care, and to have a show like this that’s set in on a psychiatric and neurology department where it’s not a scary place to go get help, I think it’s such an important message to show people, and if we can show people that it’s not scary to get psychiatric help or neurological help. I think we’re doing our small part, some way, somehow.“
Also, Brilliant Minds highlights about a different type of outcome, says Grassi, one that isn’t always shown in traditional medical dramas. “A lot of these types of shows are really about, ‘what’s the diagnosis, what’s the fix, what’s the solve here,’ but in a lot of our cases, and in real life, there often isn’t a cure or a fix. So, a lot of the time, the stories are about adaptation — how do you accept a new normal? How do you grow? What is it like to be resilient when it feels impossible. That’s what we’re doing that’s unique.”
What makes the series so relatable is that what’s happening is often universal, explains Grassi. “I think a lot of it feels very personal because a lot of people are dealing with stuff like this; figuring out things like, ‘what does this diagnosis mean going forward, and how do we talk about this within our family?’”
He concludes with the thought that, “A big part of why I wanted to make this show is that there was a lot of stigma and secrecy surrounding mental illness in my family growing up, so the idea that we can have characters who talk about mental health and medication and all sorts of things openly, and can even have different opinions about it and come together, I think, feels vital, especially right now.”
Season two of ‘Brilliant Minds’ premieres on Monday, September 22nd at 10/9c? on NBC. Episodes will be available for streaming on Peacock the day after air.
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