Code Black recap: Every character is Only Human

Code Black cuts into the personal lives of its characters and rips them out this week. Here’s what happened in Code Black season 3, episode 9.

While CBS‘s Code Black delivers the best medical drama on TV, the show also mixes in its share of poignant personal stories — and those stories were at the forefront in this week’s episode.

The opening of “Only Human” might feel familiar, because this is another episode that starts off with Dr. Ethan Willis (Rob Lowe) and Rox Valenzuela (Moon Bloodgood). This time, they’re joined by his father Martin (a returning David Clennon) for what should be a nice breakfast. Should, but Martin casually brings up that one of Ethan’s brother’s military squad-mates has died.

Let’s quickly segue back to Angels Memorial Hospital, where Dr. Noa Kean (Emily Tyra) still has a housing problem, as she’s being asked to leave her friend’s apartment so the friend’s boyfriend can move in. Noa asks her boyfriend Dr. Mario Savetti (Benjamin Hollingsworth) if he thinks that’s karma for her not moving in with him; he wisely offers a non-answer.

While Noa and Dr. Leanne Rorish (Marcia Gay Harden) help a couple who hit each other in a cycling accident, Leanne is shocked to see Ariel’s boyfriend Max Edwards (guest star Alex Lange) rushed back into the ER. At least this means Code Black gives us more of Patrick Fabian, because there’s never enough of Patrick Fabian.

Leanne, Dr. Will Campbell (Boris Kodjoe) and Jesse Sallander (Luis Guzman) eventually manage to stabilize Max, while Noa talks to the wife of the cyclist couple and hears her say she’s trying to make her husband happy because “he married a size 6” and she’s not that anymore. It’s not a good day for love at Angels Memorial Hospital.

Oh, plus Dr. Elliot Dixon (Noah Gray-Cabey) is getting deposed in that lawsuit he’s been dealing with half the season. This is not going to be a warm and fuzzy episode, at all, and we’re only 12 minutes in.

Rox accompanies Willis and Martin to the military funeral. The explanation is that she’s got the car, which makes logical sense, but it still feels just a little weird that Code Black has her go to an event so personal to Willis and his father. They don’t seem that close, yet.

At the wake, Willis is shocked to hear from the man’s widow that the man killed himself, “just like your brother did.” He’s the third person in the unit to have committed suicide, so Willis is now sure that something happened during their last deployment that pushed them all that far. He will find out, because after all he’s played by Rob Lowe, the man who also went looking for Bigfoot.

He takes Rox and Martin with him as he tracks down the last surviving member of his brother’s unit, and forces his way into the man’s hotel room to get answers.

Back at the hospital, we find out that Max has climbed to the top of the lung transplant list. That displaces one of Campbell’s patients, who awkwardly rolls past him in the hospital and comes to the realization that he’s the one getting her transplant. At least she’s gracious about it.

Max wants to see Ariel (Emily Alyn Lind), but Ariel’s gone back to being brusque and aloof again, possibly because she’s starting to figure out that Max won’t be around that much longer. Leanne knows she’ll have to have a tough conversation with her adopted daughter.

Code Black is in desperate need of comic relief, so “Only Human” gives us a woman who drank one too many bottomless mimosas and is throwing up, hitting on Elliot, and not understanding that she has pancreatitis. Plus, Mario and Angus are at their hilarious best again while talking to the husband of the cyclist couple (that’s Nashville‘s Nick Jandl, by the way):

"Mario: He’s never been to the gym, so.Angus: Now I’m overweight and sensitive."

The jokes stop when his condition gets worse, forcing Angus to attempt a risky procedure right in the middle of the ED. With Mario’s help, he’s able to buy the husband enough time to get him into the OR.

Willis is still talking to his brother’s colleague, who seems resigned to the fact that he’s going to die shortly just like the rest of them. In fact, he’s even got a gun, and so our hero winds up having a talk at gunpoint for a few tense moments. The other man explains that Robert ordered an assault that wound up killing almost two dozen children.

Then he turns the gun on himself, and although Willis tackles him, the bullet still fractures his skull. This prompts Rox to rush into the hotel room for some emergency medicine, and then we have Martin speeding them both to the nearest hospital (not Angels, because that would just be maximum capacity drama).

