‘Brilliant Minds’ Season 2 Episode 13 Recap: “The Rabbit Hole”

By
Rebecca Murray
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Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 13 Recap
Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf and Tamberla Perry as Dr. Carol Pierce in ‘Brilliant Minds’ season 2 episode 13 (Photo by: Pief Weyman/NBC)

NBC’s Brilliant Minds season two, episode 13, begins with a sorority conducting a ritual. Sorority sister Nora (Malia Pyles) arrives and begins parroting everything they say.

(The following is a recap of season two, episode 13, “The Rabbit Hole,” and there are spoilers.)

Sofia (Sarah Steele) is fulfilling her half of the deal, filling Oliver (Zachary Quinto) in on his dad’s time in Mongolia. That’s where they met. It’s Oliver’s turn, and he asks about her symptoms. She hasn’t slept for a few days, and he suggests they run some tests.

Once he arrives at the hospital, Oliver can’t help but discuss Josh’s new boyfriend, Beau, with Carol (Tamberla Perry). Carol refuses to be in the middle of this whole thing. She’s just happy that Josh is happy. Carol reluctantly explains that Josh and Beau broke up the first time they dated because Josh didn’t want kids. Now he’s ready.

A man rushes into Emergency holding his child who can’t breathe. Dr. Anthony Thorne (John Clarence Stewart) helps him, asking what might have brought this on. The dad’s upset because his ex is going to assume he did something wrong.

Meanwhile, Dana (Aury Krebs) approaches Oliver to see if she can switch from having Carol as her mentor. She claims Carol’s too busy, but Oliver turns her down. He hates paperwork and grants, so Dana’s stuck with Carol. (Oliver doesn’t know that Dana’s responsible for Carol’s suspension.)

Sorority sisters surround Erika (Ashleigh LaThrop), trying to find out what’s happening with Nora. Ericka promises to check on her and just then, Nora hops through the hallway, imitating a bunny.

Josh (Teddy Sears) confesses to Carol that he didn’t tell Beau about Oliver. Things are going well, and he’s concentrating on moving forward. “Tell that man the truth, Joshua,” says Carol, adding, “Do not start your future with a lie.”

Ericka presents Nora’s case to Oliver, and when Oliver asks Nora if she knows why she’s in the hospital, she repeats, “The world is infinitely possible.” She has cuts on her hands, but when Oliver asks about them, she suddenly stands up and claps in his face. Instead of explaining why she did it, she says, again, “The world is infinite possibility.”

Oliver tells her to resist when he tries to lift her arms, but she does the exact opposite. She mimics his arm movements as Ericka takes notes. Oliver, Dana, Ericka, and Nico (Al Calderon) go over the results, and Oliver determines she’s catatonic. All of her demonstrated behaviors are features of catatonia; you can be catatonic even if you are reactive, despite how it’s portrayed in films.

They need more tests to see if this is her first psychotic break or if there’s something else going on. But first they have to treat her catatonia immediately, and that requires benzodiazepines. 

Dana, Nico, and Ericka question Nora’s sorority sisters who spill the tea on Nora’s ex-boyfriend, Ben. Nothing else they say is really helpful at all.

Sofia shows up for the tests Oliver wants to run, and she’s full of interesting tidbits on his dad. Josh briefly interrupts, but Oliver’s short with him and sends him away. After he’s gone, Oliver fills Sofia in on their complicated relationship.

Nora’s labs are normal so there’s probably not an underlying organic cause. Carol points out that Nora’s age is when people would experience their first psychotic break. Just as Oliver says he can’t reach her family, the benzos work and Nora starts talking. 

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 13 Recap
Ericka Lenorera as Virginia and Malia Pyles as Nora Sutton in ‘Brilliant Minds’ season 2 episode 13 (Photo by: Pief Weyman/NBC)

Nora’s responsive but agitated. She starts yelling for Virginia, but none of the doctors have any idea who Virginia is. Suddenly, Nora becomes catatonic again.

Oliver, Carol, Dana, and Ericka discuss the case, and Oliver suggests ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) might help. Oliver also thinks Virginia might be the key. Ericka learned from Nora’s friends that Virginia’s in one of Nora’s classes. However, she’s GDI—gosh darn independent. Dana thinks they can track down Virginia through Nora’s phone.

Josh calls Nico in to find out how Neuro’s doing, but actually to get the scoop on Oliver. Nico confesses he really likes Oliver, much more than he anticipated. Nico also confesses that he heard about their history and that he couldn’t see them together, because one’s a Cancer and the other is a Gemini. But now… he can definitely see it. Josh insists he’s seeing someone else.

Anthony calls Carol in to help with the feuding exes who are arguing over their son Owen’s medical emergency. The kid’s doing okay, but the parents are battling it out as Carol introduces herself. She gets them to calm down, and Anthony confirms that Owen can be discharged soon. They’ll send him home with an EpiPen, but he needs to see an allergist. Anthony believes a new food allergy caused the kid to stop breathing, so it’s no one’s fault.

