YMMV / The Good Doctor

---

• Accidental Aesop: Attempting to damage your lover's Porsche with a baseball bat due to having a second girlfriend is not the wisest thing to do if you find this out. Although this sounds like an obvious moral, it wasn't portrayed as such on-screen.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Asher was a huge Base-Breaking Character among the fandom due to how defensive he got about his religious past, to the point of even taking his anger out on Jerome about it. However, his death midway through season 7 left those who liked him heartbroken. Even his detractors.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Glassman and Shaun have a very close friendship... or at least the show says they do. Was their friendship ever truly repaired after Shaun punched him in the face? The remainder of the season Glassman is exhausted by Shaun's antics, and in season 2 he is constantly and easily irritated by Shaun, even when he tries to help him (although truth is told, the fact that he is suffering from his cancer treatment can also influence the situation). We keep getting told their relationship is like father and son, but this might not necessarily be a good thing. A darker take on their relationship might imply that Glassman only wants Shaun as a replacement after the death of his daughter, hoping Shaun's quirks will equate him to a child. Any attempt of Shaun's to act like an equal is met with open challenge.
  • After all, which are Lea's feelings for Shaun? Does she really see him just as a friend or even as a brother, or does she love him deep down and is she lying to herself about it? Season 3 finally confirms that Lea loves Shaun far more than just a friend, but is afraid to start a relationship with him due to her troubled personality and his autism.
  • When Shaun invited Carly on a date at the end of Season 2, he had moved on from Lea (or at least believed it) and were the events of the episode "Friends and Family" that made his romantic feelings for Lea rise again? Or did he never get over it and dating Carly was his desperate attempt to contain these romantic feelings for Lea?
  • Regarding the alleged rivalry between Carly and Lea for Shaun, was this rivalry one-sided or was Morgan right when she alerted Shaun that Lea was trying to demonstrate her dominance over Carly? Lea says no, and Morgan is known for being cynical and pessimistic... but it is telling that in the same episode, Lea interrupted Shaun and Carly's karaoke meeting and ended up causing a series of events that culminated in the couple's breakup. To make matters more suspicious, it happened hours after Carly told Lea that she trusted Shaun and that if he said that he and Lea were just friends, then she believed him. Is it possible that Lea was doing these things deep down out of jealousy, no matter how much she tried to deny it before and after?
  • In the opening scene of the episode "Hurt", Lea and Melendez meet by chance at an event and talk briefly before being interrupted by others. Some fans question whether they were considering flirting with each other, considering the looks between them and the fact that they've both recently suffered romantic disappointments.
  • At the finale of Season 3, was Melendez being sincere in saying that he loved Claire or did he lie to make her feel better before he died?
• Anticlimax Boss: Salen Morrison ends up becoming this in "Cheat Day" when she is about to face Shaun and Lim, alongside Glassman, Lea, Asher, Jordan, Park and a repented Morgan at the conference of pension investors and proceed with her hostile takeover of the hospital by releasing sensitive information regarding some of their past wrongdoings. However, it basically takes Andrews daring her to tarnish his reputation as well if she's to go through with it, when he brings her documents of his own wrongdoings, to then convincing her to drop the entire ordeal, to which Salen reluctantly agrees and signs off the Ethicure acquisition.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Some fans have lost patience with the development of Shaun's romantic plot with Carly in Season 3, thinking that however realistic or well-intentioned the plot is, it is stealing precious time from the show. It doesn't help that Carly abruptly ends their relationship in episode 15, for realizing that he loves Lea.
  • After three seasons, fans are finally starting to get tired of the Will They or Won't They? situation involving Shaun and Lea. At this point, many fans believe that the writers are making forced excuses just to create melodrama and delay their romantic involvement for as long as possible. Fortunately, this situation came to an end at the finale of Season 3, when Shaun and Lea finally became a couple.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Season 4 was the stopping point for many fans of the show. Melendez being dead was already two (or all three) strikes against it for some. The season starting off with a two-part episode focused on the hardships of the then-current COVID-19 Pandemic was a turn-off for fans who used the show (and TV as a whole) as a distraction from the hard times. While the topic was mostly avoided afterwards, the next episode introduced several new residents, whose storylines took time away from Shaun and put him slightly Out of Focus, and several other fans felt this was the first of multiple episodes that suffered from Political Overcorrectness, mainly with Claire and Morgan rudely accusing a resident of "mansplaining" after stating his opinions. "Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices" was the last straw for many fans, which tackled transphobia, abortion, racism, and misogyny all in the same episode. The increase in focus on Shaun and Lea's relationship in the second half of the season, along with the departure of two of the four new residents, helped bring the season back on track by the end.
• Award Snub:
  • The show has yet to receive even one Emmy nomination.
  • Even the biggest detractors of the show praise Freddie Highmore's performance. He has been nominated for the Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, but has never won.
  • Richard Schiff was nominated at the Critics Choice Awards for his performance in Season 2, but didn't win.
• Awesome Music: Whoever chooses the songs to play in the episodes of this series deserves a raise.
  • Vancouver Sleep Clinic's "Someone to Stay", the gorgeous song that plays in the final scene of the episode "Islands: Part Two", when Lea says goodbye to Shaun.
