NBC’s Brilliant Minds celebrates the spookiest day of the year with season two, episode six, “The Doctor’s Graveyard.” Charlie (Brian Altemus) takes the interns to a haunted house as a team-building activity, and Ericka (Ashleigh LaThrop) points out that depictions of padded rooms and straitjackets make it more difficult for people to ask for help. Everyone else is into it.
(The following is a recap of season two episode six and contains spoilers!)
A chainsaw-wielding psycho spooks the group, causing them to split up. Van (Alex MacNicoll) and Jacob (Spence Moore II) end up in a mirror maze, and Dana (Aury Krebs) and Charlie wind up together. Ericka has to handle the haunted house alone. Unfortunately, she’s trapped in an elevator, which is the worst-case scenario after her recent experience in one. She panics and runs out, straight into Jacob’s arms. He assures her he’s got her as an actor, portraying a mental patient in a straitjacket, cackles.
Meanwhile, Oscar (Zachary Quinto) hears a knock on his door and thinks it’s his dad. No one’s there. He spots a dead woman and freaks out. Fortunately, it’s just a dream and he wakes up, shaken.
A 30-year-old man is brought without vitals after spending time in an ice bath. The EMTs have tried to revive him for 30 minutes, but Jacob wants a normal temperature before calling it.
Nurse Nico Silva (Al Calderon) walks around confiscating any costumes, reminding everyone they’re unprofessional. Dana thinks that Nurse Silva is killing the Halloween spirit, while Ericka notes that the third person has just died in Room 313 this week. “The curse continues,” says Dana. Josh (Teddy Sears) insists curses aren’t real and won’t let them take the room out of rotation. Oh, but then Josh won’t let them move one of his patients into it. So, is it cursed or not, Josh?
A process server hands Josh papers, and Oliver points out that maybe the curse is real.
Even Carol (Tamberla Perry) is working on Halloween, which is unusual since she loves costume parties. She reveals that she is not interested in Halloween this year because she always dressed up in a couple’s costume with Morris.
Oliver overhears a man refusing to believe his boss, Cyrus (Arian Moayed)—the man who was brought in unresponsive—is dead. Jacob describes Cyrus’ condition and that even after being warmed up, he doesn’t have any vitals. Oliver checks him out and has EMT Katie Rodriguez (Mishel Prada) hold compressions. When she does, Cyrus springs back to life. His assistant, Thomas (Varun Saranga), declares, “Oh my god, he did it! He beat death!”
A short while later, Oliver runs him through a series of tests and says he’s in pretty good shape. That is, considering he was dead for an hour this morning. Cyrus says he does ice baths to stimulate the vagus nerve, but this morning he was in it just a few minutes before everything went blank. He believes the cold shocked his heart into arrhythmia.
Cyrus brags about his penis, isn’t happy about a 119/78 blood pressure reading, and declares he’s on a no-sugar diet. Thomas confirms they’re obsessed with data, and his job is to monitor Cyrus’ body.
Cyrus is a biohacker, and Charlie explains they’re normally men obsessed with monitoring their bodies under the belief they can live forever. Dana corrects him and says women do it too, and biohackers want to increase their quality of life. As they talk, they’re munching on Halloween goodies—which biohackers would never do. Oliver realizes this and stops eating.
They need to figure out what happened to Cyrus in the first place.
Ericka spots Sam (Nabil Rajo) in the ER waiting room and he admits the holidays are lonely. That’s why he’s there.
Carol’s called in for a psych consult on a man dressed as a creepy clown. She refuses to handle the case. “I do not do clowns!” she says, backing away.
It turns out Josh was served because of Oliver’s case involving Sarah, the teenager who thought she was pregnant. Oliver ran dozens of tests to prove she wasn’t, and her parents don’t want to pay. Despite the dollar amount, Oliver believes it’s a win because he saved them the cost of therapy later. Plus, that was before he was told to rein in expenses.
After Josh leaves, Oliver thinks he sees the same dead patient he saw earlier standing behind the door.
Charlie and Dana report that Cyrus might just be the healthiest man in New York, so why did he pass out in his ice bath? However, his labs come back, and his hemoglobin is super high. Their conversation’s interrupted when Thomas nearly passes out in front of them while climbing the stairs. He manages to say something about blood and Cyrus.
Charlie and Oliver rush to Cyrus’ room and find Cyrus in the middle of a blood transfusion. The blood is Thomas’, which is why he fainted. They’re running tests on Thomas, and Oliver points out that whatever illness Thomas has could also affect Cyrus. But Cyrus doesn’t think so; he ran extensive background checks on Thomas before hiring him. His blood is perfect.
Oliver asks why he’s doing this, and Cyrus reveals he was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago. After he went into remission, he used all the energy he expended to fight the disease to optimize his body. Oliver warns him biohacking might have been what stopped his heart. Cyrus insists it’s what saved him.
Josh gathers Oliver’s team, and they admit to having enjoyed working on Sarah’s case. They’re giggly over it, and Josh cuts to the chase, listing all the tests they ran. Suddenly, Josh shuts up, leans over his desk, and spits out a tooth. Dana can’t stop herself from saying, “The curse!”
Charlie asks Thomas what he believes happened to Cyrus, and Thomas insists what he’s doing for Cyrus isn’t a sacrifice. Charlie points out all the things he’s missing and that he’ll regret not living his own life. He gets Thomas to admit that Cyrus is on a low dose of the immunosuppressant rapamycin.
