“ | I'm suggesting we all have exposure. You, the residents. Audrey, this is a tragic day. But we cannot allow a single event to derail everything we do here. | „ |
~ Salen to Lim about covering up a baby's death due to expired medicine as to not damage the hospital's image |
“ | I've always been open with you, Audrey. Tried to help you understand what it is I'm trying to accomplish here. And you went behind my back and tried to destroy it all. I'm never gonna forget it. | „ |
~ Salen threatening Lim for having gone up against her, later resulting in her demoting Lim as chief of surgery |
Salen Morrison is the main antagonist of the fifth season of the ABC medical drama series The Good Doctor.
Salen is a confident, stubborn, intelligent and nosy woman, who saved San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital by buying it and became its boss. She brings a lot of changes to the hospital in order to increase income, that brought out the uneasiness of all personnel, particularly that of Shaun Murphy.
She is portrayed by Rachel Bay Jones.
Biography[]
Salen first appeared at the hospital, initially starting off as a patient under treatment from Drs. Marcus Andrews, Morgan Reznick, Jordan Allen and Asher Wolke, but is constantly escaping her room while snooping around the hospital, also crossing paths with Lea Dillalo, Shaun Murphy's fiancée and the hospital's head of the I.T. department. Her bizarre behaviour leaves them impatient and demand to know what she's up to; Salen admits that she was doing so deliberately, playing up her scleroderma symptoms to test the staff at St. Bonaventure. However, after Lim was about to give a presentation to the hospital board, Dr. Aaron Glassman steps in and informs her that someone has just bought the hospital. To their suprise, it is revealed that Salen herself did so. Salen owns a company named Ethicure, which takes over the entire hospital. In her own words, it is an algorithm that would help doctors serve clients rather than helping patients. Glassman considered resigning but soon accepted a deal to continue working, yet he becomes absent anyway, which causes him to push Shaun away and going on vacations to Montana. The personnel struggled to get used to Salen's new changes at the hospital, but mostly Shaun was quick to complain about them, especially after having an episode in which he noticed that the restroom napkins were replaced with electric dryers. He set his demands and Salen rebutted calling attention towards his autism, citing her similarities with her ADHD condition. Surprisingly enough, Salen agrees to go through with Shaun's demands. She even chastised both Lim and new resident Mateo Osma, also Lim's boyfriend, for prioritizing a a black girl's case over other surgeries they have rescheduled (particularly one of Lim that was expecting her cancer results), reminding them of the new client policy she implemented when she first took over the hospital.
Just as Lim and Mateo Osma were exiting the hospital, they noticed a huge billboard with Shaun on it stating their doctors are different and a giant label of “Autism Spectrum” on it. They worriedly deduced that Shaun wouldn't like this at all. As expected, Shaun is completely infuriated and tries to get Salen to remove the billboard, even after Walt, the father of a young girl named Holly, shares some medicine research that might be helpful in his daugher's case, leading Salen to order the team to treat him like a consulting physician, something that makes Shaun clash completely with Walt and resulting in Andrews removing Shaun from the case, yet he acknowledges that he was right. Salen gives Shaun 48 hours for him to think it through and revisit the decision. Holly later reveals to Shaun that she was inspired by the billboard and that's why she chose him as her doctor; “You think differently, like me… and I thought you would help me”, the disappointed Holly states. Taking the little girl's words to heart, Shaun changes his mind and tells Salen to keep the billboard, although as long as she corrects a mistake in it. Salen, on the other hand, starts dating Dr. Andrews and Morgan (both of whom, except for Shaun himself and the rest of the staff, are immediate loyal followers to each and every of her orders) strikes up a deal with her to earn Glassman's former office and clinic, which he left behind after resigning.
