New Amsterdam Episode 3
Every Last Minute
Welcome back to the Dam. The Dam is busy as ever and as we join the staff on this day, Dora is once again chasing down Dr. Max Goodwin noting 31,252 steps in her daily quest to find and keep up with Max. Despite his penchant for avoiding the unpleasant parts of life, Max must finally meet with the Dean who waits in his office.
The Dean of Medicine
The Dean, seated in Max’s chair offers two words by way of greeting, “You’re fired.” Max politely says “Okay”. As we all expected, the Dean isn’t thrilled with the changes that Dr. Goodwin made in his first five days on the job. Dr. Goodwin was hired to make changes, which he is doing, but the Dean isn’t pleased because he hired Max to make his changes, not Max’s. If the Dean was looking for a yes man, he made the wrong hire with Dr. Goodwin. Ultimately, this is a can’t lose situation for Max. As he explains: if he is fired it will save his marriage and he will be eternally grateful. If he stays, he can save the hospital and the Dean gets the credit. The Dean gives Max six months. Dr. Goodwin, thriving on pressure and conflict avoidance, responds “Give me three.”
Treating a prisoner
Dr. Bloom is busy securing the ED in preparation of receiving a patient from Riker’s Island. We see the preparations at the prison and hospital to transport a prisoner safely to the hospital for treatment. As the patient arrives, we meet Janelle, a young pregnant woman in an orange jumpsuit. Clearly, this wasn’t what Dr. Bloom (or I) was expecting.
Janelle presents with high blood pressure which may be the first signs of preeclampsia, a fairly common condition during pregnancy. As it turns out, Janelle has the more serious HELLP Syndrome, which impacts blood pressure, liver function and platelets. With such sever hypertension, Janelle also experiences maternal seizures and treatment (delivering the baby) becomes emergent. Janelle refuses to consent for delivery.
Dr. Bloom finds Dr. Goodwin to help intervene with Janelle. Janelle is refusing to deliver because she doesn’t want her baby to end up in the foster care system like she was. With only six weeks left of her sentence, Janelle wants to try to hold on and deliver after she is released. She has no family to help and is willing to wait or die trying. The doctors know they can get the court order to save her life, but Max prefers patient consent. While he doesn’t utter the words this time, he brings his “How can I help” attitude. He promises to find Janelle a solution for her and the baby. There is always a way.
Janelle delivers her baby by c-section. Without an answer from Max, Janelle says she must give the baby up and refuses to hold her. Janelle is a scared Mom who feels let down by Dr. Goodwin’s inability to find a solution before her baby was delivered.
The invisible man
When we meet Ray DeMarco, he is nude and digging up a grave by hand apparently trying to see his fiancee’ Maddy again. When he arrives at the Dam, Dr. Bloom orders a toxicology screen based on the tracks on his arm and refers him to Psych. Enter Iggy who begins his assessment in his typical disarming manner. Ray is distressed over the loss of his fiancée’ and signs suggest that this case is a fairly clear psychotic break. The case gets more complicated when Dr. Frome discovers that Ray has no feeling in his arms and believes himself to be invisible.
Dr. Frome teams up with Dr. Kapoor (#Kapiggy) for further neurological assessment, but finds Ray’s room empty, which offers Dr. Kapoor the opportunity to exercise his dry sense of humor. Dr. Frome alerts security to his missing patient without tipping off the entire hospital. After all, Max is busy trying to woo Mrs. Ryland for $10 M. After several sightings of Ray throughout the hospital without him being returned for treatment, Iggy becomes frustrated. He meets a distraught woman named Maddy, Ray DeMarco’s fiancée’.
As the doctors check in on Ray’s labs they unlock the mystery. Ray has been injecting himself with embalming fluid because he thinks he is dead, and those puzzle pieces help Dr. Frome with locating Ray. He finds Ray in the Morgue and tries to explain Cotard’s syndrome to Maddy. As Dr. Frome speaks with Maddy, Dr. Kapoor looks for underlying neurological pathology to cause the physical symptoms not explained by the Cotard’s diagnosis. The MRI reveals a brain tumor that can explain all of Ray’s symptoms: delusions, numbness, out of body feeling. Dr. Kapoor begins treatment with steroids. Maddy tells Ray that the Drs. will bring him back to life tomorrow (when the steroids should begin working).
Physician Heal Thyself
We catch glimpses of Max coming to terms with his cancer but also not aggressively treating it. Dora catches up with Dr. Goodwin speeding down the halls with some administrative paperwork for him to sign. As skilled as Dora is at tracking Max down, Dr. Sharpe is equally talented. Dr. Sharpe falls in step with Max as he heads off to visit Georgia while discussing his treatment plan. Chagrined by Helen discussing his condition in the hallway he tries desperately to wave her off. He reminds her that he is also a doctor while embodying the stereotype that physicians make the worst patients. They discuss the steps necessary to begin treatment: molar removal, PEG insertion, IV ports. All these things would dramatically slow down Max’s pace before adding the chemotherapy. One thing we know about Dr. Max Goodwin: he is a clock racer. He is currently racing several: the clock to save his marriage, the hospital, his own life and change the system. What we don’t know? Which will win.
Max is still ignoring Dr. Sharpe’s directive to share his diagnosis with Georgia when he walks in to visit her. He is surprised to hear that she is being discharged today. Her plan is to go to her parents’ house in Connecticut while Max is desperate for her to stay. Georgia grants him another reprieve to attend to his job and says she won’t leave before he returns.
At the end of the day, Max chooses to jump all in on the fight for his life. He asks Dr. Sharpe to be his physician and with both setting their claims, she agrees. The clock to the start of his chemotherapy and radiation treatment is set at 3 weeks. It’s a good thing Max likes a fast pace, he has a lot to do before that treatment begins.