  • Noah Gurdersen's "Send The Rain (To Everyone)", the beautiful song that plays in the final scene of the episode "I Love You". After 40 minutes of tragic or bittersweet endings for almost all the characters, this song is perfect for the happy ending of the new couple Shaun and Lea.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Shaun. While he gets praised by many autistic viewers for being a generally positive representation who completely embraces the benefits of autism, just as many (some even on the autism spectrum themselves) have criticized him for being a bit too perfect and thus not all that relatable, especially for autistic people with average or below-average intelligence. Many autistic people have also criticized the casting of neurotypical actor Freddie Highmore, saying an autistic actor should have played the role. And some critics charge that his character relies too much on stereotypical autism tropes.
  • Lea started as Ensemble Dark Horse after a short participation in the first season, where she won so many fans that she was promoted to the regular cast in Season 2. However, she became this in Season 3 because of the love triangle involving her, Shaun and Carly. Many fans like Lea and think she is perfect for Shaun because of the chemistry between them, while others think she is a messy, selfish person. The fact that she admits in episode 16 that she loves Shaun, but that she is afraid to date him because of her problematic personality and also because he is autistic, has only made matters worse among the fandom, igniting the character's defenders and critics.
  • Dr. Morgan Reznick is either well-liked for being an Alpha Bitch people Love to Hate, or disliked for her abrasive personality.
  • Dr. Han was hated by almost all the fans because of his arrogance and the cruel way he treats Shaun in Season 2. In 2023, he's gained a half-ironic fanbase among detractors of the show who take his side against Shaun, viewing his reasons as sound and logical.
  • Dr. Marcus Andrews post-Season 2. He was either more positively received for shedding his previous skepticism towards Shaun and condescending treatment of his employees (even standing up for them by helping them out in convincing Salen to withdraw the Ethicure acquisition), or loathed for reverting back to this personality, especially treating Jared (like in Season 1) just as poorly as before when he came back, making it seem as if he actually never learned anything of his past wrongdoings.
  • One-Shot Character Nathalie Beauchemin, portrayed by Meghan Heffern, from the episode "Heartbreak" is a divisive character because some consider her a Tsundere, others like her as she's considered relatable, but the fanbase can't agree at all on whether she is good, or even if she should return as fan speculation about her return occasionally keeps coming back.
• Broken Base:
  • Lea and Shaun becoming a couple at the end of the third season, for a certain fandom sector they liked that they took the step from Best Friends to a couple, another sector thinks that they should have stayed as Platonic Life-Partners, and a last sector considers that their relationship was never in really platonic, and if anyone was always Shaun's platonic best friend was Claire and not Lea.
  • Claire reporting Lim's PTSD to Glassman. Some fans agree with her doing so to protect Lim before she suffered a meltdown on the job (which she almost did multiple times), while others think she was being a tattletale.
  • Fans are divided on the Season 5 episode "Dry Spell". Some consider it the show's funniest episode thanks to most of it being comic relief instead of the usual all-serious storylines. Other fans think it's a cringeworthy and disgusting episode that borders on pornography with every plot revolving around sex, including one patient desperate to have sex ASAP despite having hemorrhoids.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • Dr. Han being fired at the end of "Trampoline" is very satisfying after all he put Shaun through.
  • Shaun standing up to Salen when he's demanded to leave the hospital, even though he initially quit, was absolutely awesome to see, given how uncomfortable she has made him over all the controversial changes at the hospital that led to his reaching breaking point.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Although the series uses the narrative structure of Patient of the Week, there still is a Myth Arc running through the series, which will make little sense if you haven't seen the pilot episode. Also, each season has a developing Story Arc with a Continuity Nod to earlier events. It's not as bad as some franchises, but it's one of those shows that viewers can't just easily jump into. The relationship between Shaun and Lea in particular is something that requires being watched in the correct order in which the episodes were released to make any sense to the viewer, especially given the sheer amount of Continuity Nod and Foreshadowing.
• Designated Villain: Powell is not exactly a fan-favorite character and while they don't condone her morally questionable decisions and history of defiance during her time as a resident, she doesn't do absolutely anything villainous other than advising Lim against taking the surgery that allowed her to walk again (and rekindle her friendship with Shaun, whom she blamed for causing her paralysis) and feeling ZERO guilt about it. The episode "Hot and Bothered" has Shaun treating Powell out of pure pettiness when he finds out she was the one who talked Lim out of taking his surgery, especially when they have to work together on a case. The two actively disagree on how to treat their patient, to the point that Shaun has had enough of Powell and removes her from the case, accusing her of undermining his authority by acting like if she knew more than he did. Shaun eventually reinstates her (per the patient's demands) and they both manage to be on equal footing thanks to their knowledge of ancient surgical history and part on good terms. While Shaun's frustration of Lim rejecting the surgery (and Powell's role in it) is quite understandable, Shaun blowing it out of proportion on Powell was totally out of line and unnecessary.
• Die for Our Ship: Lea receives a lot of hatred, for supposedly getting in the way between Carly and Shaun. Even when that relationship hadn't worked since before, and Lea only represented the last nail in the coffin.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Despite being Patient of the Week, Nathalie Beauchemin (portrayed by Meghan Heffern) and Kayley Parker (portrayed by Chelsea Allden) are characters the fandom want to make a return.
