Colors, for the most part, have always been linked to our emotions. Like when you think of the color blue, it’s usually associated with sadness. Red, has been associated with love or passion. What happens when the color is no longer there? In tonight’s episode of Brilliant Minds, we meet a painter whose work exuded vibrant colors, conveying emotions with each piece. However, lately, he hasn’t been able to create art like he once did.
When his ability to create work declined, his manager reached out to Oliver to help him. With his career on the line, she believes that Oliver is his only hope of getting back on track. Gabriel, the painter, is reluctant to leave his home so Oliver has to make a house visit.
Chapter Nine: The Colorblind Painter - BRILLIANT MINDS - Pictured: Robert Manning Jr. as Gabriel Ferguson, Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf. Photo: Rafy/NBC © 2024 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Gabriel wants nothing to do with Oliver. He’s content with his way of life and pretty much wishes Oliver would leave him alone. It isn’t until he’s getting ready to leave that Oliver notices the difference in Gabriel’s work. The ones from before were colorful and the new ones were, well, not. It’s not that there wasn’t any color involved, it’s just the colors were wrong. He had a painting with blue bananas. Then Oliver noticed Gabriel’s mismatched socks and determined he was colorblind.
Gabriel laughs at this and instantly corrects him stating it’s not that he doesn’t see the right colors, it’s that he doesn’t see them at all. “Everything is like burnt charcoal” he says, and the moment he makes this point to Oliver, everything instantly goes black and white. This vision, seeing the world the way Gabriel suddenly did, brought on the intensity of his drastic change of character.
Chapter Nine: The Colorblind Painter - BRILLIANT MINDS - Pictured: Robert Manning Jr. as Gabriel Ferguson. Photo: Rafy/NBC © 2024 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Back at the hospital, Carol is still seeing her patient Alison, you know, the woman who slept with her husband, Morris. It’s hard to understand why she’s doing this to herself, and as a psychiatrist, I thought Carol would’ve known better. How could she not see through Alison’s manipulation? (I guess I could see how that’s hard to witness, but still). Morris isn’t making things any easier by telling her to “just move on”, but he has no idea she’s “treating” his mistress.
After first meeting Alison, I knew something was off about her. When she returned to the hospital demanding to see Carol, she nearly lost it on a nurse who told her she wasn’t available. Ericka and Dana were there to help calm her down, but the way she pulled information out of them and then walked away calmly when she got some answers, I knew right then and there she knew what she was doing seeing Carol. What exactly is her endgame?
Chapter Nine: The Colorblind Painter - BRILLIANT MINDS - Pictured: Tamberla Perry as Dr. Carol Pierce. Photo: Rafy/NBC © 2024 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Now that we have some answers, Gabriel agreed to let Oliver bring him to the hospital for tests to see what could be causing the sudden color blindness. It turns out he was involved in an accident. He started to lose his ability to see color shortly after that – the world looked different to him without color which is why he decided he’d stay inside. Digging deeper into the car accident, we learn that Gabriel was trapped in the car for quite some time before he was extracted and in that time, he was exposed to a toxic amount of carbon monoxide. This exposure caused damage to the part of the brain that processes color.
There’s no way to reverse this damage, but Oliver believes there is a way to open up that passageway to temporarily give him access to seeing colors: psychedelic mushrooms! Funny to think that drugs such as these do make you see interesting colors (...from what I hear). The only thing this does is remind Gabriel of the wife he lost in this accident. For a moment, he’s able to see his wife the way he remembered her: vibrant and alive with color. Knowing that she’s gone and his memories of her are shades of gray, Gabriel loses it and wants it all to end.
Chapter Nine: The Colorblind Painter - BRILLIANT MINDS - Pictured: Alex MacNicoll as Dr. Van Markus, Zachary Quinto as Dr. Oliver Wolf, Ashleigh LaThrop as Ericka Kinney, Spence Moore II as Jacob Nash. Photo: Rafy/NBC © 2024 NBCUniversal Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Oliver convinces him that losing his ability to see color doesn’t mean that he’s incapable of seeing the world’s beauty. It’s about finding a new way to create the picture despite the new differences. “A world without color is not a world without emotion but it does ask for a new way to express the feeling inside us.” Gabriel, accepting his new way of seeing the world, creates new art: all black and white – seeing the world in a new light.
As the episode concludes, Carol is headed to her car after shift only to find that it’s been vandalized. Do we even need to question who is responsible here? Something is telling me we haven’t seen the last of Alison Zhang-Whitaker.
What’d you think of tonight’s new episode of Brilliant Minds? Share your thoughts below or connect with me on X/Twitter @chenfordhugs
