'Chicago Med' Season 10 Episode 17 "The Book of Archer" Review
- Zakiyyah
- Apr 3
- 4 min read
This week’s episode of Chicago Med really came in heavy from the jump. Archer talks to his son Sean and Sean describes what happened to his mother. Sean says he walked into the kitchen and found his mom passed out on the floor. She had been drinking, tripped, and hit her head on the counter. The fall caused a brain bleed, and by the time she got to the hospital, it was already too late. She didn’t make it.
Archer is stunned, like you can see everything freeze around him. He tries to ask for a doctor, but Sean just cuts him off and says, “She’s gone.” And that silence right after, was numbing and painful. You could feel all the pain and regret that Archer was feeling. Sean hangs up, clearly overwhelmed, probably not ready to deal with anything more than just getting through
the moment.
The hospital is in absolute chaos. The EMR system went down after a server update, so now no one can access patient charts, histories, nothing. Everyone’s doing their best to keep things running, but it’s a mess. Maggie, Doris, and Leonard are all scrambling, trying to hold the ED together while IT is totally MIA. It felt so real, like this is exactly how a system crash would go down in a high-pressure hospital.
Then Goodwin finds out that Dr. Lennox is out and asks Archer to cover the ED. This man just lost his ex-wife, and he still steps up. That’s Archer for you, he doesn’t slow down, he doesn’t let things show. But underneath all of that, you can tell he’s barely holding it together. It’s like he’s burying himself in work because if he stops for even a second, the grief will catch up.
One of the standout cases this episode was Milo, a 12-year-old boy who had a heart transplant not too long ago. He comes in after what looks like a panic attack, but the more the team talks to him, the more it becomes clear that it’s deeper than that. Milo is convinced that the heart doesn’t belong in his body, he says it talks to him and that it’s angry.
At first, everyone assumes it’s anxiety and stress from swimming for the first time since his heart transplant, his parents are in the middle of a nasty divorce and can barely be civil around each other. That’s when Dr. Charles starts thinking about something called cellular memory. It’s a controversial theory, but basically, it suggests that organ recipients can carry some emotional imprint from their donor. And honestly? The timing and triggers made it hard to ignore.
In the middle of all this, a pregnant woman named Laura comes in after getting an electric shock at home. She’s mostly worried about the baby, but a scan reveals something else, a mass on her right ovary. It seems to be growing which raises the concern for cancer. Dr. Asher calls in her OB, they go through the scans, and together with Archer, they have to walk Laura through a really difficult decision. The safest time to operate is now, during her second trimester, but that comes with serious risks. Laura’s instinct is to wait, to protect the pregnancy, even if it means putting herself in danger. It leads to some tension between Asher and Archer, who aren’t exactly on the same page about how much they should push her.
As for Milo, things come to a head when Archer decides to reach out to the donor’s mom, even though she’d initially said she didn’t want contact. Her name is Heather, and at first, she wants nothing to do with it. The grief is still too fresh. But Archer explains what Milo is going through, the guilt, the fear, the confusion and she agrees to meet him.
Their meeting was easily one of the most moving moments of the entire episode. Milo tells her he doesn’t feel like he deserves Mackenzie’s heart. Heather listens and gently tells him that Mackenzie was her daughter and she was smart and strong and had a temper too. Heather explains that Mackenzie died in a drowning accident, and suddenly everything clicks for Milo. His issues happened in a pool. It’s this eerie, emotional moment where everything makes sense, and you can almost see the weight start to lift off of him. Heather tells him Mackenzie would’ve wanted him to live, and in that moment, you can see something shift in Milo. It’s like he finally lets himself believe that he’s allowed to be here and accept Mackenzie’s heart.
Meanwhile, there’s a more quiet, grounded story building with Maggie. She’s being encouraged to run for a leadership role in the nurses’ union, something that makes total sense, given how respected she is. But she’s unsure, as always putting everyone else first. Then she has a really real conversation with Archer. He opens up about his grief, how he keeps showing up even when he feels like falling apart, and Maggie listens. He tells her that sometimes you just have to do the thing that scares you because it’s worth it. That moment between is very touching and way out of character for Archer. So simple, but honest, two people who carry way more than they let on, lifting each other just a little.
Laura eventually decides to go through with the surgery, and thankfully, it goes well. Both she and her baby make it through, and Dr. Asher seems genuinely hopeful that she’ll carry to term. It’s one of the few truly hopeful moments in the episode tonight.
And finally, there’s this small but meaningful moment between Archer and Sean at the end. After ignoring his dad’s messages, Sean finally picks up. He says his mom wasn’t perfect, but she always loved him, and that’s something she and Archer shared. You can feel the shift, no grand gestures, no over-the-top reconciliation, just the beginning of something healing.
And that’s really what this episode was about — change. The kind that doesn’t happen all at once, the kind that’s messy and slow and painful. But also the kind that starts with just showing up. And in a world where everything feels chaotic, sometimes that’s the bravest thing you can do.
What did you think?
Loved it
Hated it
So/So
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