• Fan Nickname: Due to being played by Daniel Dae Kim, some have nicknamed Dr. Han as Dr. Gat.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Grey's Anatomy, sparked by star Ellen Pompeo referring to The Good Doctor as "some bullshit" on an Instagram livestream after seeing a promo for the show during a new Grey's episode. The fact that both medical series are from the same network, ABC, does not help either. The Good Doctor, which has been noted by real doctors to be more medically accurate than Grey's, subtly fired back during the Season 4 episode "Venga":
  Tiziana: We lived in the U.S. for a few years. Uh, my mother cleaned houses. I watched "Grey's Anatomy."
  Claire: (laughs) Oh. Well, being a surgeon is not much like that.
• Friendly Fandoms: With House, which is not surprising considering that both series are from the same creator and even have some of the same actors and actresses in guest roles.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The series is very popular in Brazil, to the point that it was the most watched foreign series in the Brazilian streaming Globoplay.
  • It is also very popular in Spain, to the point of having most of the most viewed videos on AXN Espana's Youtube channel (the television channel that broadcasts the series in the country). Highmore was invited to much rejoicement to Spanish talk show El Hormiguero, where he got to hear the Spanish dub and joked that his VA David Robles sounds even sexier than himself.
• Genius Bonus: The hospital is named after St. Bonaventure, who was known as a very clever man but humble and always practical. These are attributes of Shaun, but not Melendez, and the makings of a good doctor.
• Growing the Beard: The general consensus among fans is that Season 2 is better and more consistent than Season 1.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In Season 1, Jessica decides to end her relationship with Melendez because unlike him, she doesn't want children, and wants to give him a chance to be happy. This gets much worse when Melendez dies in an accident caused by an earthquake at the end of Season 3.
  • Kenny has become even less sympathetic in the wake of the actor who played him, Chris D'Elia, facing allegations of sexual misconduct in 2020.
  • The Season 2 two-parter "Quarantine" had the cast dealing with an unknown, airborne, and highly contagious virus that caused the hospital to go into lockdown. The episodes aired in December 2018 and January 2019, quite a ways off from the pandemic in the real world.
  • In "Take My Hand" (aired October 14, 2019), Glassman gets cold feet right before marrying Debbie and says, "I don't want to go two years and get divorced." They didn't even last that long. Debbie packs up and calls it quits in "Forgive or Forget", which aired 19 months later on May 24, 2021.
  • In "Mutations", Claire throws a makeshift prom for a teenage patient. Since the episode originally aired in January 2020, a sign reads, "PROM 2020". Many actual 2020 proms would end up being cancelled due to the soon-to-arrive pandemic. Also, the patient's date wears a face mask (due to his weak immune system). Had the patient herself been wearing one as well, one could easily assume the prom was taking place in the later part of 2020.
  • In "Fractured", Shaun, in a frantic state, after Carly doesn't take well him sleeping with Lea, telling Glassman that he thinks everyone, Glassman himself included, is going to leave him, only for Glassman, on the verge of tears, to emotionally respond "Don't ever say that about yourself!", reassuring Shaun by saying he could never leave him. However, it becomes a hard pill to swallow in Season 5 when Glassman goes "on vacation" to Montana in the midst of Salen's controversial takeover of the hospital, thus technically leaving Shaun when he needs Glassman the most, and Shaun's angry and totally justified "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Glassman for lying to him after a baby's death has a negative effect on him (alongside the changes Salen made to the hospital and Lea changing his scores after a patient's daughter rated him low and cruelly called him "weird") just makes it worse.
  • In Season 3 episode "Unsaid", upon seeing Lea passionately kissing her boyfriend, Carly jokes to Shaun that Lea will get pregnant that night, while Shaun replies that it won't happen because Lea uses condoms. This turns out to be tragic in Season 4, when Lea, who is now dating Shaun, becomes pregnant but ends up losing the child because of medical complications.
  • The two-part premiere of Season 4 was focused on the characters dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same week that the second episode aired, it was announced that Richard Schiff (Dr. Aaron Glassman) and Sheila Kelley (Debbie Wexler), who are also a couple in real life, were diagnosed with coronavirus, and their characters had to be written out of a few episodes in which they were planned to appear.
  • Season 4, Episode 3 leaps into the future with an opening of Freddie Highmore saying they wanted to present a "hopeful look at the time to come without masks" and a return to normalcy. The week the episode aired, most of the United States was seeing a new record high in COVID-19 cases as the pandemic was getting worse, not better.
  • The episode "The Uncertainty Principle" which aired on January 18, 2021, seemed like it was trying to discuss a futurology trend and/or satire cryologists, but then as of February 3, 2021, Dave Asprey, American tech entrepreneur went to the media about it, and it was much the same as in the show for the way his behavior was.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight: In Season 3 episode "Hurt", Steve's ghost (representing Shaun's subconscious) mocks Shaun for trying to save Lea from the rubble even after she has made it clear that she doesn't want to date him, and says "You're not her hero". In Season 4 episode "Forgive or Forget", Lea, who is now dating Shaun, asks him to pose for a photo saying he is "her hero".
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Dr. Glassman is played by Richard Schiff, best known for playing Toby Zeigler on The West Wing. On that show, Toby had a rabbi named Glassman.
