Canadians have already watched it, but the final season of Transplant premieres tonight, Thursday, May 22, on NBC. It’s time to see how Transplant season 4 wraps up Bash’s story as a Syrian refugee who fights his way to become a doctor in the Canadian medical system.
This was always planned as a four-season series, and Joseph Kay was clear on that at the very beginning. We chatted with him about that plan, and about what’s to come in the fourth season with the way everything ended in the Transplant season 3 finale. And yes, we had to ask about poor Theo, who always seemed to end up hurting each season!
GeekSided: I have been a Day One fan of Transplant. You had me hooked on the logline. Living in Canada, I love how our medical system is front and center in this series instead of putting the show somewhere in the States to show the medical system so many of us know already. Why was it so important for you to showcase Canadian healthcare?
Joseph Kay: Thank you for saying that. First of all, from the very beginning, we wanted to go for authenticity as much as we could. I do find it frustrating from any international perspective when the health care system in Canada gets unfairly tarnished as a failed public health system. Obviously, it’s imperfect, but everybody’s system is.
There are massive institutional struggles, and I wanted it to be authentic. I wanted to give it a platform after spending at least a year before writing the show talking to doctors and doing research and trying to immerse myself into it.
The most obvious thing comes to the front, which is that the institutions are about people, so if you can invest in the people who are having these institutions function, then you see all these incredible human stories that are upsetting, but also an inspiration. I hope that people come away from our show thinking that it’s about the people. Sometimes, there are great people going above and beyond, and sometimes there are not. That’s what you get in every system.
GS: Something that I adore is that you don’t explain the Canadian healthcare system, and you don’t dumb it down for the international audience who may be used to running insurance first. Was that a creative choice to be able to get into the actual story?
JK: Yeah! There’s so much of a universality in the specific way that we’re embracing the world right now. I think if we tried to do the show originating from Canada 10 years ago, we would have been under different kinds of pressures to sort of explain it or make it more generic, like setting it in a generic North American city, which is what used to happen to a lot of shows coming out of Canada.
It was always my intention to make it as specific as possible. Sometimes, there would be questions with our partners at NBC or NBCUniversal about some of the language, but they were just questions. We would talk about something as simple as Celsius vs. Fahrenheit, but there was never a sense that we shouldn’t do it that way.
GS: This was always envisioned as a four-season show. Why opt for that, and was there ever a consideration on expanding it as it became so popular?
JK: It was four seasons because Bashir’s residency is four years, and I thought that breaks it down nicely. It was planned that way. The plan was always to spend time to have this window into his life for a four-year period, where we see that he starts to put some of his past behind him and kind of emerge from beneath it.
He was never Meredith Grey. So much of the story is tied to his past that it would get cumbersome and repetitive to continue, to mine from it, in the same way, which is one of the reasons why John Hannah leaves the show [in Transplant season 2]. We get the mentors out of the way and get the people who are protecting him out of the way, so that he can have that arc that works for him.
To your second question, did I think about extending it? It tortured me, because I felt it was the right creative decision, but there was a group of people, crew and cast, who I became very close to over the six years that it took us to make these four seasons, through a pandemic. It became a regular job for gig people, so it was hard to walk away from all of that. Emotionally, it was hard to turn the page, but I always say the show is about new beginnings. That’s thematically what the show has only ever been about, and personally, we would adhere to that.
It's been a minute since we started filming, and I still miss all those people.
GS: You say new beginnings, and I think of what Bash has been through and what he still has to go through. He changes his mind now and then about what he wants to do within medicine. Can you tease anything about his journey in Transplant season 4?
JK: Bash is entering his final year of his residency, so he has to look at his future. For him, his fate is uncertain, and that’s a big deal. It’s an even bigger deal because his life was ripped away from him. He had a career back home, and he had a future that was just ripped away, and he got to start again. Now he’s coming to the end of something, so that’s throwing him for a loop.
He started out in medicine, and he thought if he should become a surgeon, and he kind of just didn’t want to do that for emotional reasons, he made the decision in Transplant season 3. Season 4 finds him kind of holding onto this interest he continues to have in public health. It’s one that he’s nurturing.
In season 3, he goes back home, as close to home as he can get, and goes to a refugee camp to try to do field medicine. Season 4 finds him still circling his mind about whether that’s the right path for him. We use the flashbacks in season 4 to engage in another story. Instead of about Bash’s time during the war or his time escaping the war, we actually tell a story about what Bash’s life was like when he first came to Canada, so we’re kind of contrasting those competing emotions of feeling uncertain now and then.
GS: I swear, Transplant has one of the hardest slow-burn romances ever with Bash and Mags. They just get there and then something pulls them apart again. Now there’s tension and Mags also has her own health problems. Can you tease what’s to come for them in Transplant season 4?
JK: We leave them at the end of season 3 in some sort of limbo, but there isn’t outward tension. There is still chemistry, because it’s pretty clear that these two love each other. Fate has kept them apart, and what ends up happening at the beginning of episode 1 is like a work situation gets created where there’s competition for something big, and what that serves to do is reanimate the tension between them.
And, as you know, Mags has a very big decision to make about her health. She’s a candidate for a heart transplant, and she’s deciding whether or not she wants to do it, so she has this big personal thing sitting there. The chemistry between them gets reignited, and I would say it sets them up for what is their most romantic and their most affecting story and season in the length of the show, and that we’re pretty excited about.
GS: I’ve only got time for one more question, so I have to ask about poor Theo! He really went through it during season 3. Does he get something good happening to him in season 4?
JK: Yes, our favorite thing to do in the writers room is to torture Theo, and Jim Watson, who plays Theo, is great. He loves it and he thinks it’s hilarious. So yeah, we end season 3 with him losing his job, his life, you know. Theo has gone from somebody whose life seemed the most certain and the most on the rails, to somebody in our company who, in a way, seems like the least together and the least certain, and he’s thrown by that.
When we see him, he’s been banished from the hospital, and he’s lost his privileges. He just doesn’t feel like the world has room for him anymore, and it’s really upsetting him. He’s doing virtual medicine, like Zoom medicine, and he still likes the connection that he has with his patients. He just feels like he’s lost his place, so I guess I would say in a show about new beginnings that has kind of held firm on the belief that we’re all entitled to second, third, and fourth acts. He was looking hard for his, and we want him to find it.
Transplant season 4 premieres with a two-hour premiere on Thursday, May 22 at 8/7c on NBC.