The Good Doctor Season 4’s medical mission to a rural Guatemalan clinic changed the lives of many grateful patients and the St. Bonaventure surgical team. The empathetic Claire Browne (Antonia Thomas) found her purpose in staying in Central America, while trauma surgeon Mateo Rendón Osma (Mexican star Osvaldo Benavides) has accepted a position in San Jose, California, working with Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) and Co.
Presumably, Osma’s legal issues—an outstanding warrant related to pot possession during his residency in the U.S.—get handled! Look for Osma’s connection with PTSD-suffering Audrey Lim (Christina Chang) to continue. Says exec producer David Shore, “[He’s] a new face, a new perspective, a new opportunity—for Lim, for Shaun, for the hospital.”
Helping Shaun save a baby in Guatemala allowed Lea Dilallo (Paige Spara) to accept her miscarriage, and she proposed. In the premiere, their upcoming engagement party has everyone feeling festive. Odd couple Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Alex Park (Will Yun Lee) are—surprisingly—“still good,” Shore adds.
Meanwhile, both Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) and Marcus Andrews (Hill Harper) are “trying to cope” with broken marriages, “and taking very different approaches to their losses,” continues Shore, who leaves us with this cryptic tease: “A major challenge to all of our characters—particularly Shaun—comes from within.”
The Good Doctor, Season 5 Premiere, Monday, September 27, 10/9c, ABC
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s 2021 Returning Favorites issue. For more inside scoop on the new fall TV season, pick up the issue, on newsstands now.