  • At one point in Mucize Doktor, Damla asks Ali if he would like that another autistic doctor worked at the hospital, to which he replies that he never thought of that, but that his colleagues wouldn't have payed him a lot of attention anyway - although this doesn't happen at all. In the American adaptation, by Season 7 we're introduced to Charlie Lukaitis, an autistic doctor who is also as talkative and stubborn like Shaun, but is still given the same fair treatment by everyone around her (the very same treatment Shaun deserved to have since he started) despite her mistakes and Motor Mouth tendencies, something that visibly annoys Shaun, now an attending like Melendez (and his Turkish counterpart Ferman).
• Ho Yay:
  • Comes up several times with Morgan. Notably in an episode where she shows an unusually high level of emotional interest towards a female patient, and when she starts to take interest in Claire (a scene which occurred in a montage of romantic moments).
  • Many fans also ship Lim and Claire, although they are just best friends.
• Informed Wrongness:
  • In "Apple", Claire questions Lim's judgment, who assigns her to a racist patient as punishment. Not only does the patient make derogatory remarks about her, he actually throws his tray at her. And yet, when she asks to be transferred, her request is completely brushed off because it's a lesson about "not undermining authority". Claire may have been wrong to openly confront her superior, but she did apologize, and it's no reason for her concerns about treating a patient who openly assaulted her to be ignored.
  • Doctor Han may get a lot of hate for his treatment of Shaun, but he does make a lot of good points. He is rightfully worried about Shaun's ability to cope with the full responsibilities of being a surgeon, especially when it comes to dealing with the patients' emotions, something which Shaun has repeatedly shown to have tremendous difficulty with without constant supervision. His biggest flaw is coming in as an outsider with zero sentimentality towards our protagonist, and refusing to accept the opinions of Shaun's colleagues, who he feels are too close to the subject to be objective. It doesn't help that he is a very capable and accomplished physician whose presence elevates the competence of his staff (even if he is a massive hardass), and he was fired because he refused to comply with the order to reinstate one surgical resident, and not because he made any kind of catastrophic mistake that would warrant the sudden removal of a chief of surgery.
• Jerkass Woobie: Morgan is a pretty unpleasant person most of the time, but she also knows how to help and advise her co-workers when she wants to. Therefore, it's hard not to feel sorry for her when she sacrifices her professional career to save a pregnant woman at the finale of Season 3. Season 6 later reveals Morgan as a victim of sexual assault but did not press any charges against the man responsible as she hated the idea of being pitied because of it, something she ultimately regrets when she operates on a female patient who went through a similar incident. Now she will never know whether or not he's causing more harm to other women out there.
  • Asher. He’s could be pretty cynical and uptight. But damn, he did not deserve to die in the mid season 7.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: The show is 99% of the time a non-antagonist one, but there are some exceptions.
  • Kenny was heavily disliked for being an abysmal replacement to Lea after she temporarily left before returning permanently, and not actually giving a damn about Shaun. The writers realized this and had him written off through Shaun mentioning he got arrested for unspecific crimes.
  • Dr. Matt Coyle is universally hated for sexually harassing Claire at work, then refusing to own up to his actions and disregarding Jared's apologies and pleas to help him out in convincing Andrews to rehire him. While Coyle still works at the hospital, and the case built up by Claire about his infamous history of sexually harassing black female doctors goes nowhere, he does get transfered to another department, so at least he leaves her alone.
  • While she doesn't abuse him the way his father does, Shaun's mother Marcie definitely counts. She only sat there and watched how her violent husband Ethan physically and emotionally scarred her autistic son. Did she do anything about it, even after Shaun's brother died? NOPE! Marcie still stayed together with him regardless of the monster he is. Even when Shaun returned years later to see his terminally-ill father, this woman still sided with Ethan by claiming it was the morphine making him say those harsh hurtful words at his son...just after he forgave him! So yes, the fans were better off not having her around for further seasons, even when Lea, with Shaun's consent, decided not to invite her to their wedding.
  • There are also Lea's parents who are clearly far from being role models to her daughter and instead nothing but a pair of petty cynical jerks who passive-aggresively criticize her over the most trivial things, including her short-lived failed relationships (and...SURPRISE! marriage as revealed in Season 4) more often than not. When they formally meet Shaun, however, they get to the conclusion that he's no better than Lea's past boyfriends, especially because of his autism, and outright tell Lea not to date him. Fortunately, Shaun bats for Lea by pointing out how they keep judging her over that flaw. They even become overbearing when they find out about Lea's miscarriage and pressure her into coming back to Hershey for a while.
  • Some of the patients or the patients' relatives are this, from firmly disagreeing on how they want their surgeries to go, to the people accompanying the patient disregarding their wishes or behaving like jerks to the doctors assigned on their cases (with some refusing to take responsibility for their actions), even despite how said doctors actually try to do something to help them out of caring. Naturally, they get a pass when that party realizes just how wrong they were and how said actions, no matter how well-intended, were actually doing more harm than good (The most notable examples are Shaun facing prejudice from the parents of an autistic boy, who were only doing what they thought was best for his son, and Melendez naturally being offended at the thought of them banning Shaun from doing the surgery on him, or Claire helping Michelle, a girl with self-harm issues, but whose mother puts her under a lot of pressure by making her take care of some of her foster kids, only for the mother to demand to have Claire removed from the case by a visibly reluctant Lim just for going behind her back in encouraging Michelle to see a therapist, then Michelle responds by threatening to quit on the surgery unless Claire is allowed to do it. Even if their patients turned out well, it doesn't change the fact that they all overreacted and did not initially thank Shaun and Claire for their obviously good intentions).
