Chicago Med's Director Wanted S8 Episode 20's Dual Deliveries To Be 'Tasteful'
Contains spoilers for "Chicago Med" Season 8, Episode 20 — "The Winds of Change Are Starting to Blow"
After eight seasons, one might surmise the doctors on "Chicago Med" have been through it all, but its latest outing proved there's always more for the team to learn. It was a jam-packed episode, including a cancer survivor who ran out of luck despite the best efforts of the team using OR 2.0. However, the real highlight for most fans was likely the sequence where Dr. Hannah Archer (Jessy Schram) delivered a baby while Dean Archer (Steven Weber) was tasked with removing a six-foot-long tapeworm from the woman's husband.
It's an intriguing development on its own, but the way in which the scenes were cut together was even more interesting. The episode's director, Nikki Taylor-Roberts, spoke with Cinema Blend about bringing those moments together and making sure they played off one another well even though there are very different emotions associated with each procedure. She explained, "I tried to be tasteful about it, because those are two different things. [laughs] I'm trying to be careful with my words here, but giving birth is not like having a parasite and delivering a parasite. But for some who have struggled, maybe it feels like that!" It certainly led to some memorable moments, and Taylor-Roberts continued about how she learned a great deal about parasite extraction through the process.
The dual deliveries brought a lot of relief to the parents
A baby should be a welcome occasion for both parents. A tapeworm, on the other hand, is likely to bring about a lot of anxiety. The episode cutting back and forth between the dual procedures was an interesting one because it was bound to create some form of whiplash in viewers. They may have been happy to see a woman give birth but disgusted at the thought of a six-foot-long parasite being pulled out of someone. Nikki Taylor-Roberts was well aware of this and wanted to do justice to both sequences because they're both major moments: "I was trying to be tasteful about how I showed that, and shared that they're both exciting moments for both individuals: one because [the husband] will get relief of this medical mystery, and the wife is gonna get relief too of all the trouble she's been having, but it's a child."
Naturally, seeing the baby was probably a nice palate cleanser for viewers who didn't want to think about whether they could be harboring any parasites in their own bodies. Taylor-Roberts thought that way, considering she had to do quite a bit of research on the topic on the episode: "Going into the research behind parasites, I learned a lot of stuff that I didn't want to know about tapeworms, tapeworm extraction, and how a person just doesn't know that they have one and how common it is."
It's best not to linger too much on the tapeworm storyline, but it definitely made for engaging television. And with "Chicago Med" having been renewed for Season 9, fans can look forward to plenty of other interesting, unique cases in the near future.