Code Black recap 312: As Night Comes and I’m Breathing

Code Black’s penultimate episode delivered heartbreak and set up next week’s series finale. Here’s what happened in Code Black season 3, episode 12.

Just two episodes of CBS‘s Code Black remain, and Wednesday’s next to last installment quite clearly set the table for the Code Black series finale. But is it all winding down the way that we want it to?

“As Night Comes and I’m Breathing” picks up the majority of its plotlines from where last week’s episode left off. Dr. Leanne Rorish (Marcia Gay Harden) is panicking at the knowledge that Ariel (Emily Alyn Lind) is missing, and Jesse Sallander (Luis Guzman) is there to comfort her, because Jesse.

Meanwhile, Col. Ethan Willis (Rob Lowe) is still sitting by the bedside of his partner and crush Rox Valenzuela (Moon Bloodgood), now at a military hospital in San Diego. He’s not doing well with not being a doctor.

And Diego Avila (Tyler Perez) screens his documentary, only for his father (Alex Fernandez, Jane the Virgin) to tell him he wishes it never happened. Hey, has Code Black found a more abrasive dad than Dr. Desmond Leighton? But before we can start hating him, the ED gets slammed and with Leanne out, it’s up to Dr. Mario Savetti (Benjamin Hollingsworth) to take control.

This is a bad time for Mario to learn that his girlfriend Dr. Noa Kean (Emily Tyra) is interviewing for an OB position in Philadelphia, as Code Black hinted at last week. And it’s a bad time for Leanne to show up anyway, only for Dr. Will Campbell (Boris Kodjoe) to usher her into his office.

"Leanne: I thought a distraction would be helpful."

We see Campbell’s dad side come out again as he tries to reassure Leanne; we need more scenes like this, as Code Black has a great dynamic between Boris Kodjoe and Marcia Gay Harden that is not explored as much as it could this season.

Leanne eventually leaves the hospital and goes to see Owen Edwards (Patrick Fabian), hoping he might know something that could help. Owen points out that at least her child is still alive, but he decides to team up with her anyway.

Upstairs, Dr. Angus Leighton (Harry Ford) finds out that his patient Vicky Markwith (hey, that’s Kathleen York from The West Wing) is taking medical advice from her daughter Tabitha (Samaire Armstrong from Dirty Sexy Money). Vicky is now insisting on seeing a neurosurgeon, and Angus agrees to her request.

At least we get a reference to his much-missed brother Mike (Tommy Dewey) in all this. Vicky finally opts for surgery over chemotherapy, even though Dr. Elliot Dixon (Noah Gray-Cabey) is also skeptical.

Plus, Mario suggests that if Noa wants to be an OB she should take over treating pregnant patient Keri (Stephanie Lemelin), and Diego is screwing up big time with his father hovering around. It’s all pointing toward some personnel changes at Angels Memorial Hospital.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7FGR-E9hLI

Leanne and Owen go through Max’s phone, checking out the messages he exchanged with Ariel and reflecting on their kids’ short-lived relationship. But they also contain references to people that Leanne doesn’t know and a party, which is usually where a lot of teenage TV drama starts.

That sends them to Campbell’s daughter Emily (Laya DeLeon Hayes), who tells them Ariel is out with a homeless friend, likely near the Eighth Street Bridge.

In San Diego, Willis has jumped into action with the help of another soldier he ran into at the military hospital. This naturally doesn’t go over well with General Cohn (Andy Umberger), and Willis finds himself facing military discipline. He’s promptly arrested.

Angus assists with Vicky’s surgery, which is unique because Code Black not only has her awake during the procedure, but she’s playing the keyboard. That’s one way to distract yourself from your brain being poked and prodded. This is where we point out that Kathleen York is also a musician, under the name Bird York.