  • For obvious reasons, Powell. She tends to get the most hate from the fans for constantly defying her superiors and encouraging Lim not to take the surgery that could cure her paralysis. The fact that Powell willingly admitted to it to a furious Shaun, as well as making it clear (on the day she finally gets fired) she doesn't regret any of her bad decisions, didn't help matters. She even at one point got ticked off by Asher's inquiry on her history as an amputee.
• Like You Would Really Do It:
  • The two-part finale of Season 3 tries desperately to make the viewer believe that Shaun's life is in danger. Shaun, the protagonist of the series. Obviously, he survives. Melendez, on the other hand...
  • The repeated times that Shaun's job gets threatened become this over time. While he did actually get fired briefly at the end of season 2, he came right back before the end of the season, and any further attempts with this drama have basically been a dry well.
• Memetic Badass: Dr. Han is seen as one, specifically due to his stoic reaction to Shaun's breakdown in Season 2. He often gets portrayed as a Chad and has gained an ironic fanbase who roots for him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • I AM A SURGEON!/Live Dr. Han Reaction^ExplanationIn 2023, Shaun's Season 2 breakdown in front of Dr. Han captured a surge of attention on social media... though not necessarily positive attention, as many found the scene unintentionally funny, often taking Dr. Han's side of the argument, and others used the scene as a springboard to discuss their dislike of the show and its portrayal of autism. The scene also became a popular subject for redraws, replacing Shaun and Han with a variety of characters in other works who are opposed to one another. It's also served as another variant of the "Soyjak vs Chad" meme due to Shaun's whiny expression contrasted with Han's stoic one (and large jaw).
    • Live Johnny Gat Reaction ^ExplanationA common edit is to alter Dr. Han into looking like Johnny Gat from the Saints Row series, as both are played by Daniel Dae Kim.
  • On Twitter, some have created as a Pun "I am a Sturgeon!" and post photoshops and cartoons of the fish pasted over Shaun or just sturgeons by themselves in other media.
  • Based Dr. Han ^Explanation In a similar vein, many people taking Dr. Han's side, as well as negative reaction to the clip of Shaun misgendering a trans patient and Daniel Dae Kim's good acts publicly led to a complete turn around reappraisal of his character as the Only Sane Man in the hospital.
  • Based Shaun/Surgeon ^ExplanationOn the flip side, you get transphobic people defending or even praising Shaun for misgendering a transgender girl and often ignoring that Shaun learns his lesson by the end of the episode.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • Shaun humiliating Lea should be seen as a cruel act, but that doesn't stop many fans from considering it an "awesome" moment.
  • The clip of Shaun repeatedly misgendering a transgender patient is frequently posted and applauded by transphobic people even though the episode is about Shaun learning to accept the patient's gender identity.
  • Non-fans/outsiders who only know the show through the "I AM A SURGEON!" memes believe Dr. Han is an Only Sane Man who only spoke against Shaun using reasonable concerns that someone outburst prone would risk patients' life. While this would be a reasonable complaint, this is not Han's true motivation for resenting Shaun, it comes instead from his own prejudice against autistic people and autism in general.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Ethan Murphy crosses it when he calls Shaun weak and blames him for Steve's death, just after Shaun had forgiven him. His Turkish equivalent does pretty much the same thing, but the scene becomes darker and scary with him calling poor Ali a "MURDERER" in his face while yelling at him that he should've been the one who died and not his brother.
  • Salen Morrison in Season 5, when she makes the decision of covering up an infant's death due to expired medicine, something that she herself indirectly caused for making budget cuts. All for the sake of protecting the hospital's image. She takes this to a new level when she fires and blackmails Glassman, Lim and Lea by threatening to release oppo research on them if they go public against her.
  • Damla from the Turkish show crossed it for purposefully revealing Ali and Nazli's relationship to Tanju, followed by him threatening to fire Ali thinking he would endanger patients while handling a relationship at the same time.
• Narm: Depending on the viewer, the show's dramatic moments can end up this way.
  • In "Islands: Part Two", Lea doing a Title Drop by asking Shaun if he is a good doctor. It is set in a moving scene, but the way she says it is so random and forced that it can make the viewer roll their eyes.
  • Glassman's ridiculously awful hairdo in the Season 1 finale "More" really hurts an otherwise heartwarming flashback scene between him and his young daughter.
  • Shaun's infamous "I AM A SURGEON!" rant from Season 2 became a meme in 2023, mainly due to Freddie Highmore's Inelegant Blubbering and melodramatic face.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Even though Shaun realizes his mistake by the end of the episode, many people still consider Shaun to be transphobic due to him repeatedly misgendering a transgender patient. This is made worse by many transgender individuals being on the autism spectrum, thus causing some viewers to find the excuse of Shaun's autism awkwardly funny at best and flimsy and odd at worst.
