The Night Shift Season 4 Premiere Recap: Let's Make a Deal
NBC’s The Night Shift resumed on Thursday with Part 1 of its Season 4 premiere. Picking up just 48 hours after the walkout triggered by Topher’s firing, was the splintered staff able to reassemble?
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Setting a potential detente in motion was Jordan and Drew’s daring rescue of Mac from the forest fire. After failing to get him properly tended to at the nearby (but shoddy) VA hospital, they transferred him to San Antonio Memorial, where Jordan levered Julian into performing life-saving surgery on the war hero by puffing him up in front of the press. In private, Julian argues that the possibility of extending cancer patient Mac’s life by maybe nine months isn’t worth the resources/cost. When Jordan pushes him to reconsider, Julian offers to deliver — if the entire staff returns, with Jordan in charge.
Jordan lies, for the time being, to get Mac operated on, and in doing so gets an earful from Scott, who was the recipient of his own offer from Julian — to head up a specialty surgery center. In doing so, Scott could write his own ticket, and maybe finally plant some roots. Jordan meanwhile explains her TC-like deception by noting that “coloring inside the lines” all her life has gotten her very little, except near-deaths and misery. After Mac’s surgery, Julian calls Jordan on her lie — at which point she proffers a solution: the VA is looking for a partner hospital to take its backlog. It’d be a steady stream of patients and, more importantly, non-bouncing government checks. She’s game to manage the transition, and thus get everyone back — including Topher, though just as a doctor.
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Elsewhere during Part 1 of the premiere:
* In the geographically separate storyline that apparently is not going away, TC after that missle attack in Syria came to in the back of a pick-up truck, and then found himself on the business end of a terrorist’s gun. A dropped bomb cut short that standoff, after which TC was rescued by some locals, including a doctor named Amira. TC wanted to treat the injured gunman, if only to get intel on where MIA Syd might be, but Amira and her friends were more interested in killing the guy. But after they were done with torturing him, TC leaned on the terrorist for info on Syd, then sped off in a truck….
* Kenny returned to work, but Paul refused to, as they lugged into the ER a gunshot victim who had been literally dropped at their feet. There, Paul was snubbed by Shannon, his father, and then Scott (who noted, “You walked out on me, too”). When Paul shares his plan to find a new gig elsewhere, Scott notes that doing so would set his residency back a year, best case, if not find him starting completely over. Scott invites Paul to come back to work with him, and do some great medicine together.
* A traveling nurse named Cain (recurring guest star Mark Consuelos) ruffled some feathers by 1) making Shannon and Kenny question their knee-jerk assumption that a drugged-out cellist was some no-good addict, and then 2) extubating the guy without a doctor’s order. Turns out, the new guy’s instincts were right: the patient is a good guy who had been drugged by a spiteful neighbor, who then called the cops.
* The episode ended with Drew arriving at the scene of an amusement park accident, where two girls were poised to tumble out of a derailed roller-coaster car. Ascending in a cherry-picker, Drew coaxed one girl to climb into his arms, but the other one chose not to fall to the inflated mat below, but instead grab onto and dangle from the cherry-picker — which casued it to start to topple….
To be continued!
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