One thing we can certainly say for Transplant is that this show sure knows how to put our daily city lives into perspective. While some of the docs are dealing with romantic rejection, others are dealing with what may very well be PTSD from their time stitching up soldiers in the Syrian Civil War. You may recall Dr. Bashir “Bash” Hamed (Hamza Haq) was most recently on thin ice at York Memorial because his medical training transcripts were being withheld by the Syrian government. “I’m an enemy of the state,” he told the hospital’s legal representative—a pretty cryptic remark which did little to put them at ease—but had us wondering what the heck that could possibly mean. This week, we got more of an answer and a first-hand look at how the civil war in Syria has ravaged the medical community.“During the war, I treated regime soldiers,” Bash explained to Dr. Leblanc (Laurence Leboeuf), adding that he did it at gunpoint and only when forced. “Now I can’t go home.” That rule break cost Bash everything, not least of all, his homeland.

 

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But we see how heavily invested he still is in the well-being of his fellow Syrians when Bash sneaks away to FaceTime with Saleh (Elie Shankji), a White Helmet (volunteer emergency service workers in Syria) who is busy saving people injured in an airstrike despite his limited supplies. The scenes on the ground in Syria are touching to watch, punctuated with flyover jets in the distance and chaos and havoc all around. Bash does his best to offer tips and procedures to Saleh, but once the phone call ends, we are presented with the stark contrast between that bleak situation and the clean, orderly, and safe conditions within York Memorial. An excellent reminder to count our dang blessings we live in Canada.

Rooting for the rule-breakers

Bash isn't the only one dealing with high-stakes rule-breaking. There’s Dr. Bishop (John Hannah), who after having his life (and his head) saved by Bash in the first episode, is counting his own blessings. Or potential blessings. Since head ER nurse Claire Malone (Torri Higginson) told him to take the event as a "second chance at life," he's been considering exactly what, or who, that means. It suddenly becomes clear that he and Malone once had a "thing," and we suspect it might have been a passionate, whirlwind "thing," because Bishop coyly asks her out to dinner with hopes of reigniting that "thing." Malone is not having it, and tells him as much in no uncertain terms.Faced with a more serious rule-break, Dr. Leblanc is debating whether or not to violate a patient’s confidentiality by revealing to the police her patient confessed to a hit and run. The old man came into the ER claiming to have fallen off a stool, but his toxicology and bruising suggests he was drunk and a steering wheel caused the damage. Considering that the docs just treated two patients earlier in the day from a hit and run (one of whom didn’t survive), Leblanc puts two and two together and confronts the old man. His confession hits her to her moral core, but after getting advice from Bash (the king of rule-breaking!), she tells him he can either confess to the police, or try to live with his conscience for the rest of his life. Her gamble pays off, but we have to wonder how close she came to never learning the truth.

Get to know #Transplant's very own "Hermione of the ER", Magalie "Mags" Leblanc (played by @RealLaurenceLe). pic.twitter.com/gaCtmKv6p0

— Transplant (@TransplantCTV) March 13, 2020

By the end of the episode, Dr. Bishop once again takes a stab at breaking the rules, this time to help Bash keep his job. With his transcripts unavailable, and his confession that he’s an enemy of the state, Bash’s future at York Memorial was scant at best. So after walking in on him Facetiming with Saleh back in Syria, Bishop breaks an important rule—he lies to the hospital’s legal representatives, saying that he spoke to the Dean’s Office at the University of Aleppo who confirmed Bash’s qualifications. Bishop then swore an oath to the legal advisory board that what he was saying was true, just to put Bash’s transcript woes to bed. It’s a huge rule-break, but if there’s anything we’ve seen in this episode, it’s that desperate times call for desperate measures. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but when it does, the payoff can be extraordinary.Watch Transplant on CTV Wednesdays at 9/10MT.