  • Fans also won't forgive Morgan for ruining any potential chance Claire had with Melendez by filing the favoritism complaint against him out of petty entitled jealousy. As if that wasn't bad enough, however, by the time Claire realizes she loves Melendez, all possibilities for them to be together were destroyed after Melendez dies at the end of the third season, though not before they mutually declare their feelings for each other, which also gives them more reason to be mad at Morgan, whose actions were nothing but petty. While Morgan does apologize and tells Claire she regretted filing the complaint, it took Claire and Melendez staging an argument in front of Morgan to make her believe that the complaint was causing more conflict.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Kenny, the new neighbor of Shaun who moved into the apartment of Lea after she moved out in the second half of Season 1. Although he seemingly acts nice to Shaun, it soon became clear that he was taking advantage of him. Kenny would break into Shaun's apartment by picking the lock, use Shaun's money to order Chinese food (which Shaun doesn't even like, so Kenny takes it all for himself), and makes Shaun pay hundreds of dollars for outings and dates with his girlfriend. Park tells Shaun that Kenny has a criminal record, but he disregards this, as he enjoys having a friend after Lea moved out and Dr. Glassman admitted that he cannot be a "friend" without acting as a father figure. Shaun finally gets the hint after Kenny "borrows" his 70-inch TV so he and his friends can watch sports and refuses to let Shaun join them because of his "quirks". The writers seem to have realized that the character was unsympathetic and that there was not much to do with him, since Kenny did not appear in Season 2, and Shaun revealed that he was arrested.
  • Dr. Danica Powell was presented in Season 6 as a less interesting substitute for Claire Browne. She befriended and bonded with Lim over her paralysis, even to the point of discouraging Lim from taking the surgery planned by Shaun. Powell would also gaslight Lim into not seeing her paralysis as being injured (to which Lim corrects her that she is) by taking her to recreative activities for disabled people and arranging dates with wheelchair-bound men. This contrasts entirely with how Claire previously helped Lim with her PTSD in Season 4. She also had the gall to use her friendship with Lim to get off the hook after her unauthorized surgery on her paroled friend Vince was discovered.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Morgan was instantly hated by the fanbase after her debut late in Season 1 due to her selfish, over-competitive, no-filter attitude towards the other residents. When Claire tries to make polite conversation with her during their first surgery together, Morgan immediately drops a bomb on her by saying, "You and I are not going to be friends." She was even worse with Shaun. When he asked her if she respects him, she outright says "no", in front of Dr. Lim, no less. Thankfully, she became much more likable over the course of Season 2 and Season 3, forming a much friendlier and personal bond with Claire, and gaining a better understanding of how to communicate with Shaun. Although she still has her cruel and selfish moments occasionally, she is now on good terms with the rest of the characters.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: Some fans think this of Shaun and Lea in Season 3. Although the two have had several Ship Tease moments in the first two seasons, the writers have finally decided to create conflicts between the two, forcing them to admit that they are in love with each other. The problem is that it ends up consuming a good part of the second half of the season, spending precious time that could be spent on other plots.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • Lea is a Nice Girl who has feelings for her friend Shaun, but is not willing to have a relationship with him, because she does not think she is capable of dealing with his autism. The series clearly tries to portray Lea's situation as understandable and without moral judgments. Still, much of the fandom sees her as a "bitch" who discriminates Shaun for his autism and that Shaun was perfectly justified when he humiliated her and almost destroyed her car.
  • Due to the memes, Shaun ends up suffering from this, with many people calling him racist, sexist, transphobic, or even xenophobic, forgetting that many of those clips are taken out of context, Shaun just does in an innocently insensitive way and Shaun usually learns his lesson for the end of the episode.
• Rooting for the Empire: Dr. Han has found a large fanbase among detractors of the show, who think his criticisms of Shaun were justified.
• The Scrappy:
  • Taryn in Season 4, one of the two mothers whose sons got hospitalized because of a political protest they attended, is found very annoying, especially when she yells at the doctors for their supposed incompetence, during which she almost pushes a pregnant Lea. When Shaun comes to her rescue and she deduces they are dating, Taryn makes a rude comment about them based on her son's life. Ironically, the fact that she appeared in one of the season's most hated episodes didn't help matters. She does redeem herself by offering to donate blood for the other mother's son, and both mothers are at peace in the end.
  • Salen Morrison in Season 5 was almost instantly hated by much of the fanbase upon her takeover of the hospital. Any respect other fans still had for her was lost after the events of "Expired".
  • Emily Song in Season 5, the daughter of an Asian patient, was also disliked for giving Shaun a low rating, and (while most of her concerns were not entirely inaccurate), she did call him "weird". This causes Lea to delete this and most of Shaun's other negative reviews, causing his average rating to go up, which lifts Shaun's spirits before he finds out the truth. Arguably, Lea's actions makes her responsible for Shaun's later breakdown in the episode "Expired" and almost ruining of his engagement with Lea when the truth comes out.
  • Dr. Danica Powell, introduced in Season 6, is disliked by most fans. In her first two episodes, she makes decisions that could have both been grounds for termination (refusing to participate in a xenotransplant to take a stand against animal rights, and releasing a mentally-unstable patient from her restraints). She also gets angry with Asher after he curiously inquires her about her time in the military, accusing him of undermining her as a disabled female. Her influence on Lim's refusal of surgery to possibly fix her paralysis only led to more hate in the fandom, and fans are also accusing Powell of rushing and even gaslighting Lim into accepting her new lifestyle, including forcing her to accept dates from wheelchair-bound men. In "The Good Boy", she gets fired after calling out of work to secretly perform surgery at her home on an old friend who violated parole, and Asher gets probation after she drags him into it. Despite the consequences, she is satisfied that everything turned out well for her friend.