Salen met with the medical staff informing them of the new Epicure algorithm that rated their patient care. Unfortunately for Shaun, he had the lowest scores of everyone on the team; Lea felt the algorithm could be tweaked but he was fine with it and sought to change his behavior. Even so, after Shaun helped Emily save her Asian father's life, albeit with his blunt behaviour, Emily's feedback was harsh and she rated him low and called him “weird”. Surprised at this, Lea made a decision which would later turn out to be a great mistake: erase Shaun's scores and forge them in positive ones. Lea then left a voice message to Glassman to contact Shaun as he needed him. Lea later confessed to Shaun about erasing the scores, which made him understandably upset, not only for the deed itself, but also more over the fact that the information was kept from him, asking Lea to change the scores back to normal, which she was unable to because the system is irreversible. However, after a surgery gone awry in which a baby flatlined due to expired medicine, this would be the last straw for Shaun's view of Salen's changes, finally cracking as he had started to have a complete breakdown over the medicines, Glassman walking out on him, Lea deleting his bad reviews, but also the baby's death, being a tragic reminder of how he and Lea lost their own when she had got pregnant, with Glassman comforting him. At the same time, the furious Lim confronted Salen about the incident. Tearful but quickly regaining her professional hard hand after Lim made it clear that the mother would sue if she found out about the expired medicine, Salen suggested covering it up so that the hospital's recent improvements won't get derailed. As a result, Salen payed the baby's mother off and had Dr. Fremes, the pharmacist, fired from the hospital (under the guise that he had resigned out of guilt) and intimidated into staying quiet by making him sign a non-disclosure agreement. Determined not to let her get away with this, Lim builds up a case against Salen, discovering that the hospital isn't legally owned by Salen yet, needing Dr. Fremes's written proof to support her plight before the state’s Attorney General. However, Fremes backed out at the last minute and the AG declined to investigate Lim's claims without neither the proof nor Fremes himself. Later on, presumably tipped off by the AG, Salen confronts Lim over her actions, stating that she would never forget what she did.
As a result of Lim's actions, Salen demotes her from her job as chief of surgery and gives it back to Andrews, who takes the high-profile case of Nelly, a famous pop star, whose vocal chords are broken, despite Shaun's objections that the surgery is too risky to perform, Nevertheless, Andrews does the surgery anyway with both Glassman and Salen observing from the OR's balcony. Nelly almost bleeds out, proving that Shaun was right and leaving Andrews momentarily distraught, but at the last minute survives thanks to her clotting factors. Shaun blames Salen for Andrews's mistake and decides to quit rather than allow her influence lead him into a dark path of his own. Later on, after Lim rejects a job as head of trauma surgeon from another hospital, she enlists some of the other doctors to help her lead a mutiny against Salen; some of the nurses agree, as well as Park, who is initially reluctant due to being short of four months to complete his residency, yet he still joins Lim's posse since he couldn't let in good conscience allow her reign to continue, let alone after the baby's death earlier, although Shaun and Jordan refuse, mostly the latter who isn't willing to put her residency in jeopardy. Glassman also teams up with Lim later on, with her declaring that it's time to run Salen's "bandit ass out of town".
Despite Glassman and Lea's objections, Shaun decides to speak out against Salen despite the damage it would inflict on his residency, reminding them of past situations when everyone stood up for Shaun when no one believed in him. Shaun returns to the hospital and Salen tries to have him kicked out, but Shaun firmly refuses, telling Salen that because of his promotion through the banner, it would result in a PR disaster if it's with Shaun kicking and screaming. Lea, Glassman, Park and even Asher still parttook in Lim's rally against Salen, yet both Morgan and Jordan both made it clear they wouldn't join, both because of not wanting to risk their careers and also because of Morgan's idolizing of Salen, which put a strain on her relationship with Park (who temporarily quit out of loyalty), leaving Andrews as Salen's only ally, although he was angered to hear that she had fired and blackmailed all of them (save for Park and Asher) into silence by threatening to expose sensitive information about them: Glassman's constant absence from the hospital and vacationing to Montana during Salen's takeover after years of excusing Shaun's behaviour, Lea's tampering with Shaun's low scores and Lim employing Mateo into the hospital while the two were dating, then supposedly firing him when he returned to Guatemala, with Lim correcting her that he had quit. Eventually, seeing Park's fury regarding the unfairness of the situation, Morgan finally decided to stick with her colleagues. In the end, after pleading for Salen to at least hear out Lim and the others's testimonies, Andrews instead convinces her to withdraw from the entire deal, presenting her with an opposition reaserch on himself over the mistakes he has made (including being promoted to president and keeping his former job as chief of surgery as well, and his firing on Dr. Jackson Han that cost him his title and reputation), citing that she'd have to take him down if Salen was to go through with the act, thus signifying Andrews's turning on his crooked girlfriend. Giving up, whether over how genuine her relationship with Andrews was or the fact that she had no more allies left, Salen cut her losses and called off Ethicure's purchase of the hospital, telling him that keeping the hospital afloat was now up to him before walking away, possibly for good. Lea and Lim are rehired, while Andrews fully regains control of the hospital as the current president.
