r/Brilliant_Minds_NBC

Maybe this will help??

Here’s a link to sign a petition to showcase our support for the show and fight for a season 3!

Okay hear me out.
What if we crowdfunded one final episode of Brilliant Minds.
Not a whole season. Just 42 minutes.
The writers’ only assignment: tie up every dangling plot thread they left us with after the cancellation. I don’t care how ridiculous it gets. Reveal the birth mother. Explain the hotel room full of unconscious people. Solve the body in the car. Give everyone therapy. Let Wolf and Nichols be disgustingly happy. If you need a montage and three improbable coincidences, so be it.
I’d throw in $50. I bet I’m not the only one.
Half joking… but also, has this ever actually been done? Because I’d absolutely back it.

Wolf and Josh's relationship is tested on a personal case. Carol and Thorne treat a patient with a huge secret. Van helps Ericka and Dana through their crises.

So yeah, I was mad at the cliffhanger but the anxiety really kicked into high gear once I saw that TVInsider article about what would have happened in S3 as there's a part of me that's afraid that that alone means we're too late as why share the details if we still could yet find a way to see them. However a part of me remembers what happened with the cancellation of So Help Me Todd (which Brilliant Minds's situation shares striking similarities to) and when that show's creator did his interview/article thingie about what would have happened he did it for all five of the seven-planned-seasons-of-the-show that never got to air not just one season. Therefore there's a part of me that wonders if the article was partially just to defuse the cliffhanger tension and therefore if the show might still have a chance. I'm sorry I've been this vehement but this show is very special to me and my anxiety-ridden brain is not gonna feel satisfied with either just the broad-strokes of the article (the little moments are what make this show special) or the overambiguity and overindividuality (thus meaning it's harder to get fandom to cohere on a story) of relying on fanfiction.

So I want to still fight for this show because I hope I'm not too late but I don't know what ideas would work that I haven't already tried

I'm absolutely heartbroken and gutted that I keep getting into shows that keep getting cancelled, makes me not want to watch anything new anymore. First Kaos on Netflix and now this?!?!? Anyways....

A lot of people are saying that viewership sharply declined and season 2 is bad... What? I got into the show because of how WILD season 2 is!! I grew up with House MD, one of my favorite shows of all time, and nothing else, no other medical show hooked me in so strongly until I came across my mom watching Brilliant Minds one day. I tried watching the first episode of The Pitt after finding out about the cancellation and just couldn't do it, way too fast paced and anxiety inducing, I like having calmer and more funny bits in between the drama, y'know? Brilliant Minds is basically like a modern House MD but less douchebaggery lmao, got the same exact formula basically and I love it. I like getting to know the characters. Maybe I'll need to give The Pitt more of a chance because I don't know what to do with my life anymore.

I don't want Brilliant Minds to end. Really makes me feel like if House came out today, it would've been cancelled at the beginning too. People just aren't giving new shows a chance anymore. We don't have cable TV so it pisses me off that Brilliant Minds has such low ratings, does streaming even matter to corporate or what?? We had no idea the show existed until my mom came across it on Peacock. Was NBC just not advertising it or something? Like what made such a genuinely good show flop so damn hard? It makes me so sad. I haven't felt this connected with a show in a long time and I don't understand why everyone hates the 2nd season so much because that's what got me into it.

Seriously, the wasted potential makes me so damn depressed. Imagine if Brilliant Minds got to have eight seasons... There was so much GOLD and now it's gone. Imagine if House only got two seasons and was cancelled!!! Come on!!!

What do we do now??? Is it really hopeless? Absolutely ZERO chance of it getting picked up on streaming? I'm so tired of this shit. Genuinely good and relatable queer and neurodivergent rep that's out there, direct, instead of hiding under several layers of coding and subtext. It's so refreshing, and then it gets cancelled. Exactly like what happened to Kaos, and that show had GOOD numbers and ratings! Just wasn't good enough for Netflix apparently... and now NBC and Peacock shoved Brilliant Minds under the rug. Queer media is being hidden and it really hurts. It's so exhausting, getting attached to characters, getting into a show, and then boom, right after I get caught up, it gets cancelled. This has happened to me several times now. Wtf do we do???