  • Damla, the new resident from Mucize Doktor (who does not appear to be based on anyone from The Good Doctor), is absolutely despised, not only for her hardhearted attitude and showing no interest in befriending her coworkers, but also because she agreed to become Tanju's informant who would report back to him any mistake Ali made and have him fired. This came to a heat when Damla had the gall to reveal Ali's relationship with Nazli to an infuriated Tanju, which resulted in the viewers hating her more than ever before for such low blow. Even when Nazli confronted her about it, Damla showed no guilt or remorse, nor did she apologize for her behavior or own up to her actions.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Although it had some praised episodes like "Friends and Family" and "Hurt", Season 3 received backlash from some fans for an increased focus on romance drama, with more of Shaun's struggles now being on his love life rather than his social and professional lives. Criticism increased after the writers made some controversial decisions in the season finale, more specifically, the sudden death of Melendez, and Shaun and Lea finally becoming a couple.
  • Season 4 is receiving criticism for a few reasons. First, for introducing four new residents to the series, which many fans accuse of being uninteresting or irritating, spending an absurd amount of time that could be devoted to the main characters (the show alleviates this as the season progresses when two of the new residents leave). Also, some fans are not keen on multiple episodes this season focusing on politics (particularly "Irresponsible Salad Bar Practices", which has the lowest user rating of the series on IMDB). However, Noah Galvin's character and Story Arc are praised for being realistic.
• She Really Can Act: Some fans were pleasantly surprised by Paige Spara's performance in the emotional scene of Lea and Shaun confessing their feelings for each other in the episode "Autopsy", as well as the scene in "Dr. Ted" where she learns that her and Shaun's baby will not survive.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat:
  • Fans want Shaun with Claire, Lea or Carly (although in the case of Shaun and Claire, their fans decreased considerably as their interactions decreased and more fans started to ship her with Melendez). Some fights between these fans on the internet can get ugly. Very ugly.
  • There are also fights between those who want Melendez with Lim and those who want Melendez with Claire. Unfortunately, this dilemma ended in a tragic way in Season 3.
• Signature Scene: Shaun's emotional breakdown at the season 2 finale alongside Dr. Han. In context, it is an intense and heartbreaking scene due to Shaun being effectivelly fired for being autistic, on top of everything he went through to get where he was. In meta however, It's easily the biggest Memetic Mutation of the show and the scene non-viewers are more likely to identify.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus among critics is that The Good Doctor is a remake of House, but with an infinitely more likable protagonist (it doesn't help that both series are from the same creator). If you don't mind that, the show might please you, especially because of Freddie Highmore's performance.
• Squick:
  • A painful boil on a teenage girl's labia.
  • The Season 3 premiere, "Disaster", has a patient of Glassman's who turns out to have rotting feet, complete with live maggots.
• Strawman Has a Point: Andrews willingly takes on the high-profile case of Nellie, a former pop star, who wants her voice back at any cost. However, Shaun rightfully points out the risks it involves, only to be continually ignored, as to please Salen and feed his own ego, also accusing him of being irrational just because he's upset over his fight with Lea for changing his survey results. Ultimately, after talking to Glassman, Shaun finally agrees to assist in the surgery even if it means Nellie would likely die. During the surgery, Shaun's warnings are proven right when Nellie suddenly flatlines, so he calls Andrews out for not listening to him...until her heart rate returns to normal and her BP rises. She survived thanks to her clotting factors. But Shaun says they only got luck and the surgery was still a failure. Even Andrews seems to recognize this when Shaun announces that he's quitting for Salen changing him to the worst before anything like that ends up happening to him.
• Take That, Scrappy!:
  • The writers seem to have realized that fans hated Kenny for the way he treated Shaun in Season 1, considering that he not only disappears in Season 2, but Shaun even says that Kenny was arrested.
  • Damla (from Mucize Doktor) got roasted by Ferman for messing with Ali, even threatening to fire her if she dared continue this behavior. Luckily, the writers have acknowledged the tremendous hatred and ire Damla earned from the audience that they decided to write her off the show. The first episode of Season 2 had Tanju revealing that Damla quit on her own because of a job offer at another hospital.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: David Shore has a tendency to repeat ideas from his previous medical series, House.
  • Many fans immediately realized the huge similarities between the Season 3 finale and the Season 6 finale of House, especially the fact that in both cases, the protagonist tries to save a woman in a ruined building, does an amputation, and the whole tragedy ends up making the protagonist and his love interest finally become a couple.
  • In Season 4, the main plot is that Shaun and his colleagues have to teach four new residents throughout the season and finally choose one of them to join the team. This is basically the same arc of House Season 4.
  • And then there's the first half of Season 5 with Salen Morrison, a greedy businesswoman who tries to take over the hospital, becomes an enemy of the staff, and then ends up quietly leaving with no real climax. This is remarkably similar to the Edward Vogler subplot in Season 1 of House . Which is quite bizarre given the fact that Vogler only existed thanks to Executive Meddling and both Shore and a lot of the writers disliked him as a character.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Melendez. For many fans, Melendez's death in the finale of Season 3 deprived the series of one of the best characters in the series who had a great Character Development. In addition, many fans were in favor of him and Claire becoming a couple, mainly because of the signs that came from Season 1 and their plot in Season 3, and are disappointed that this will never happen.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In Season 1, after being sexually harassed by Dr. Coyle, Claire vowed to ruin his career by tracking down former female colleagues of his. At the end of "Seven Reasons", she meets one who confesses that she was also harassed by Dr. Coyle, and it is implied that the women will work together to expose his behavior. This plot is never mentioned again for the rest of the series.
