‘Countdown’: Jensen Ackles & Jessica Camacho Talk Meachum’s Confession

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Countdown Season 1 Episode 7 “Nothing Else Helps.”]

Detective Mark Meachum (Jensen Ackles) finally lets someone in about the serious medical condition he’s been hiding from the task force all season on Countdown in the Wednesday, July 23, episode.

The series premiere reveals that Meachum has a glioblastoma multiforme, a brain tumor. With the risk of surgery or radiation outweighing the benefits, his doctor recommends he just live out his remaining days in comfort with relief medication. He, instead, chooses to continue to work, suffering headaches that are starting to affect him on the job. He tells DEA agent Amber Oliveras (Jessica Camacho) he’s just dealing with migraines, and she gives him stronger medication to help in Episode 6. But in Episode 7, after he’s late to work and at first tells her the pills are no longer working due to the law of diminishing returns.

Near the end of the episode, she stops by his place with a drug to disrupt his serotonin receptors, and that’s when he tells her he has a tumor and it’s terminal. He doesn’t know how long he has, he says, and he’s not going out staring at the sunset on a beach, dipping his toes in the ocean. If he’s going out, he’s going out saving something, the city, its people. (Sound like another of Ackles’ characters?) So how much did Meachum want to open up to someone, especially Oliveras, even if part of him didn’t want to want that?

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Jessica Camacho Explains Why Oliveras Opens up to Meachum on 'Countdown'

“I think this is kind of the inherent struggle with him, is he’s so used to kind of staying guarded and staying behind his exterior, that he’s built up all these walls as we do, these emotional kind of barricades that we put on ourselves,” Jensen Ackles tells TV Insider. “But I think he’s now getting to a point where he really doesn’t have anybody in his life. And I think that it’s starting to kind of dawn on him that maybe some cracks in his armor aren’t the worst thing, and he feels a connection with her, obviously, and is maybe trying to accept that this is coming at the right time.”

Jessica Camacho says that Oliveras “understands” Meachum’s plan to possibly go out saving the city.

“I think she respects it. I think that’s what she would do, too,” she admits. “So I think she understands, but also you start to kind of care for somebody, and you’re no longer playing the same game. You want them to be okay. You want them to keep showing up. You want the best for them. So even though she respects it — and I know internally, she’s like, ‘Yep, I know that I would do the same’ — it’s also this fear that can only happen when you let somebody in a little bit.”

Countdown, Wednesdays, Prime Video

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