Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Chicago Med’ Season 10 on NBC and Peacock, The Return Of The Dick Wolf Co-Created Medical Procedural

Chicago Med is the youngest series in the One Chicago universe – where it joins Chicago Fire and Chicago PD – but ten seasons is nothing to sneeze at, and Med ’s core remains strong while it exercises new talent. Law & Order veteran S. Epatha Merkerson returns as the chief administrator of Gaffney Chicago Medical Center, alongside Oliver Platt, Marlyne Barrett, and Steven Weber. But with a mass casualty incident hitting the hospital hard, adjustments in the emergency department will occur on the fly, and new voices – Sarah Ramos ( Parenthood ) and Darren Barnet ( Never Have I Ever ) join the cast – will make an immediate impression.

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Opening Shot: // Incoming Trauma//Incoming Trauma//Incoming Trauma// The “brick” patient routing device monitored by charge nurse Maggie Lockwood (Barrett) is blowing up in the worst way possible.

The Gist: As Chicago Med Season 10 begins, Sharon Goodwin (Merkerson) is gathering the emergency department for a huddle. With the imminent closure of another major Chicago hospital, Gaffney will be receiving double the patients, straining its already finite resources. To handle it she’ll be implementing changes to the ED workflow, which means everybody’s gotta be onboard, from doctors like Dean Archer (Weber), Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram), and Mitchell Ripley (Luke Mitchell), to the nursing staff, and to the medical residents who learn on the job at Gaffney.

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You can hang onto any questions about these changes, however, because a passenger boat has capsized off Navy Pier, and the ED must prep for trauma on a massive scale. As the team leaps into action – Dr. Daniel Charles (Platt) treats a hurt little boy with hemophilia, and Dr. Asher must deliver a baby early to save the child and the mother, both of them wounded by shrapnel – it’s all hands on deck, so to speak. Residents like Howard (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut) and Hudgins (Conor Perkins) are in the thick of it, too, and everybody on the hospital floor gets a chance to shout medical drama signifiers like “Full MCI protocol!”  and “Get me a 14-gauge angiocath.”

Even Goodwin has scrubbed in to help (“There’s a reason why I keep my RN license active”), and so has Dr. Caitlin Lenox (Ramos). Lenox arriving to take on a senior role would have been part of Goodwin’s speech to the staff, and especially to Archer, since she’ll be running the ED concurrently with the swaggering trauma surgeon. But with the hospital slammed, introductions occur over active gurneys and through hollered lifesaving commands. “I thought it was gonna be a quiet morning,” Nurse Lockwood says as the cases pile up, and Archer gives her a tight grin. “That’s when the universe gets you.”

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Medical dramas will never not be a part of network television. As a contrast, Season 10 of Chicago Med joins new kid on the block Brilliant Minds – with Zachary Quinto as a House -style neurologist – and Grey’s Anatomy , which incredibly has just returned for its 20th season.

Our Take: A small screen medical drama is only as good as the team it builds. Because while medicine is always changing and advancing, we are all veterans of watching a show like Chicago Med , which like its peers in the genre tends to stand pat with the stories and dramatic beats that work best. When another critical case crashes through those big double doors, we better be meeting a group of doctors and nurses on the other side who harbor a host of professional and personal issues that constantly enmesh. And as season 10 of Med gets underway, it’s updating its established ensemble heat. S. Epatha Merkerson has a couple of great scenes as Sharon Goodwin, who trades her administrator’s suit for a set of scrubs the second she sees the trauma cases streaming in.

Merkerson was always a steady anchor for Law & Order , and it’s no different with Chicago Med . But it’s the addition of Sarah Ramos as Dr. Caitlin Lenox that feels most immediately fresh, since she literally leaps into action at a moment’s notice. Whatever Archer thinks about his new colleague – and Steven Weber is very, very good here as the showboating, arrogant surgeon – Lenox is already scoring points with the ED staffers and us viewers with her hands-on, nonsense-free style. Well, most of the emergency department staffers, that is. After a stressful, bloody day at the hospital, one incident with a resident not only presents how Dr. Lenox manages personnel. It creates a new channel for hard-charging drama inside an already established team.

Sex and Skin: What about epidermal duress, instead? Or being fully underneath the skin? Because with Chicago Med , then we’d be talking. Most episodes include at least one overhead shot of some poor sap’s exposed internal organs – don’t nick that liver with your scalpel! – and a few quick glimpses of ghastly wounds and spurts of blood as necessary.

Parting Shot: In a scene that’s an entire pilot-y line in itself, Dr. Lenox tells Dr. Archer the hows and whys of her arrival as the new co-boss of Gaffney’s emergency department.

Sleeper Star: Every TV medical team needs its MVP, and as pragmatic and prepared charge nurse Maggie Lockwood, Marlyne Barrett continues to fill that role.

Most Pilot-y Line: “Don’t be concerned about the ED. I’m ready for whatever’s coming.” It’s probably true that somebody wired like Dr. Dean Archer would say this exact line even if they did know what was actually coming, which turns out to be unexpected and a whole entire thing, and on more than one front.

Our Call: STREAM IT! Now in its tenth season, Chicago Med operates with a consistent mix of established talent and new faces rotating onto the emergency department floor, and links into the One Chicago universe with the kind of propulsive storylines and emotional notes expected from a medical drama.

Johnny Loftus ( @glennganges ) is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift.

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