  • In Season 1, there was the subplot of Andrews and his wife visiting specialists to overcome fertility issues so they can have a child. The situation is never mentioned again in later seasons and Andrews has made no mention of having any children since then.
  • In the Season 3 episode "Friends and Family", Shaun decides to visit his parents after discovering that his father is dying and wants to ask for his forgiveness. To help him, Shaun invites the people he trusts most, Glassman and Lea. Although they both help Shaun during the trip, they don't have any interaction with Shaun's parents other than just looking at them from a distance. Shaun's parents never argue with Glassman about how Shaun was raised in his care, and don't even show any curiosity about who is the woman with their son. Also, some fans feel that the writers have wasted an opportunity for Lea to defend Shaun and make a "The Reason You Suck" Speech for his parents.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Dr. Han in Season 2 is intended to be an antagonistic and abrasive character towards Shaun, but a lot of points he raises have some merit, such as letting a outburst-prone doctor on the autism spectrum perform surgeries on patients, thus putting them at greater risk, and later questioning Dr. Andrews about using Shaun to score some diversity points rather than using his more useful talents in diagnostics to their maximum potential.
  • Lea in Season 3. Although she has gained dislike from some fans (as you can see below) for rejecting the possibility of a romantic relationship with Shaun, many fans believe that she has good arguments. Since the first season she has proven to be a troubled person, and Shaun has also proven to bother her on more than one occasion with his actions. There is also the fact that even Carly sometimes lost her patience with Shaun during the period they were dating. Shaun responding to Lea's rejection with anger and in a way that sounds almost abusive (even briefly considering destroying her car) doesn't help either.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Glassman's subplot in "First Case, Second Base" is about him being uncomfortable with Debbie owning a gun. But since his reasons for being uncomfortable are never properly explained, he just comes across as whiny.
    • She pointed a gun on him when he came home once, so he had plenty of reason to be upset with her.
  • Carly breaking up with Shaun for realizing that he loves Lea has upset some fans, who think she is overreacting and even being manipulative with Shaun by insisting on something he claimed (until that moment) that was not true.
  • Shaun became that to some fans because of the way he reacted to being rejected by Lea in Season 3. For them, the fact that he continues to insist on trying to win her over after she makes it clear that she just wants to be her friend can be compared to the behavior of a creepy stalker. The fact that he even considered breaking Lea's car at the height of his anger does not help.
  • Powell was already hated since her first appearance in Season 6 for making decisions that could've got her fired right on the spot. However, she became this for encouraging Lim not to do the surgery to cure her paralysis, yes, the very same one that Shaun was planning to carry out in an effort to make it up for her. By doing that, not only had she managed to get Lim to outright reject it, but she didn't even consider Shaun's negative feelings about this as all he ever wanted was to fix his frienship with Lim, who has been blaming him for the outcome of her operation back when she was stabbed by Villanueva's abusive ex.
  • Charlie in "Critical Support" became this as many found both her thin-skinned demeanor at Shaun and accusation of interrupting her just because she was interrupting him to be a Never My Fault case, merely based on her autism, rather than a justified complaint. It didn't help matters that Charlie filed a complaint against Shaun out of pure entitlement at the end of "Who at Peace" just because he kicked her out of the OR a second time.
• Viewers in Mourning: Melendez's death felt very strong in some parts of the fandom, to the point that many viewers threaten not to watch the fourth season, if they do not revive him in some way.
• Win Back the Crowd: Season 5 is generally more well-received than the season before it. Despite the departure of fan-favorite Claire as a series regular, fans consider Season 5 the point where the show is headed back to its roots, with more focus on Shaun's medical expertise akin to the early seasons, and a better balance of focus between that and Shaun and Lea's relationship. The episodes "Expired" and "The Family" are considered some of the best episodes of the series by many fans.
• The Woobie: Where do we start?
  • Shaun suffered prejudice all his life for being autistic, having a drunk father who abused him physically and emotionally, an absent and negligent mother, and a caring brother who unfortunately died in childhood. When the series begins with him as an adult at the clinic, his life is still problematic, including co-workers and bosses who despise or distrust him, his mentor and father figure having cancer, and a very turbulent relationship with his neighbor and roommate with whom he is in love with.
  • Claire, who is sexually harassed by a co-worker and loses her mother in a car accident on the very night that she has her first surgery. After that last event, she ends up entering a phase of depression and self-destruction, needing the help of her co-workers to escape this. And then she falls in love with her boss Melendez... only for him to die in a tragic way at the end of Season 3.
  • Dr. Glassman, who lost a daughter, ends up having cancer (though he beats it), goes through two failed marriages, loses his house in a fire, and loses his career as a surgeon after he is discovered to have permanently-damaged brain tissue.
  • Lea. Behind the facade of a woman who is always confident and smiling, she is clearly broken inside. Her brother blames her for the disaster involving their shop, she is insecure, constantly changing jobs and boyfriends. And she ends up falling in love with her best friend and roommate Shaun, but thinks she is unworthy of him because of her messy personality, and for not believing that she would be able to deal with his autism.

---