Wolf cares for a nervous teen facing awake brain surgery. Meanwhile, Carol and Dana look into potential corruption at Hudson Oaks.

And what I mean by that is not just the very very thematically parallel plot (both in the show-getting-on-soapbox and the fantasy stuff that seemed like a love letter to not just its fandom but fandom itself) but all the things this episode showed us that a season 3 could give us more of, from big plot things like relationships moving on or THAT TWIST (I swear this has been the year of me falling in love with Sarah Steele through her characters) to little things like more "AU bullshit" (I understand the thematic importance of them not being there but I kinda wish "Ericka The Knowledgeable", "Dana The Heartfelt", and "Charlie The Redeemer [interesting not The Redeemed, maybe that could hold implications for his future]" had been there helping Wolf help the guy fight through this as that would have been cool) or autistic!Wolf becoming canon or Charlie actually feeling like a good-guy-part-of-the-team-proper or even just them having to go to a Renaissance Faire for some reason and Dana actually getting to rock that kind of outfit (and maybe Sofia with them too??? I swear I've thought for a while Dana and Wolf have sibling energy, wasn't expecting her to strike a spark with his half-sister and I want to see more than just one full episode and a bit of that happening).

Now as I see everything from fall TV schedules to that one post delivering some kind of "post-mortem" (when regardless of if the series would end when it does or could be saved, the season hasn't even fucking ended) analysis of the show and how it's "getting cancelled because it's right" (in a way that made my similar-neurodivergencies-to-Dana's fear it getting saved proves it wrong), I'm desperately trying to fight as hard for this show as Dana and Carol were for the Hudson Oaks people and Wolf was for the patient guy this episode but the aforementioned neurodivergencies keep making every bit of negativity I see about its chances (be it realism or cynicism) pseudo-catching in the sense of "you never know they might be right" when I don't know the truth and would like to believe it has a shot of getting saved somewhere because the world needs it but I don't know what to fucking do.

And I know I've been making a lot of these posts in kind of a colloquially-manic frenzy ever since the announcement of even the move of the back six to the summer but this show has come mean more to me than I could say without a fucking essay-if-not-video-essay in even a relatively small number of episodes, even more than So Help Me Todd which was a cancelled show under eerily similar circumstances that I keep being afraid my efforts to save Brilliant Minds would have to outdo to actually save it because SHMT didn't get saved. I know some people might tell me to just let this go but the only ways I would really be happy to just leave this at the satisfying-end-to-S2 NBC promised for next week without feeling guilt comparable to what I still feel for So Help Me Todd (I feel responsible because I didn't do enough) would be under the following conditions; A. another network procedural gives us a slow-burn gay couple among its main characters, B. another network procedural (albeit not necessarily the same one either as each other or as point A) gives us gay neurodivergent characters of similar character archetypes to Wolf and Dana as between all the things Dana feels like she's got, Wolf's autism-coding, and even Nico's ADHD-coding but less so and me being pansexual with AuDHD and anxiety I have never felt so seen in my freaking life and C. the only way I'd be happy with Brilliant Minds ending with just a bit of real!Sofia would be if that meant Sarah Steele was now free to play Marissa Gold on more episodes of Elsbeth (even if those wouldn't include some implied-crossover revelation of her mom having a second family with a doctor from the Bronx iykwim) as as I said characters have similar energy and I am kinda in love (as much as one can be for multiple characters an actress plays without being parasocially weird about the actress, insert joke about how crush makes sense if I see myself that much in Dana). So seeing as those would be unlikely to all happen even though you never know I feel like I have to fight for this one-of-a-kind amazing magical show to be able to continue its story somewhere in a world that needs it especially once someone brought up the idea that the cancellation was for ideological reasons not just Weird Studio Shit.

