Welcome back to The nerd shelf!
Today's post is going to be on my first impression of one of the shows that I mentioned in my My Eight Most Anticipated New Shows | Fall 2018 post, New Amsterdam. Now, this is one of my favorite pilots of this fall so far. I loved it. If you like medical dramas fucking watch it!
The trailer for New Amsterdam:
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
So this is definitely one of my favorite pilots from this fall so far. I was right to put it in my most anticipated shows post because oh my fucking god this was good. Before I watched the trailer I thought maybe I didn't need another medical drama in my life but I was so wrong. This pilot had me crying and laughing and it had me excited about what's next.
I was drawn to this show as soon as Jock Sims said he was going to be in it. I love Jocko, he's amazing in The Last Ship (I love that show), and with them having their final season I was excited to be able to see him in something new so soon. I mean The Last Ship isn't even over yet but you know what I mean. The music in this episode was amazing. The opening with I feel good was just great, it got me into a great mood, and the Fix you cover in the end was amazing. That song can get me to cry at any time and to put it with this montage was great. There was a waterfall of tears going down my face.
So I think I'm going to go through this episode character by character, starting with Max Goodwin.
So Max is the new medical director of New Amsterdam. He's known for turning a clinic around and making it better but firing a lot of people in the process. He also has this line that he says throughout the episode to everyone, "How can I help". I love that. In the first scene with him, he's on a run and we see him having some pain in his throat. Now NBC, I have a bone to pick with you. Your trailers show way too much. If you watch the trailer before the show you know exactly what's going to happen in the end. I do NOT like that. I want to be excited for the show but not spoiled. If I hadn't watched the trailer I would have been picking up on that little moment in the scene and tried to figured it out before the show tells us what it is. Anyway, he's on his morning run and he runs to the hospital. Now I fucking hope that he showered before changing into his scrubs. There's this scene with him in the locker room and some nurses and a janitor are talking in Spanish behind him. They are basically kind of talking shit about him not knowing that it's him or that he knows Spanish when Dora (Zabryna Guevara) comes in and reveals that it's him. She seems to be working for the dean of the hospital. She kind of is his tour guide who has to take him everywhere. We find out that she has done this with five different medical directors over five years. That doesn't seem promising but Max also doesn't seem faced.
They have a meeting with all the doctors. He tells this story of how he and his sister, Luna, was born at the hospital and that eight years later Luna died there. She got a hospital-acquired infection and it was something that was preventable but she died anyway. He tells them that this job is a dream come true, he wants to save lives. And then he says it, how can I help. And no one answers. This scene made me feel like I was back in school. When a teacher asks a question and no one wants to answer even if they have the answer. Or if a teacher asks if anyone has a question and no one says anything because they don't want to look stupid. And then he fires everyone in the cardiac surgical department.
He also tells the department heads that he will hire fifty new attendings for them. He tells them that he doesn't care if the board said no to their ideas, he just wants to make the hospital better and give the doctors what they need to care for their patients.
After the meeting, he asks one of the doctors to do a throat biopsy. Again if I hadn't watched the trailer this would be more intense and interesting.
He's married but they are separated. From what we learn they have separated because Max was spending to much time on his work and not on his marriage. His wife, Georgia (Lisa O'Hare) is pregnant. We have a scene when they're on the phone and he promises her that he's going to win her back before the baby comes. Later she calls him and she's bleeding. They get her to the hospital and they take care of her, they stop the bleeding and both mom and baby are okay. Georgia says that the baby's name is going to be Luna and fuck me I cried so hard.
Dr. Vijay Kapoor (Anupam Kher). He's a neurologist and he gets a patient that they thought was dead but it turns out that she wasn't. Her medication made it seem like she was. In the beginning, he seems like he doesn't have his shit together. He forgets that his glasses are on his head, he takes everything very slowly, and he wants to talk more than treat. At least that's what it seems like to the audience and the doctor that works with him. She goes to Max and tells him her concerns. When Max confronts Vijay about not treating her Parkinsons Vijay drops a bomb on him. She never had Parkinson's, she had a tumor and her symptoms made her get all these misdiagnoses that lead to her taking a mix of medication that was slowly killing her. Vijay did everything right because if he had treated her for Parkinson's then she would have died.