Suddenly, the mom begins having difficulty breathing and Anthony calls for another epi push.

Nico, Ericka, and Dana go through Nora’s phone and her different social media accounts and can’t find Virginia. Nico has other work to do and leaves after reminding Dana he has grant paperwork for her to complete. Dana uses her phone to find out if she can ethically accept mentorship from someone who doesn’t know she reported them to HR. The response – that it’s a really deep, important question – sounds exactly like what Nora said earlier in response to Oliver’s question.  Dana suddenly realizes that Virginia is an AI chatbot marketed to young women!

Ericka prints out Nora’s chats and shows them to Oliver, who doesn’t understand any of this AI stuff. He wants to start the ECT while he dives into the chats and sends Ericka and Dana to Nora’s sorority house.

The chats start out with just questions about her school assignments and help with reports. But they became more personal and confirm Nora was confiding in Virginia, telling her things she couldn’t tell her family or her sorority sisters. It’s revealed that her sister always says the world is infinite possibility.

The transcript also shows Nora was working on building a model that would bend spacetime to her will. She wanted everything to go back to how it was. Oliver’s shocked that sometimes Virginia gives good advice. But he’s taken aback when Nora asks about Virginia, and she calls herself a nerd with too much trivia in her head. (Oliver expected her to say she’s a computer.)

Nora wanted to create an alternate timeline and Virginia encouraged her, pledging to help.

As Dana and Ericka look around Nora’s place, the talk turns to Carol and being a mentor. Ericka suggests Dana should just come clean and that Carol can take it. They discover whatever it was that Nora was building in a closet, and it indicates a date of November 28, 2025.

Oliver reads the chat logs from November 28th and finds that Nora asked Virginia about Ewing sarcoma. Virginia rattled off facts that Oliver disputes, including the life expectancy and treatment survival rate. Virginia’s facts are outdated.

The ECT worked, Nora comes out of the catatonia, and Oliver orders a full body scan now that he’s aware of the cancer diagnosis. But it turns out Nora’s sister is the one with cancer, and that’s why she’s so upset. Nora admits that Virginia told her they could fix it by creating an alternate timeline. Virginia made the crazy idea sound possible.

When Nora’s time machine failed, she became catatonic. Oliver confesses that he didn’t know Google and AI were different until today, and it seems Virginia is Nora’s best friend now.

Back in the emergency department, Anthony informs Owen’s parents that Owen and his mom, Simone, were bitten by a tick in Martha’s Vineyard. Owen’s dad didn’t even know they had traveled out of state. Anthony’s forced to pull the parents aside to warn them not to fight in front of Owen.

“Put your junk aside or one day you’re going to wake up and that kid won’t be talking to you at all,” warns Anthony.

Brilliant Minds Season 2 Episode 13 Recap
Aury Krebs as Dr. Dana Dang and Tamberla Perry as Dr. Carol Pierce in ‘Brilliant Minds’ season 2 episode 13 (Photo by: Pief Weyman/NBC)

Dana comes clean and tells Carol she reported her, and Carol admits she knows. Carol assures Dana she would never jeopardize the well-being of her patients and believes Dana will come to see that as they work together on the grant.

Josh is looking at an email from Beau about egg donors when Oliver barges in. He thinks Josh must have been in a frat because he has an affinity for sameness.

Carol suggests Nora take a break from AI and spend time with the real people in her life. A short while later, Nora’s sister, Crystal, visits and doesn’t look sick. She’s feeling pretty good and reveals she’s not dying; her medical team believes she’ll survive this. Virginia was wrong and Ericka reminds Nora not to blindly trust AI.

Nurse Nico Silva inadvertently breaks the news to Oliver that Dana is the one who reported Carol! Oliver immediately rushes to Carol’s office, upset that Dana did this and upset that Carol didn’t tell him she knew who reported her. Carol informs him this wasn’t about him and that Dana wasn’t wrong in doing what she did. (When Oliver barged in, he called Dana a snake.)

Oliver’s hurt Carol didn’t confide in him, and she admits she’s been worried about him because he’s been off, personally. She points out he let his ferns die and stopped swimming.

Later, Oliver commiserates with Sofia in a bar, drinking and talking about Carol and Dana. “God, I hate everybody,” says Oliver, adding, “except for you.” They dance, Oliver at first reluctantly and then totally losing himself in the music.

Oliver’s voiceover warns that sometimes you make a new friend who feels like the connection you need, but you fail to see the warning signs. That’s followed by a flashforward one week to Oliver walking the halls of Hudson Oaks.  He finds Sofia in a room and says he’s there to save her. She confesses she knew he’d come.

 

 

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