SJ Main Muñoz is the first Latina director to be invited into the Television Academy as part of a diversity initiative and was one of the 2019-20 finalists of NBCUniversal’s Female Forward program. Muñoz has returned to direct her second episode of Chicago Med titled For the Want of a Nail, which aired last night.
In the episode For the Want of a Nail, Dr. Dean Archer (Steven Weber) minimizes and dismisses a woman with extreme pain in her abdomen. While this wasn’t a HUGE plot point, it is an ongoing women’s issue where women seek medical attention for serious illnesses or injuries and for whatever reasons male doctors send women home with life threatening ailments.
In this particular instance Dr. Manning (Torrey DeVitto) knew the patient personally and noticed in the diagnostic testing that her friend’s gallbladder was inflamed and possibly infected. She was appalled when she saw that the patient was getting discharged and went to her secret love interest, Dr. Marcel (Dominic Rains) for a second opinion and he agreed with Dr. Manning that the patient required surgery.
Angered by this action, Dr. Archer retaliated by reporting the secret relationship he suspected after witnessing the two flirting in the hospital lobby on their way into work. The couple are then forced to report their relationship to Human Resources.
Maggie (Marlyne Barrett) extends kindness to an underprivileged pregnant woman in a local thrift store. It becomes apparent that the woman is bleeding so Maggie brings her to Chicago Med where it is discovered she has placenta previa and requires the baby to be delivered immediately.
Once the baby is delivered it is then discovered that the premature baby also has spina bifida, which prompts the mother to consider giving up her baby for adoption. Maggie then confides in the woman, telling her that she gave up a baby for adoption when she was 16 and she regrets it.
For the Want of a Nail as a whole was exceptionally well done and subtly touched on a few issues women have to deal with emotionally, professionally, publicly, and privately regularly.
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About Female Forward
NBCUniversal’s Female Forward program aims to achieve gender parity in the director’s chair and create a pipeline into scripted television.
Co-Presidents, Scripted Programming, NBC Entertainment Lisa Katz and Tracey Pakosta are quoted as stating, “Female Forward will give our industry a larger pool of experienced female directors to choose from as they are staffing their shows, and that number will multiply as the program culminates year after year.
Our goal is to completely eliminate the often-heard excuse – which we strongly believe simply isn’t true – that the reason there isn’t parity in the field is that there aren’t enough qualified women, and we feel confident that this program will begin to change that narrative.”
Chicago Med is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Wolf Entertainment.
Joia DaVida reports on the entertainment industry in both Chicago and Los Angeles.