The New Cardiac Surgical Department
During the tour with Mrs. Ryland, Dr. Goodwin crosses paths with Dr. Richards and his three new attending physicians. All women of color. An awkward moment ensues but Max is saved by Dr. Bloom’s need for his help on her case.
In the elevator, Dr. Bloom and Dr. Richards discuss the new hires. She assumes she knows his motives in making these hires and asks if there is a future wife in the mix. Dr. Richards explains that 19% of surgical positions are held by women and that not enough women of color hold such positions to even create a statistic. He continues by assuring Dr. Bloom he plans to hire staff of all ethnicities and genders, but he started with these three women. He also notes that all three of them have better qualifications than either Dr. Bloom or Richards.
The $10 Million Dollar prize
When you’re late to the staff meeting, you cede a little control and Max finds that vacuum taken up by the Dean of Medicine. He tells the staff he has a $10 million donation coming for the hospital system. The catch? Only one hospital can get the money per the widow. She has visited University, but still wants to visit New Amsterdam. Dr. Goodwin joins the meeting and knows the game afoot. The Dean has earmarked the money for University but needs New Amsterdam to play their role. He promises that money will flow to address the budget needs of the Dam. After the Dean exits, Max asks who wants ten million dollars.
Dr. Goodwin proceeds to give Mrs. Ryland a tour of the Dam, at least until he is called away. He finds her in a chair later in the day, surprised by her continued presence. She had cleared the day to visit New Amsterdam and stayed even after Dr. Goodwin had been called away from the tour. When Max sits beside her, the showed him the plans the Dean had sent her of the Arthur Ryland Heart Institute at University Hospital. Mrs. Ryland asked Max why he had fired Dr. Merritt, the cardiologist who had treated Arthur after his first heart attack. The answer was as “Dr. Max Goodwin” as it gets: “because he only cared about money”. Mrs. Ryland said the same about her late husband. She didn’t love the plans finding the center garish and vain. That’s when Max asked her what she wanted.
It was at a visit to the nursery that Mrs. Ryland (with a little encouragement from Max) decided where to donate her money. The Dean was not pleased to hear that Mrs. Ryland planned to give the money to Riker’s Island, enabling changes for the prisoners including a nursery and Kangaroo Care room for newborns. Max offers a passionate speech on changing the system, breaking cycles and preventing generational relapse. Can we get a Dr. Goodwin at every hospital yet?
Persona vs Physician
In this episode Dr. Helen Sharpe comes face to face with this one truth: celebrity has overshadowed her credentials. Dr. Sharpe is extraordinarily qualified, but patients aren’t sure they can trust her to put her patients first. Twice people have commented on her Birkin bag, which was a gift rather than the purchase of someone as wrapped up in their celebrity as we might have all believed her to be. Along the way, we begin to see the many layers of Dr. Sharpe open, our own rose blooming at the Dam. On this day, challenged by donors and patients to find her true self, Dr. Sharpe reclaims her purpose as a doctor. She knows her role in the press has been helpful to the hospital, but the pull of the Hippocratic oath wins out. Dr. Helen Sharpe is an excellent Oncologist and she is determined to be an even better physician. The timing is excellent as Max finds himself in need of a world-class Oncologist.
The Georgia Complication
The complication is that his wife, who doesn’t know he has cancer, is dressed and ready to leave the hospital for her parents’ house in Connecticut. Max doesn’t want to visit her there, he wants her to stay in NY, to stay at the Dam, and most of all to stay with him. As Georgia continues to pull away, Max leans in to try to figure out how to keep her near. Clearly they love each other, but Georgia is not convinced that Max can keep his promises after so many broken ones.
After his visit with Dr. Sharpe, Max goes to visit Georgia but finds she has already been discharged. We know Max always moves at a quick pace, but what makes him run? Trying to catch Georgia before she and Luna get out of the Dam. He just catches her and kneels in front of her wheelchair all but begging to be the one to take care of them. He asks Georgia ‘if he can’t take care of them then’…and leaves the remaining words unspoken. Why be a doctor at all if you can’t be trusted to care for those you most love? Finally, she agrees and for at least this moment, Max’s footing in life is on slightly more solid ground.
Ghosted
We get a little more insight into Dr. Kapoor in this episode. An acutely observant staff member in the café’ notices patterns and moods. Early in the episode she noted Dr. Kapoor’s choice of chocolate croissant to “treat” his furrowed brow. As he looks at his phone she asks if he missed an important call. A call he isn’t sure is coming. She tells him he was ghosted. Later, Dr. Kapoor adorably returns to the café’ and asks what being ghosted means. Upon hearing the definition, he sighs. He admits that it is his son ghosting him, but then decided maybe he ghosted his son first. Even I want to give Dr. Kapoor a hug and help his resolve this situation that is clearly causing him pain.
My Thoughts
Three episodes in, New Amsterdam is hitting on all cylinders. The character development is brilliantly interwoven into the cases. The writers are doing a fantastic job at illuminating medical conditions, issues surrounding costs of healthcare, and the impact of medical issues on life. Sure, they miss the mark on some of the smaller details, but it doesn’t detract from the story or the meat of the show.
One of my favorite parts of New Amsterdam is that the story of the doctors is at the forefront. The medical cases are realistic, important and play a great supporting role, but it isn’t trying to recreate an emergency every minute. This is a slower paced medical drama, different from the others offered. Then again, if the goal of the Dam is to change the system, they can’t follow the model of everyone else, can they? I can’t wait for my next appointment at the Dam.
No, Georgia, it turns out Max isn’t the only one who loves it at the Dam.
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