In the aftermath of Ethicure terminating their partnership with St. Bonaventure, things went sour between Andrews, Lim and Glassman, even when they had to work together on the Liu family case, who got into a car crash accident. On his first day as president, Andrews reinstated Lim as chief of surgery while Glassman is demoted to a neurosurgeon. Andrews informs both him and Morgan that, in light of the latter's revelation of malpractice to Nira, a blind patient, he was going to shut down the clinic. Glassman tried to negotiate with Andrews, who refused and instead told him to prioritize surgery. Meanwhile, all three of them start calling each other out over their poor handling of Salen's controversial actions. Lim could not hide her bitterness towards Andrews for giving her back a job she had unfairly lost in the first place and was unwilling to give Andrews or his inflated ego credit for having second thoughts at the last minute. Even after the baby's death, Andrews still remained loyal to Salen, then leveraged the situation for his own advantage when things got out of hand on account of her. Glassman wasn't ruled out as well since his active negligence towards his former position only made things worse and he had only stepped up as soon as the situation had a negative impact on Shaun, although not a minute before. Nevertheless, Andrews finally owns up to his clouded judgement: the baby's death had kept him up at night, as well as Salen herself, who had promised Andrews some changes to ensure that future incidents would never happen again, but it was his genuine love for Salen that prevented him from seeing through her shady wrongdoings. He should have stepped up sooner to protect the hospital he calls home and the "pains in the ass" he considers family. With their rift forgotten, Andrews, Lim and Glassman share a drink together to celebrate. Morgan also manages to reopen the clinic by providing tele-med services to nursing homes and gives it back to Glassman, having acknowledged that she isn't ready to take charge.
Relationships[]
Allies[]
- Ethicure - Subordinates
Enemies[]
- St. Bonaventure Hospital - Former Subordinates turned Enemies
- Dr. Shaun Murphy - Exploitee and Enemy
- Dr. Audrey Lim - Archenemy
- Dr. Aaron Glassman - Rival and Blackmailee
- Dr. Alex Park
- Dr. Marcus Andrews - Former Love Interest turned Enemy
- Dr. Morgan Reznick - Former Situational Ally
- Dr. Asher Wolke
- Dr. Jordan Allen
- Dr. Mateo Osma
- Dr. Fremes - Blackmailee
- Lea Dillalo - Blackmailee
Trivia[]
- She is similar to Dr. Jackson Han because of some changes they have made to the St. Bonaventure Hospital. While Han simply became Chief of Surgery, in replacement of Dr. Andrews who was President of the Hospital at the time, and switched Shaun from Surgery to Pathology due to his poor communication skills (although the closest of a good thing he ever did was preventing Shaun, Melendez and Lim's medical licenses from being revoked due to their controversial actions during the quarantine in season 2), Salen and her company Ethicure bought the hospital, this time with lots of changes in technology that made Shaun completely uncomfortable, just as he was when he demanded that Han switched him back to Surgery.
- However, unlike Han, who fired Shaun right on the spot when he refused to relent and is completely against autism (albeit only meeting a person with the same condition but it is only known they died), Salen surprisingly listened to and agreed to some of Shaun's demands, yet it didn't change Salen's questionable ways to keep the hospital on track. Even so, Salen did turn on Shaun following his resignation that came because of her influencing Andrews to the worse, although also unlike Han, she did not gain the last laugh with having Shaun kicked out of the hospital as he stood up for himself in a very intelligent way, not childishly like his final confrontation with Han, which led Salen to relent.
- During the course of season 5 in which Salen took over the hospital, Andrews and Morgan were the only main characters on the show to be team Salen as they, not only fully supported the new changes she implemented, but were also Salen apologists behind every one of her shady schemes. On the other hand, Shaun, Park, Lim, Glassman, Lea, Asher, and Mateo (right before he quit) were team anti-Salen, especially Lim and Shaun as they openly objected to those changes. The death of an infant and Andrews nearly killing a patient during a risky surgery (to further inflate his ego) became the last straw for them to take action. Jordan, on the other hand, remained neutral as she had no interest in deifying Salen's takeover of the hospital and declined (initially) to join the mutiny against her led by Lim as to not risk her residency. Lea was in-between because she tried to control Shaun's impulsiveness with the changes and at the same time please Salen with her I.T. job.
- Due to their departures from the show between seasons 2 and 4, Melendez, Claire and Jared were the only original main characters who never met Salen at all. While Melendez died in season 3, Claire and Jared took jobs at other hospitals. Even if they had returned (which Claire did very much later after Salen's departure in season 5, and again in season 7, while Jared returned in season 6), the most possible probability would've been them being team anti-Salen as well.