Fox’s Doc is growing through some onscreen changes in season 2 — but what does that mean for the show’s current love triangle and the fate of each character?
During the premiere, which aired on Tuesday, September 23, a hostage situation at the hospital paused Amy’s (Molly Parker) personal issues with Michael (Omar Metwally) and Jake (Jon Ecker). The episode ended with Amy and Michael closing the door on their romance — for now — while her future with Jake remained uncertain.
Amy’s biggest priority, however, was trying to get her memories back.
“Season 2 will be different than season 1 because Amy is starting to get some memories back. That changes everything for her,” executive producer Hank Steinberg exclusively told Us Weekly. “But the mind is a mysterious thing and operates in mysterious ways. She’s got eight years of missing memories and she’s only going to get them in drips and drabs. They’re going to come sometimes in ways that make sense to her — and other times that don’t. But they will be significant memories.”
Inspired by a true story, Fox’s Doc follows the chief of internal medicine at Minneapolis’ fictional Westside Hospital, who suffers a traumatic brain injury in a car accident that causes her to lose her memory of the last eight years. Amy not only has to remember her medical career and build a new life, she also comes to terms with a shocking divorce from her husband and a death that changes the course of her future.
“We’re still dealing with the secret sauce of the show, which is her missing memories and how that defines — or doesn’t define her — as the person on the other side of this accident,” Steinberg teased. “But there’s a whole different thing that she’s confronted with in the first season. It was, ‘I don’t remember any of this.’ Now this season she’s got a better grip on what she’s been told is what happened in her life. Now she’s able to access some of it on her own.”
The season 2 premiere hinted that Amy’s search for the truth could create complications.
“She’s in a rush to get her memories back because she wants to remember who she was as a doctor and get back all that medical knowledge so she doesn’t have to be an intern anymore,” Steinberg explained. “She wants to remember her love with Jake so that she can get back in with that. She wants to remember the last year she had with her son because she doesn’t remember that. So she’s got a lot of urgency.”
He continued: “But there are mechanisms and procedures one can do to push the brain. They’re stimulating brain waves and there are others that can be done neurologically — but they can have side effects. Spoiler alert: they might just have side effects that will make her pursuit more challenging and create other obstacles and problems for her.”
Speaking of complications, Amy’s love life took a major hit after Jake saw her sharing a sweet moment with Michael.
“The love triangle has a lot of legs to it and it’s going to have to play out. Michael has got a new baby but a part of him still loves Amy. Jake, meanwhile, feels betrayed but he still loves her,” Steinberg told Us. “Right now it seems like he can’t get over it. But can he? Especially if she changes her behavior or starts to remember things? So we intend to play that out over the season.”
Michael’s personal life also has its fair share of “good obstacles,” since his wife — who isn’t Amy — just had a baby.
“It keeps him from just saying, ‘Screw it, let’s get back together.’ He’s a good guy who wants to do the right thing and his image of himself as the good guy is a big component of not leaving his new wife and baby,” he continued. “He doesn’t know what this baby’s going to mean to him. Is it going to be a new start? Is it just going to be a little bit of a haunting reminder of his son? Is it going to be terrifying because he just lost a child? So that’s going to bring up lots of interesting feelings for him. Let’s just say, there are ways to muck things up that would not make that be a last and final obstacle.”
Season 2 has the perk of having an extended episode order — 22 episodes to be exact.
“It gives us a lot more time to explore many things, to play things out with Amy and Michael and Jake in a way that’s a bit more deliberate,” he shared. “The first season, we originally thought we were going to get 13 and it ended up being 10 episodes. We love the first season and how it came out but we felt a little squeezed. So it’s daunting to have 22 and to have to fill that space. We’re very mindful about not getting melodramatic or jumping the shark, which can happen to shows. But we have such great supporting characters and the medical cases to sustain.”
While more episodes means a “nice balance,” some fans have been worried this could pave the way for more onscreen exits or deaths. Steinberg addressed those concerns, telling Us, “TJ already got shot so he was this close. There are always scary medical things that happen in hospitals. Audiences should be on their toes.”
Viewers should also look forward to new faces such as Felicity Huffman in the role of Dr. Joan Ridley.
“She is a very interesting role because she and Amy have known each other for decades and she was Amy’s mentor. But she’s very tough. She has an expectation from Amy and it’s almost like a mother-daughter thing, where she pushes Amy to be the best and she doesn’t care as much about Amy’s personal life,” he explained. “So that will be a challenge because Amy is trying to have a fulfilling personal life at the same time as becoming the great doctor that she was. She wants to try to have both things and Joan believes that Amy fulfilling her potential as a doctor is the highest calling and the most important thing.”
He concluded: “So there will be tension there, and Joan will also have her own agendas for herself and her own secrets that Amy doesn’t remember because she doesn’t remember those years.”
Doc airs on Fox Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
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