Written by Brad Falchuk And Manny Coto And Austin Elliott
Directed by Matt Spicer
Dr Nostrum (to Claire): "I couldn't agree with you any more. What we're doing here is awful but the end result? Oh my goodness, we're gonna save thousands of lives."
An episode entirely in black and white for no reason whatsoever and titled after the unnecessary rebeanding of a certain app? I'm not saying those things are connected because they're not. The title of course was related to a mystery ward of course.
Our protagonist of the piece was a young nurse named Claire Michaels (Mia Isaac). A nurse who nearly let a mother of a cancer stricken boy leave the hospital due to the latter being unable to afford a life saving opportunity for her son. Then there was kindly Dr Nostrum (Henry Winkler) who wanted to help for free.
Of course this was an offer that seemed far too good to be true and when a patient named Alice (Amy Ruggiero) ended up killing the unfortunate Justin (Trenton Hudson), things started to get a lot stranger in the hospital. Strange enough for Claire to start asking questions. Not necessarily ones that she would be prepared to grasp the answers for.
Yes, her fellow co-worker, Lilly (Jennifer Ferrin) killed herself while giving Claire a cryptic warning. However, it was Nostrum himself who revealed that the mystery Ward X was a place of horrifying experiments to try and cure cancer. He failed to get Claire on board with his grand scheme and she succeeded in getting the mother and son from earlier in the episode away from him.
The depths of Ward X though felt like they were pulling from the Asylum season of the main show itself. We got to see patients experimented on as well as a poor security guard named Malcolm (Dyllon Burnside). Even when Claire managed to get one over on Nostrum, this episode still had a rather unpleasant twist.
I really was hoping that Claire would actually succeed in her mission to stop the Springheel project but it definitely wasn't meant to be. Of course it went beyond Nostrum and her fate at the very last moment definitely felt a bit too much. It would've been nice for her to have had a win but apparently not.
- Claire's mother died of cancer when she was young. Nostrum tried and failed to use that fact to get her on side.
- The black and white format reminded me of the parent show experimenting with the idea for the Death Valley segment of Double Feature.
- After years of his son directing for this franchise, Henry Winkler appeared in an episode not directed by Max. I hope the main show can get him too.
- Chronology: As with every episode this season, this was another contemporary one.
For the most part, I found X to be rather decent. Saying that, the downbeat endings this season have almost felt a bit too much and this one might have benefitted from Claire getting some kind of win. Good performances from Mia Isaac and Henry Winkler.
Rating: 6 out of 10
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