When they break the news to the patient they give her a choice to fight, stay in the hospital and go through brutal treatments and ultimately die anyways or go home to spend her last days how she wants to spend them. She wants to spend her last time with her parents and her daughters who they left behind in South America and they crossed the borders illegally. They can't go home but Max comes up with an idea to talk to the ambassador who's staying in the hospital. He asks him to get her and her husband back to their family. The reunion scene with the patient and her family is so moving.
Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery). She is the department head for the emergency department and we first see her as she comes into work. She looks a bit messy, like she's hungover. At the meeting with Max, she's the first one to actually answer him when he asks how he can help. She wants to get rid of their waiting room and make more space for beds and get the patients directly into the beds. He says yes, and she seems shocked. He's up to trying things that the department heads think could work. I love that. At the end of the episode, we see them removing the waiting room.
It's Lauren who does Max's biopsy and this scene is great. He can't stop moving or talking so she can't do her job. In the end, she just grabs his face and does the procedure. I love that scene.
Let's talk about Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) since Floyd and Laurens's storylines intertwine a little bit. We first see him and Lauren together during the meeting, she asks him to grab a drink later, he says no, she specifies that she means sex and he still says no. As we see later in the episode they have some history. Floyd is one of the cardiac surgeons that is fired. Lauren, however, tells Max to look into his file. She puts in a good word for him.
Max comes into his office as he's packing up his stuff. He asks him why he has the lowest billing rates in the department and if he doesn't like surgery. Floyd tells him that he loves surgery but there are other ways to help people without cutting them open. Max then offers him a job, to be the head of the cardiac surgical department. When Floyd points out that there isn't a cardiac surgical department anymore Max just says build one, a good one. Floyd tells him that it's a rigged system and that they won't just let him come in here and help people and Max says "so let's help as many as we can before they figure us out". I loved this scene. One Jocko was in it and I love him and two the writing was so fucking good.
Lauren and Floyd have this moment when she asks him again if he wants to grab a drink. He tells her he wants them to just be friends again. She asks him why he doesn't want to see where their relationship goes and he tells her because she's white. She obviously doesn't understand where he's coming from and neither did I, to be honest. It's hard to see it from someone else's perspective but when he explained I understood. He wants to marry a black woman, he wants his kids to be black. He has seen the women in his life feel betrayed because famous and not famous black men have decided to get white girlfriends and they felt betrayed. It can't be easy growing up with something like that but isn't the most important thing to find someone that you love no matter their skin tone? If someone has a different opinion on this I really want to have a conversation with you because as I said I don't really understand. I'm white and I'll probably never fully understand.
From the beginning of the episode we see a kid getting of a plane and going straight to New Amsterdam. He is visibly sick but he doesn't get care until he passes out in the waiting room. One of the nurses finds his boarding pass in a pocket and gives it Lauren who sees where he came from and calls Max. They think he might have Ebola so they put the patient in an isolation chamber while they do tests to see if it is Ebola. They have to wear protective gear that looks like hazmat suits when they go into the room to treat him.
A detective from the NYPD and an agent from the FBI comes to the hospital to question this boy. They have information that the NSA has intercepted a video from isis saying that they have sent someone to New York infected with Ebola and that the boy is now a terrorist suspect. They question him but the boy seems to have been manipulated and doesn't seem to actually be a terrorist. Max convinces one of the agents to look into his story. I love this scene because we really see how dedicated Max is to his patients.
The boy starts to throw up blood and Lauren comes in to help him. She can't get her suit on fast enough so she decides to go in without the cover on her head and puts on a mask instead. She helps him and gets him stable as Max is outside guiding her. When she's done Max sees that her gloves got ripped and she has a wound on her hand. She now has to stay with the boy in the insolation chamber as they wait for the test results.
Lauren is sitting against the glass wall waiting looking defeated and Floyd is sitting with his back to the glass on the other side. I really loved this shot because we can clearly see that they have a connection and that he wanted to just stay with her.
