Spoilers for Season 2 of Dr. Death, specifically Episode 5 “191,” are ahead. If you haven’t streamed the 2023 TV schedule entry, you can watch all eight episodes with a Peacock subscription.
Episode 5 of Dr. Death Season 2 centers around Yesim Cetir (Alisha Erozer) as she travels to Sweden to get a new trachea from Dr. Paolo Macchiarini, and over the hour-long installment she slowly dies. Throughout, Luke Kirby’s Dr. Nathan Gamelli is taking care of her, and watching as she gets sicker and sicker, trying desperately to save her. While Gamelli had been suspicious of Macchiarini for a while, this episode acted as his breaking point, and it truly displayed just how horrific the effects of these human experiments were.
So, when I got the chance to speak with the cast of this Peacock series, I had to ask Kirby about his emotional episode that proved why Dr. Death is one of the best true crime shows, and what it was like working with Erozer. Giving a thoughtful and moving answer, the Emmy-winning actor told CinemaBlend:
It was a great gift to be with Alicia, you know, she was so bright. She brought this kind of lightness to the set that was so endearing and her curiosity was so true. And then to sort of watch this child kind of fall apart, at the hands of Gamelli it was really devastating just to witness. But, I thought her work was so formidable that it was, you know, professionally, it was really inspiring.
Much like Season 1 of Dr. Death, Season 2 tells the story of a doctor and the path of destruction he leaves. The collateral damage is his patients, and Episode 5 shows viewers the prolonged tortuous events and side effects that followed Macchiarini giving Yesim a biosynthetic trachea.
While Yesim does not die in the episode -- she’s transported to a new hospital -- she’s unrecognizable and terminally ill at the end. Gamelli is devastated by what happens, and ultimately, it acts as a turning point for his character. He becomes a lot more motivated to take Macchiarini down. While speaking to me about his character, Kirby explained how Episode 5 and Alisha Erozer’s performance impacted Gamelli moving forward:
Yeah, it was a great way to kind of loosen the valve. You're not always afforded that opportunity. And thankfully, they tripled down on somebody getting something off of their chest and it felt great to be able to sit in that room and feed it straight to the face of that institution.
Luke Kirby is referring to how Gamelli acts after Yesim is transferred, and how he and the other whistleblowing doctors work tirelessly to take Macchiarini down and prove his wrongdoings.
Along with the one scene the doctors share with Mandy Moore, which reveals the verdict of the investigation into the surgeon, Kirby’s character and his colleagues also share their findings with the board at their hospital. It’s in that moment Gamelli pops off, and passionately, as Kirby said, “[feeds] it straight into the face of that institution.”
The build-up of anger in his character after Episode 5 is rooted in his experience with Yesim, and both actors gave beautifully tragic performances.
Overall, this episode that focuses primarily on Kirby’s character and his relationship with Yesim shows why Dr. Death is one of the best series on Peacock, and hammers home the catastrophic impact Macchiarini’s actions had on his patients.