Carol calls on Van to use his mirror touch to help with the clown that’s she’s terrified of. She finally admits she doesn’t need his mirror touch ability; she needs him to make sure she doesn’t get murdered.
The lights are off in the patient’s room, and they stand outside with a flashlight, calling out, “Hello.” The clown suddenly appears at the glass door, freaking them both out and making Carol run off. Van chases after Carol.
Cyrus is trying to get his steps in around the floor when he collapses, knocking a tray of syringes over. As he seizes, the syringes move toward his hand on their own. It turns out he has magnets in his fingers. He must have seized in the ice bath, but they still don’t know why. Oliver orders a contrast CT, since they can’t use an MRI when metal’s involved.
Ericka gives Sam a nurse’s lasagna and watches as he tells the voices in his head to shut up. She wants him to stay a few days, explaining he would be provided meals and get to talk to a psychiatrist. Sam agrees to think about it.
Oliver is shocked Carol’s scared of clowns, and she reminds him she’s not alone. He wonders how people overcome their traumas and reveals the backstory on the dead woman he’s been seeing. She was a patient who had headaches and confusion and was diagnosed with a grade three tumor in her frontal lobe. Oliver stayed on the case, and she always warned him not to go soft on her. She was determined to beat it. She died in the hospital on Halloween, and that still haunts him. He kicks himself for never asking her what the minimum quality of life was that she would accept.
Charlie brings Oliver the results of Cyrus’ scans and they aren’t good. Oliver breaks the news to Cyrus that he has a brain mass. Right now, they don’t know what it is. Cyrus is certain it’s cancer, but Oliver doesn’t know if that’s the case.
Ericka accompanies Sam into the elevator to go to the psych floor. She promises it’s not a scary place but also admits she doesn’t like enclosed spaces. Sam hears voices again and presses the emergency button, causing Erika to panic. She’s having trouble breathing, as Sam’s now in full meltdown mode too, banging on the door demanding to be let out.
Minutes later, Jacob finds Ericka shaking in the corner of the supply room. He sits next to her and she confesses she needs to get help. She admits she’s took pills from Dana to help with her anxiety. Her trip to the wellness center in Mexico was supposed to help, but it didn’t because she couldn’t tolerate going up to her room on the 10th floor. Instead, she went to a pharmacy and bought benzos without a prescription.
She’s been taking the benzos every day for weeks. Ericka wonders if she’s an addict, and Jacob thinks she’s being too hard on herself. Speaking as her friend, he thinks she needs help.
Oliver finds Josh in his office and immediately notices he’s been saging the room. He knows it’s because of the curse, and that’s also why Josh isn’t performing operations anymore. Josh admits that right now, he doesn’t have the unwavering certainty he needs to help his patients. Oliver says, “Curses, be damned,” and tells Josh to get back to doing what he does best.
Carol tackles her fears and enters the clown’s room alone, with Van watching through the door. The clown sings about a dead cat and laughs, and Carol hurries from the room. She thinks the clown murdered a cat and needs some serious help.
Ericka asks Carol for help with Sam, who’s now back in the ER waiting room. He holds his right ear and hears a voice saying not to trust her. Sam admits he’s hearing them and asks for help.
Oliver keeps hearing weird noises and enters a patient’s room. The dead patient from his past is lying on the bed and asks him not to let her die. Charlie interrupts the vision with news that Cyrus is out of surgery. Oliver informs Cyrus and Thomas that Cyrus is cancer free, however, he ingested a parasitic tapeworm, and it was living in his brain. It caused the seizures, and Cyrus admits he was on a raw meat diet and drank from the Fountain of Youth. The rapamycin made the infection worse.
Oliver’s worried that being a biohacker will lead to other conditions that he won’t be able to survive. Cyrus wants to change things, including no more Fountain of Youth water, and orders Thomas to make calls. And he wants Thomas to taste everything before he eats it. But Thomas is done with his boss and quits. He wants to enjoy life and eat cookies, or whatever else sounds like fun. Thomas wants to die happy and wants to keep his own blood.
Charlie asks if Oliver fears death, and Oliver grabs some munchies and admits that he doesn’t fear death for himself. He fears wasting his life. But he does fear death for his patients.
Oliver’s voiceover notes that every doctor has a graveyard with the patients they couldn’t save. These losses haunt doctors, like Josh’s loss of Benny.
Josh sits by Jorge’s bed and says, “I will stop worrying about curses, but I still need to believe in miracles.”
Oliver asks Carol about the clown, joking that he wasn’t the biggest clown she faced this year. She believes her clown fears are justified. However, she’s happy she worked on Halloween because she helped Sam. But she’s still bummed she didn’t go to a party.
Next, Brilliant Minds season two, episode six serves up a scene that’ll make every Trekkie ecstatic. Oliver brought costumes so they could go out as a couple. He’s dressed as Spock and Carol looks perfect as Uhura! They both smile as the elevator doors close. (For those who need a reminder: Zachary Quinto played Spock in 2009’s Star Trek, 2013’s Star Trek Into Darkness, and 2016’s Star Trek Beyond.)
Episode six ends with Charlie seeing Oliver’s dead patient in his locker’s mirror. The scene shifts to Hudson Oaks four months later and Charlie takes a seat opposite a very shocked Oliver. Charlie asks what’s wrong and says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
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This post was last modified on January 12, 2026 11:16 pm