The cops come in and they have looked into his story which is true. Max tells him that he wasn't infected with Ebola but another virus that is treatable with antiviral medication that they gave him before Lauren ended up in there. They let Lauren out and nurses and doctors applaud her for her bravery. I think that what she did was brave and stupid. Yes, she saved her patient and she will be okay but she could have died and then they would have lost an incredible doctor. I think she did the right thing though. If she hadn't done it her patient would have died but thanks to her he didn't. Floyd asks her to grab a drink and I don't know if this means sex or just a drink but I like it either way.
Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine). He's head of the psych department. We first see him at the meeting and he seems like a bit of a mess. He drops a lot of papers and he has so much stuff with him. He asks for healthy food and Max says yes and he gives them a farmers market in the lobby. A girl, Jemma (Lizzy DeClement), comes into psych and asks for Iggy. She gets a bit aggressive when she's asked to take a seat and wait. Just as the nurse is going to call security Iggy comes in and stops her and takes Jemma into a room to talk. She leans on him and tells him "it happened again". They seem to have a bond and we see that throughout the episode. Jemma came to him years ago after being sexually abused by her foster father, and then two times after that after being abused and mistreated by different foster parents. Iggy doesn't want to put her back into the foster system. He wants to keep her in the hospital for two years, until she's eighteen.
Max and Iggy have a meeting with Jemma after she assaulted someone who works for the hospital because they tried to take her journal away. I don't think she did it intentionally but she just wanted to keep her journal because it makes her feel safe. She felt threatened. When Max asked her why she told him it's because it's the only thing that's hers. Imagined not having anything but a journal that is your own. Of course, you're going to act irrationally when someone tries to take that away from you. There's this really beautiful moment when Iggy asks her what she wants to happen. She has never been asked that before. Her feelings and thoughts have never been taken into consideration. This actress is amazing. She plays this part so well. She doesn't want to stay at the hospital but she can't decide what she wants either and she storms out of the room and leaves her journal with them. Iggy is frustrated and Max tells him that if he can't help her as a doctor then just help her as a human. Iggy seems shocked that he's allowed to do that because he obviously hasn't been before.
Iggy reads through her journal and contacts one of her old foster mother's daughter. He meets her in the park and asks her if she could help Jemma. She doesn't like this idea. Her mother abandoned her and she didn't even know that she was a foster parent. He tries to convince her and he leaves her with the journal so that she can see what her mother did for Jemma. She comes back with the journal and we see a scene where she meets Jemma and they go to talk. This scene was so emotional to me. I just watched it again and I started to cry so...
Last but not least we have Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman). Max meets her as she's going towards the door with a suitcase. He asks where she's going and she tells him that she's going to do talk shows and conferences and that she will be back next week. Max has this amazing line where he tells her that he expects her to actually practice medicine at the hospital because that's her job. She fucking reads him about how he can't afford the kind of publicity that she's giving this hospital and then she takes her bag and goes. Max is left there telling Dora that he likes her and that when she comes back he wants to keep her. Later that night Max has Helens driver drive her back to the hospital instead of the airport. He tells her why she's important to the hospital. It's not about money, it's about care and he can't figure out why she'd rather do lectures instead of actually provide care to patients. Giving the hospital publicity is great but if she's going around telling everyone to come to this hospital but id not actually at the hospital working it kind of defeats the purpose. What if someone goes to New Amsterdam specifically to see her and she's not there. He tells her to come back in 48 hours or not come back at all.
The last scene we see with Helen is at the end of the episode when Max is by himself in the same room that his sister was in when she died, looking at the sonogram picture of his child. Helen comes in and they have this conversation about why she stopped working with patients. Max has an idea of all the death that they encounter got to her, but she said that she became immune to it which is even worse. If you didn't feel like a sociopath before that you probably would after. It must be scary when something as horrible as someone dying doesn't make you feel anything anymore, especially when you're a doctor and you're around death all the time. She tells him that she came back because of him, he has gotten people excited to be doctors again and she wants to be excited too. And then she tells him that he has cancer in his throat, again if I hadn't watched the trailer this would have been a cliffhanger that punched me in the stomach and it would have made me so excited to watch the next episode. It's not that I'm not excited to see the rest, because I am, but it would have been more a plot twist. He already knew that he had it, or at least suspected it but hadn't been diagnosed. And then she asks him the same question that he has been asking throughout the episode, "How can I help?".
