Dr. Billie Sutton’s tragic story comes to an end so that she can have a new beginning. The Resident really pulled at our heartstrings on this one.
Things for Billie (Jessica Lucas) got worse before they got better. Not even a full 24 hours after Rober Porter (Scott Cohen) threatened her, there was a swirl of Tweets with half-truths. And, of course, the rumor mill just swarmed from there.
It was heartbreaking to see Billie go through all of this. A career that she built was just being torn down tweet by tweet. This is part of social media I hate. Sometimes no one cares if it’s truthful, just if it’s salacious.
Remarkably, Billie held her head up high through all of this. She even did a pretty tricky surgery in the midst of it. Sutton has more strength than I could even imagine. And while she had people to lean on, she wasn’t emotionally leaning on them.
It’s no surprise that Trevor Daniels (Miles Fowler) started to figure it out. Once he found out the rumors were retaliation against an ethics complaint she made about a doctor, he was just one rabbit hole away from figuring it all out.
We have to give Miles a lot of praise for how he handled all the emotions with this episode. Dr. AJ Austin (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) walked in on him on the edge of figuring it out, and AJ pleaded with him to stop because he knew where it would all lead.
It was such a beautiful scene having Trevor realize everything right before our eyes. It was heartbreaking to watch, but he killed it just like Jessica in these emotional scenes.
That wasn’t the only emotional scene Trevor gave us. He walked into the medical board meeting and told them everything about how Billie was raped, and he came out of that rape and that his DNA would prove that his mom was telling the truth. But, for me, it wasn’t him telling them everything. It was him calling her mom. Even though he was broken-hearted about where he came from, he stood up for Billie.
Right after this, they had a sweet mother-son moment. Trevor still needs time to process this, but Billie told him she was sorry she couldn’t protect him from it but was proud of how he handled it and that he was very brave. She hugged him and told him she was there. It seems they are moving on to the next step in their relationship.
The Resident knows how to do these emotional scenes well and bring me to tears.
Trevor wasn’t the only one standing by Billie, though. Dr. Kit Voss (Jane Leeves) and Dr. Randolph Bell (Bruce Greenwood) were there to sit beside her during the meeting. Kit told her they were a team. I love what a family this team is. It echoed through in the storyline for Nurse Jessica Moore (Jessica Miesel) too. Nurse Jessica didn’t want to leave, but she knew her worth. She negotiated to get a higher salary so she didn’t have to leave, and she ended up earning more than her husband. This is the girl power I love to see. There are a lot of strong women on this show.
But the episode also showed how hard it is for women. Billie made one mistake that was more of an error on her attending than her, and it’s coming back to haunt her. But men can make multiple mistakes and get numerous chances. I mean, Porter had more than one ethics complaint against him, and Bell has made his fair share of mistakes, though Bell is an entirely different person now. Kit was even removed from her CEO spot in this episode because she gave Billie that second chance. So why is it that it’s frowned upon when a woman gets a second chance, but men get multiple passes, and no one bats an eye? The double standards can make me so mad, but at least we got a win on this one.
One of the reasons this episode may have been so beautiful is because Manish Dayal (Dr. Devon Pravesh) directed it. He did such a wonderful job.
How are you feeling now that Billie’s secret is out and her rapist might actually pay for his crime? Tweet me @PrimetimeDrama or @MandyTTCarr or comment below.