However, once the surgery’s done, Tabitha accuses Angus of being dishonest about whether or not there’d be complications—which of course there are.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajAYXt7WAOA

While Noa gets an offer from Diego’s father to help her land that position in Philadelphia, Mario is stunned to have Campbell offer him the residency at Angels outright. He accepts immediately, but before he can tell Noa, she needs him to help Keri. She’s struggling to breathe, and Mario worries it could be heart failure.

Keri’s only concern is her unborn child, and Noa urges her mother (Jennifer Hetrick, best known as Vash from Star Trek: The Next Generation) to promise Keri she’ll take care of the baby. We normally frown on any kind of promises in the medical world—see Angus’s storyline just a few scenes ago as proof of that—but can you blame her?

The baby survives, but Keri does not, in a whole “circle of life” kind of thing.

Meanwhile, Leanne, Owen and Jesse start searching the homeless community for Ariel, Diego has to find his courage to help Dr. Rollie Guthrie (William Allen Young) with his patient, and we find out where the lengthy title of this episode came from as Code Black reveals it’s a lyric from a song that Vicky wrote for her daughter.

The episode’s final minutes play out under music, as Noa has to tell Keri’s parents about the death of their daughter and the birth of their granddaughter. It turns out the name that Keri had picked out for the baby is actually her mother’s name. Noa leaves them with the baby and congratulates Mario on his new position, before telling him she’s going to Philadelphia.

This is “it’s not you, it’s me” in the professional sense. He suggests a long-distance relationship; she just stares at him. Yep, it’s over, and he walks out leaving her standing there. As if there was any other way that was going to end.

So Code Black has given us closure on all but two plotlines. Ariel is still missing, and it is not any shock that the soldier Willis has been talking to all episode is a figment of his own imagination. As he sits in lockup on a psych hold, Campbell has to decide what to do with him, and we have to see what comes next for Rox.

Knowing that there’s only one more episode of Code Black left, it’s impossible not to look at “As Night Comes and I’m Breathing” as the prologue to the end. There are some decent hints about where characters are going to end up, from Mario landing the residency at Angels Memorial to Diego wrapping up his documentary and having to just focus on the medicine.

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The reveal of Willis being mentally questionable was likely meant to be as surprising as the one from last season’s “Unfinished Business,” where it came out that everything was in Rollie’s head. But it’s just not. For one, “Unfinished Business” was a much better written episode (courtesy of showrunner Michael Seitzman).

For two, this revelation was not in any way a surprise. “As Night Comes and I’m Breathing” made it pretty obvious. Compare this to, say, The Newsroom where Will McAvoy’s cellmate turned out not to be real either. Kevin Rankin’s performance as the cellmate was spot on, and the story had it all unfold in such a genuinely organic way. This wasn’t on the same level in any respect. It’s a good effort, but it pales in comparison to what’s been done before on this show and elsewhere.

There’s the whole storyline with Mario, Noa and the pregnant patient in between. Their romantic relationship ending is sad, but it’s no great loss because Code Black just introduced that this year and thus we’re not as invested in it yet. Even when they moved in together, that seemed pretty fast. She’s still in next week’s finale, though, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if Noa changed her mind and decided to reconcile.

But would we care? We’d care in terms of wanting each of them to be happy as individuals, but not necessarily about the relationship coming back together. And it’s no fault of the actors at all; this is just something that was created with too much happening in not enough time.

So we go into the end of Code Black season 3, and the series, wondering if Willis is crazy, if he and Rox will get together (probably), if Mario and Noa will stay apart (maybe), where Ariel has vanished to, and why there’s a plane slamming into the hospital. Only two of those are questions it feels like we need the answers to.

The series will have to try pretty hard to top its jaw-dropping finale from last season, where there were serious stakes on the line, dramatic tension in every scene, and somebody died. There’s not the same kind of stakes right now, not based on this episode, but maybe Code Black will surprise viewers. It’s certainly done that before.

The Code Black series finale airs next Wednesday, July 11 at 10:00 p.m. on CBS. For more Code Black season 3 news and spoilers, follow the Television category at FanSided.