Note: This story contains spoilers from “Doc” Season 2, Episode 2.
“Doc” set the stage for big changes at Minneapolis’s Westside Hospital, starting with the hiring of an impressive new chief of internal medicine played by Felicity Huffman.
The Emmy-winning “Desperate Housewives” alum was introduced as Dr. Joan Ridley, a laser-focused surgeon who has a long history with Amy (Molly Parker), Michael (Omar Metwally) and more at the hospital. Her arrival proves convenient when Michael offers her the job left vacant by Richard’s (Scott Wolf) abrupt exit at the end of the season, and as Amy’s former teacher and mentor, she is perfectly equipped to keep an eye on our titular Doc — who’s still struggling with losing eight years of her memory.
But not all is rosy ahead for Amy, after Joan’s arrival sparks a flash of memory that reveals she played a part in Amy’s separation from Michael six years ago. And Gina (Amirah Vann) is visibly shaken when she learns Joan has accepted the leadership position at the hospital — and that’s before learning she intends to run things her way.
“The thing about these flashbacks is that they are confusing and potentially unreliable as truth,” Parker told TheWrap in an interview ahead of the episode. “Things could be taken out of context. It’s very tricky … what is definitely true is that Amy doesn’t know who she can trust.”
That’s especially true following the events of the Season 2 premiere, which saw Amy and Sonya (Anya Banerjee) caught in a hostage situation tied to an old patient of Amy’s she’d forgotten about due to her amnesia. And that’s on top of the fallout from Amy blowing up relationships with boyfriend Jake (Jon Ecker) and ex-husband Michael by the end of Season 1.
“As much as Amy spent Season 1 trying to be this better version of herself, by the end, she messes up and behaves in ways that show maybe there is no old Amy and new Amy. Maybe there’s just one complicated person,” Parker said. “She has a lot of bridges to mend and that’s going to take some time.”
Below, Parker discusses the latest episode of “Doc,” and celebrates the show resonating with new viewers after dropping Season 1 on Netflix.
TheWrap: These first two episodes set up a lot of big shifts ahead for the show. What was your reaction when you learned where Amy’s story was going in Season 2?
Parker: I was intrigued. There’s some really interesting themes that the writers are delving into this year. Obviously, a new character, Dr. Joan Ridley, who Felicity is playing. She plays a really fascinating character, who is a great champion of Amy’s. She was her mentor and her teacher, but she’s also an obstacle, in her own way, so that’s a great and complicated relationship.
Amy has a long history with this woman and, as she remembers from eight years ago, was very close to her and they were friends. But of course, Amy doesn’t remember the last eight years, and we as the audience don’t know what went down. So there’s this new relationship with this mentor, which gives us the opportunity to really delve into this new area of Amy’s past, and then also how that affects the present.
I love that it also gives us the opportunity to look at themes around women with careers and their relationships to motherhood, their relationships to their ambition, their relationships to helping other women who are coming up — all that stuff is great.
I’m thrilled that the writers have developed a really great twist, too. Amy begins to get these odd memory flashes, but they have no context. It might just be an image of an object. They’re like dreams, almost. So she is trying to figure out what these are … There’s a lot of mystery in this season.
I love when the writers put Amy in a situation to be a detective in her own life. She’s very good at being a detective in a medical way as a diagnostician. Now she’s been given these clues throughout the first couple episodes about her life that she starts to need to pay attention to.
In Episode 2, titled “Delusions of Grandeur,” we see this with Joan. Amy has flashes of a dinner that, by the end of the episode, we learn was the moment Joan told Amy she should end her marriage. How does that set things up for Amy moving forward?
The thing about these flashbacks is that they are confusing, and potentially unreliable as truth. Things could be taken out of context. It’s very tricky.
What is definitely true for Amy is that she doesn’t know who she can trust. She certainly trusts Gina, and she trusts Michael. She trusts Jake. And yet, everyone in her life has an opinion about who she was, who she became and who she should be or shouldn’t be. One of the things about the Joan character is that Joan doesn’t think that Amy was a horrible person before the accident. Her feeling is that Amy did the best she could in a really difficult situation, and at the same time became an outstanding doctor because of her ability to be so singularly focused on work. That’s something that Joan really respects and I think, in some ways, that’s really nice for Amy to hear.
In Amy’s very long journey of reclaiming all these pieces of self and integrating them into her sense of who she is and who she wants to be going forward, not all the narrators are reliable 100% of the time. Everyone sees her and remembers her through their lens, as Joan does as well. So as Amy starts to reclaim her own memories it’s sort of empowering, because she’s no longer in the situation — at least in that one little moment — where she has to rely on other people to tell her what happened.
Joan accepts the chief job and seems to be a great fit. Then we see Gina’s reaction to the news and she’s far from happy about the hospital’s newest leader. What’s going on there?
Gina and Joan are very different people. Their approach to medicine, to their patients, to their work is very, very different. The thing they have in common is that they both really love Amy. They both are invested in how Amy moves forward in her life.
For Joan, Amy is just this one-in-a-million kind of doctor. She’s special in a way that Joan thinks is so rare and she really, really wants Amy to focus on being a physician. Gina is coming from a completely different place and wants Amy to be happy in her life, and with her relationships as a mother, as a partner, as all those things. So they’re just different people.
Michael just had a baby, Jake doesn’t think Amy will ever pick him over her old life. The dynamics are all changing very, very drastically for Amy. Where are we headed from here?
In the first couple of episodes Amy is dealing with the fallout from Season 1, with what Jake thinks he saw and the reality of Michael having a new child, and what that means for Amy’s future. She has dug herself into a bit of a hole by the end of Season 1.
As much as Amy spent Season 1 trying to be this better person, this better version of herself … by the end, she messes up and behaves in ways that show maybe there is no old Amy and new Amy. Maybe there’s one complicated person. She has a lot of bridges to mend and that’s going to take some time.
“Doc” is getting some serious attention after dropping Season 1 on Netflix. The show is currently at No. 2 on the Netflix TV chart. How does it feel to get a big spotlight for this project as Season 2 starts to roll out?
That was really wonderful news and exciting, because we all know Netflix just provides such an enormous platform for viewership. So given that there will be an opportunity for people who didn’t catch the show last year to catch up quickly and jump into Season 2. It’s fantastic. We’re incredibly fortunate.
This conversation was edited for length and clarity.
“Doc” airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox and streams the next day on Hulu. Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.