Max is continuing to ask for Ariel, which prompts Leanne and Owen to have another disagreement. Owen thinks Leanne needs to do something to make Ariel show up for Max, but that’s not really how parenting works. Good parenting, anyway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK9sXxhd5P8

Noa gets through to the cyclist’s wife, explaining her past as a dancer and how that forced her to do unhealthy things to be thin. She encourages her to talk to her husband, while we’re still trying to get Amber the party girl to understand that she can’t party anymore. That’s Revenge‘s Christa B. Allen, and she’s playing the part to a T.

Code Black has Ariel finally summon up the courage to see Max as he’s still waiting for his new lungs to be delivered. She tells him how her father’s heart was given to a young girl and tries to comfort him. She also admits she loves him, which we all knew but it’s still an important moment to hear the words, especially when he says it back.

Campbell breaks up the love by announcing it’s time to prepare for the transplant, and then Martin rains further on the audience’s parade by chastizing his son in the other hospital’s waiting room. If David Clennon weren’t so awesome, this would be infuriating.

But at least Martin explains that Robert Willis killed himself in the house Ethan is now living in, and Ethan was the one that found him, so his insistence on getting rid of that house now makes a lot more sense. He doesn’t want his son living in that place anymore, and neither would we.

Then “Only Human” kicks us in the gut by revealing it isn’t Max on the operating table, but Campbell’s patient. Somehow, off-screen, Max’s condition got worse and he died. Naturally, Ariel lashes out in the only direction she knows:

"Ariel (to Leanne): I don’t want to go home. I want you to go do your job."

As one short-lived relationship comes to an abrupt end, the final ten minutes at least offer out some sort of balance by having the cyclists make up. He says he’s only exercising with her because he doesn’t want her to hate herself, not because he doesn’t like her; he loves her, no matter what she looks like. Hey, someone deserves to be happy around here!

Amber signs out of the hospital, but the person offering to go out for drinks is her friend, who just agreed to have one with Elliot. Let’s hope that turns out better than when Angus got a semi-love interest last season with Dr. Pruitt, and that ultimately petered out.

Plus, Noa finally tells Mario that the way she treated her body during her dance career means she can’t have kids. He replies that he never wanted kids anyway…but wait, she does, which makes for an even rougher moment between them. As he points out, why are they even having this talk if they’re not living together? So they’re going to move in together after all.

While Leanne comforts Owen over losing his wife and now his son, Rox drops Willis off at his house and tells him again he needs to talk to his father. He asks if they’re really just friends; she tells him “the same thing that attracts me to you, terrifies me.” Well, good on the show for finally admitting that yes, it’s trying to create a romantic relationship here.

Nothing happens, though, as that would be a serious case of bad timing to throw that into all these really serious and sad endings. Instead, Willis walks in the door and tells his father what he learned about his brother’s unit. That leads Martin to slap his son and tell him he’s “done” and he doesn’t have any sons anymore. Just when we thought this episode couldn’t get worse, there it is, and we get to stew on that for a week.

After tonight, there are only four Code Black season 3 episodes left, which are also the last of the series. Which is terrible, but that’s another discussion. “Only Human” is a tough, tough episode to swallow, and that’s also what makes it remarkable.

The biggest strength of the show is that it’s primarily focused on the medicine, and doesn’t wind up getting sidetracked by personal subplots and relationships like many other TV shows do. But this episode is the other way around—there’s medicine happening, but what the episode is about is almost entirely personal.

It’s Willis’s brother’s history and how it degrades his relationship with his father in the present, it’s Ariel and Max’s relationship, it’s the cyclists facing an unspoken issue in their marriage. Code Black has always woven personal stories into the hospital cases, but never before has it been quite at the forefront to this degree.

You’d think that would be counter-intuitive, but it isn’t because these personal subplots all have really profound meaning. It’s not just about who’s sleeping with who, or if somebody’s having a fight. It’s about facing death, whether past or impending, and being secure in one’s self-image, and dealing with survivor’s guilt (which it seems like Willis has to a degree).

This is some intense stuff that Code Black is probing into, with the class that this show has always demonstrated. There have been more exciting episodes with more interesting cases and bigger plot twists, but this is an episode that’s quietly important for several characters. People die, and people find out why people died, and people admit things we’ve known for weeks but haven’t been said.

And especially as we’re getting closer to that finish line, it carries some degree of closure, albeit painful, as our heroes all move on with their lives.

Next: 5 reasons CBS shouldn't have canceled Code Black

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