So that's it. I had a lot to say about this haha. I loved this pilot, it made me feel a lot of different things, it held my attention and I fell even more inlove with Jocko Sims.
/Johanna
I was drawn to this show as soon as Jock Sims said he was going to be in it. I love Jocko, he's amazing in The Last Ship (I love that show), and with them having their final season I was excited to be able to see him in something new so soon. I mean The Last Ship isn't even over yet but you know what I mean. The music in this episode was amazing. The opening with I feel good was just great, it got me into a great mood, and the Fix you cover in the end was amazing. That song can get me to cry at any time and to put it with this montage was great. There was a waterfall of tears going down my face.
So I think I'm going to go through this episode character by character, starting with Max Goodwin.
So Max is the new medical director of New Amsterdam. He's known for turning a clinic around and making it better but firing a lot of people in the process. He also has this line that he says throughout the episode to everyone, "How can I help". I love that. In the first scene with him, he's on a run and we see him having some pain in his throat. Now NBC, I have a bone to pick with you. Your trailers show way too much. If you watch the trailer before the show you know exactly what's going to happen in the end. I do NOT like that. I want to be excited for the show but not spoiled. If I hadn't watched the trailer I would have been picking up on that little moment in the scene and tried to figured it out before the show tells us what it is. Anyway, he's on his morning run and he runs to the hospital. Now I fucking hope that he showered before changing into his scrubs. There's this scene with him in the locker room and some nurses and a janitor are talking in Spanish behind him. They are basically kind of talking shit about him not knowing that it's him or that he knows Spanish when Dora (Zabryna Guevara) comes in and reveals that it's him. She seems to be working for the dean of the hospital. She kind of is his tour guide who has to take him everywhere. We find out that she has done this with five different medical directors over five years. That doesn't seem promising but Max also doesn't seem faced.
They have a meeting with all the doctors. He tells this story of how he and his sister, Luna, was born at the hospital and that eight years later Luna died there. She got a hospital-acquired infection and it was something that was preventable but she died anyway. He tells them that this job is a dream come true, he wants to save lives. And then he says it, how can I help. And no one answers. This scene made me feel like I was back in school. When a teacher asks a question and no one wants to answer even if they have the answer. Or if a teacher asks if anyone has a question and no one says anything because they don't want to look stupid. And then he fires everyone in the cardiac surgical department.
He also tells the department heads that he will hire fifty new attendings for them. He tells them that he doesn't care if the board said no to their ideas, he just wants to make the hospital better and give the doctors what they need to care for their patients.
After the meeting, he asks one of the doctors to do a throat biopsy. Again if I hadn't watched the trailer this would be more intense and interesting.
He's married but they are separated. From what we learn they have separated because Max was spending to much time on his work and not on his marriage. His wife, Georgia (Lisa O'Hare) is pregnant. We have a scene when they're on the phone and he promises her that he's going to win her back before the baby comes. Later she calls him and she's bleeding. They get her to the hospital and they take care of her, they stop the bleeding and both mom and baby are okay. Georgia says that the baby's name is going to be Luna and fuck me I cried so hard.
Dr. Vijay Kapoor (Anupam Kher). He's a neurologist and he gets a patient that they thought was dead but it turns out that she wasn't. Her medication made it seem like she was. In the beginning, he seems like he doesn't have his shit together. He forgets that his glasses are on his head, he takes everything very slowly, and he wants to talk more than treat. At least that's what it seems like to the audience and the doctor that works with him. She goes to Max and tells him her concerns. When Max confronts Vijay about not treating her Parkinsons Vijay drops a bomb on him. She never had Parkinson's, she had a tumor and her symptoms made her get all these misdiagnoses that lead to her taking a mix of medication that was slowly killing her. Vijay did everything right because if he had treated her for Parkinson's then she would have died.
When they break the news to the patient they give her a choice to fight, stay in the hospital and go through brutal treatments and ultimately die anyways or go home to spend her last days how she wants to spend them. She wants to spend her last time with her parents and her daughters who they left behind in South America and they crossed the borders illegally. They can't go home but Max comes up with an idea to talk to the ambassador who's staying in the hospital. He asks him to get her and her husband back to their family. The reunion scene with the patient and her family is so moving.
Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery). She is the department head for the emergency department and we first see her as she comes into work. She looks a bit messy, like she's hungover. At the meeting with Max, she's the first one to actually answer him when he asks how he can help. She wants to get rid of their waiting room and make more space for beds and get the patients directly into the beds. He says yes, and she seems shocked. He's up to trying things that the department heads think could work. I love that. At the end of the episode, we see them removing the waiting room.
It's Lauren who does Max's biopsy and this scene is great. He can't stop moving or talking so she can't do her job. In the end, she just grabs his face and does the procedure. I love that scene.
Let's talk about Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) since Floyd and Laurens's storylines intertwine a little bit. We first see him and Lauren together during the meeting, she asks him to grab a drink later, he says no, she specifies that she means sex and he still says no. As we see later in the episode they have some history. Floyd is one of the cardiac surgeons that is fired. Lauren, however, tells Max to look into his file. She puts in a good word for him.
Max comes into his office as he's packing up his stuff. He asks him why he has the lowest billing rates in the department and if he doesn't like surgery. Floyd tells him that he loves surgery but there are other ways to help people without cutting them open. Max then offers him a job, to be the head of the cardiac surgical department. When Floyd points out that there isn't a cardiac surgical department anymore Max just says build one, a good one. Floyd tells him that it's a rigged system and that they won't just let him come in here and help people and Max says "so let's help as many as we can before they figure us out". I loved this scene. One Jocko was in it and I love him and two the writing was so fucking good.
Lauren and Floyd have this moment when she asks him again if he wants to grab a drink. He tells her he wants them to just be friends again. She asks him why he doesn't want to see where their relationship goes and he tells her because she's white. She obviously doesn't understand where he's coming from and neither did I, to be honest. It's hard to see it from someone else's perspective but when he explained I understood. He wants to marry a black woman, he wants his kids to be black. He has seen the women in his life feel betrayed because famous and not famous black men have decided to get white girlfriends and they felt betrayed. It can't be easy growing up with something like that but isn't the most important thing to find someone that you love no matter their skin tone? If someone has a different opinion on this I really want to have a conversation with you because as I said I don't really understand. I'm white and I'll probably never fully understand.
From the beginning of the episode we see a kid getting of a plane and going straight to New Amsterdam. He is visibly sick but he doesn't get care until he passes out in the waiting room. One of the nurses finds his boarding pass in a pocket and gives it Lauren who sees where he came from and calls Max. They think he might have Ebola so they put the patient in an isolation chamber while they do tests to see if it is Ebola. They have to wear protective gear that looks like hazmat suits when they go into the room to treat him.
A detective from the NYPD and an agent from the FBI comes to the hospital to question this boy. They have information that the NSA has intercepted a video from isis saying that they have sent someone to New York infected with Ebola and that the boy is now a terrorist suspect. They question him but the boy seems to have been manipulated and doesn't seem to actually be a terrorist. Max convinces one of the agents to look into his story. I love this scene because we really see how dedicated Max is to his patients.
The boy starts to throw up blood and Lauren comes in to help him. She can't get her suit on fast enough so she decides to go in without the cover on her head and puts on a mask instead. She helps him and gets him stable as Max is outside guiding her. When she's done Max sees that her gloves got ripped and she has a wound on her hand. She now has to stay with the boy in the insolation chamber as they wait for the test results.
Lauren is sitting against the glass wall waiting looking defeated and Floyd is sitting with his back to the glass on the other side. I really loved this shot because we can clearly see that they have a connection and that he wanted to just stay with her.
The cops come in and they have looked into his story which is true. Max tells him that he wasn't infected with Ebola but another virus that is treatable with antiviral medication that they gave him before Lauren ended up in there. They let Lauren out and nurses and doctors applaud her for her bravery. I think that what she did was brave and stupid. Yes, she saved her patient and she will be okay but she could have died and then they would have lost an incredible doctor. I think she did the right thing though. If she hadn't done it her patient would have died but thanks to her he didn't. Floyd asks her to grab a drink and I don't know if this means sex or just a drink but I like it either way.
Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine). He's head of the psych department. We first see him at the meeting and he seems like a bit of a mess. He drops a lot of papers and he has so much stuff with him. He asks for healthy food and Max says yes and he gives them a farmers market in the lobby. A girl, Jemma (Lizzy DeClement), comes into psych and asks for Iggy. She gets a bit aggressive when she's asked to take a seat and wait. Just as the nurse is going to call security Iggy comes in and stops her and takes Jemma into a room to talk. She leans on him and tells him "it happened again". They seem to have a bond and we see that throughout the episode. Jemma came to him years ago after being sexually abused by her foster father, and then two times after that after being abused and mistreated by different foster parents. Iggy doesn't want to put her back into the foster system. He wants to keep her in the hospital for two years, until she's eighteen.
Max and Iggy have a meeting with Jemma after she assaulted someone who works for the hospital because they tried to take her journal away. I don't think she did it intentionally but she just wanted to keep her journal because it makes her feel safe. She felt threatened. When Max asked her why she told him it's because it's the only thing that's hers. Imagined not having anything but a journal that is your own. Of course, you're going to act irrationally when someone tries to take that away from you. There's this really beautiful moment when Iggy asks her what she wants to happen. She has never been asked that before. Her feelings and thoughts have never been taken into consideration. This actress is amazing. She plays this part so well. She doesn't want to stay at the hospital but she can't decide what she wants either and she storms out of the room and leaves her journal with them. Iggy is frustrated and Max tells him that if he can't help her as a doctor then just help her as a human. Iggy seems shocked that he's allowed to do that because he obviously hasn't been before.
Iggy reads through her journal and contacts one of her old foster mother's daughter. He meets her in the park and asks her if she could help Jemma. She doesn't like this idea. Her mother abandoned her and she didn't even know that she was a foster parent. He tries to convince her and he leaves her with the journal so that she can see what her mother did for Jemma. She comes back with the journal and we see a scene where she meets Jemma and they go to talk. This scene was so emotional to me. I just watched it again and I started to cry so...
Last but not least we have Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman). Max meets her as she's going towards the door with a suitcase. He asks where she's going and she tells him that she's going to do talk shows and conferences and that she will be back next week. Max has this amazing line where he tells her that he expects her to actually practice medicine at the hospital because that's her job. She fucking reads him about how he can't afford the kind of publicity that she's giving this hospital and then she takes her bag and goes. Max is left there telling Dora that he likes her and that when she comes back he wants to keep her. Later that night Max has Helens driver drive her back to the hospital instead of the airport. He tells her why she's important to the hospital. It's not about money, it's about care and he can't figure out why she'd rather do lectures instead of actually provide care to patients. Giving the hospital publicity is great but if she's going around telling everyone to come to this hospital but id not actually at the hospital working it kind of defeats the purpose. What if someone goes to New Amsterdam specifically to see her and she's not there. He tells her to come back in 48 hours or not come back at all.
The last scene we see with Helen is at the end of the episode when Max is by himself in the same room that his sister was in when she died, looking at the sonogram picture of his child. Helen comes in and they have this conversation about why she stopped working with patients. Max has an idea of all the death that they encounter got to her, but she said that she became immune to it which is even worse. If you didn't feel like a sociopath before that you probably would after. It must be scary when something as horrible as someone dying doesn't make you feel anything anymore, especially when you're a doctor and you're around death all the time. She tells him that she came back because of him, he has gotten people excited to be doctors again and she wants to be excited too. And then she tells him that he has cancer in his throat, again if I hadn't watched the trailer this would have been a cliffhanger that punched me in the stomach and it would have made me so excited to watch the next episode. It's not that I'm not excited to see the rest, because I am, but it would have been more a plot twist. He already knew that he had it, or at least suspected it but hadn't been diagnosed. And then she asks him the same question that he has been asking throughout the episode, "How can I help?".
So that's it. I had a lot to say about this haha. I loved this pilot, it made me feel a lot of different things, it held my attention and I fell even more inlove with Jocko Sims.
/Johanna
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