So TL;DR this episode demonstrates why this show means so freaking much to me and why it should be picked up somewhere to have all this story setup pay off but I don't know how to fight for it most effectively (especially as I have the SHMT parallels hanging over my head afraid either I have to do more than I did for that show (which included things like a petition with 43k signatures and counting) to have it stand more of a chance or the more I do for Brilliant Minds what I did for So Help Me Todd the more I'm linking their fates and meaning we can't save this because we can't save that) and every naysayer whether or not they're actually being cynical is making me feel like I'm running out of time at minimum if not banging my head against a brick wall and again wondering if this is what Wolf feels like (and fearing my magical-thinking-in-the-colloquial-sense means invoking Wolf means I can't save the show because if it stops that breaks the parallel) as the world fucking needs this goddamnit!

Brilliant Minds was right. That's why it's dead*.*

How a medical drama based on Oliver Sacks became an unlikely casualty of the war on neurodiversity.

Brilliant Minds had it all: a buzzy young actor (Zachary Quinto), a proven formula (medical procedural), and major network support. Initial prognosis: excellent. But the vitals deteriorated almost immediately. Ratings crashed after the pilot. Viewership hemorrhaged between seasons. Mercifully, NBC decided to pull the plug, burning off the final episodes on summer Wednesdays and airing the season finale on July 1.

What went wrong? Critics might point to uneven writing, one-dimensional characters, and mysteries solvable by anyone who’s seen a Law & Order cold open. But I think the show’s real problem was deeper: Brilliant Minds was optimistic television in a newly punitive time.

The show’s main character, Oliver Wolf, is very loosely based on the neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. Like Sacks, Wolf is gay — and that fact is treated as less dramatically interesting than his fern. He leads a team of aggressively multicultural and neurodiverse interns who get along swimmingly, despite their disparate backgrounds. Supportive families and communities rally around patients, accommodating their disabilities and helping them heal. When a WNBA star is admitted, the whole team lights up — apparently every employee at this hospital is a devoted women’s-sports fan.

Brilliant Minds championed a raft of liberal causes (gay rights, right-to-die, destigmatizing psychosis, conservatorship abuse), but neurodiversity was its beating heart. In its most mainstream form, this is the idea that conditions like autism and ADHD are not illnesses that need cures, but legitimate variations in human cognition that should be understood, accommodated, and even celebrated. Dr. Wolf articulates this thesis in the second episode, saying, “I don’t think that there is any standard way of being or perceiving.” Though I agree with the sentiment, I might stop short of applying it to the patient Wolf was addressing: a college kid in the throes of psychosis, actively hallucinating a dragon.

At its Sacksian best, Brilliant Minds immersed us in patients’ inner worlds. In one standout episode, a woman suffering from Truman Show delusion (a real psychiatric condition) experiences the hospital through a pink-tinted fisheye lens, with hidden cameras lurking in every corner. When a patient loses her sense of proprioception, she’s shown falling through the hospital floor. Instead of using the tired “blurry faces” trope, the faceblind protagonist’s perspective is portrayed by having the camera zoom in on individual features, bouncing from eye to nose to hair to mouth. It’s one of those rare TV depictions that gets the science right. People with prosopagnosia can see every feature perfectly. The challenge is putting them together.

In addition to entering patients’ worlds with humility and curiosity, Brilliant Minds carried other Sacks-inflected convictions: that difference brings gifts as well as burdens, that a person’s diagnosis might be inseparable from who they are, that disability lives in the missing ramp rather than the legs that need it, and, perhaps most radically, that a human being’s worth has nothing to do with how well they fit in or how useful they are.

Had Brilliant Minds premiered into the future its writers seemed to be imagining -- one of ever-widening empathy and ever-loosening definitions of normal -- it might have found its audience. Instead, it arrived in a moment when the country’s top health official stands at a podium and calls autism an epidemic that “destroys families,” when the Justice Department quietly retires decades of guidance on what the Americans with Disabilities Act actually requires, and when “accessibility” has been folded into the list of things a government can defund by executive order.

I mourn Brilliant Minds not because it was a great show (it wasn’t), but because I understood what it was arguing. And I think it was right.