New Amsterdam attempted a ripped-from-the-headlines storyline inspired by RaDonda Vaught.
The primary story of New Amsterdam Season 5 Episode 5 consisted of a chaotic and tense hospital environment after a nurse’s arrest for negligent homicide.
We also got some personal arcs teased throughout the hour.
It’s a pity that the series doesn’t spend much time with nurses. It would be so nice if the stories surrounding them packed a bigger punch by happening to characters we know.
Casey is the most prominent nurse in the series, and we haven’t seen him in ages, and he’s used sparingly.
Andrea seemed like a nice woman. She was already proving useful when she could translate the Pig Latin the patient was using for good luck.
But it stopped being about her story the second they arrested her. Andrea became a martyr and cautionary tale for everyone else, and this woman whose experience had her taking a ten-year plea. TEN YEARS!
Max: Please, let Andrea go home to her kids.
Agent: She will, in ten years. She already took a plea.
When you think of things from that angle, it’s sad that we didn’t get a more personal touch with this storyline with that poor woman’s perspective.
Everything we got was reactionary to what she endured. But this type of storyline works better if the victim of it as the center of the narrative. It would’ve came much closer to doing the story justice.They barely scratched the surface of what this issue was and the ramifications of this case on the healthcare industry.
I could appreciate that they didn’t try to have some big fix to kumbaya their way out of all of this. All Max could do was rally the troops and encourage them to continue doing their jobs to the best of their abiltiies. But in doing so, it also felt entirely dismissive of the genuine fear and what one of their own just experienced.
There’s no telling what Andrea’s outcome could’ve been with the right lawyers and some fight. Andrea faced the M and M for overriding the system and administering the wrong drug that killed a patient.
Those at least examine the medical errors and work, so they aren’t repeated. But there has to be room for human error when practicing medicine.
Not every tragic incident should result in criminal charges against the person trying to help. Otherwise, there’s no incentive to help however someone can. And this shouldn’t be about incentives.
The nurses and others were in a frenzy, too afraid to actually do their jobs, causing harm in their quest to avoid hurting or killing someone and landing themselves in trouble like Andrea.
Other staff members were second-guessing themselves and holding up the natural flow of things by ordering scans and other things to cover their bases in case they were next.
Vanessa: You ever think about getting clean?
Lauren: Sometimes.
We saw how nurses prioritizing their future ahead of the patient’s needs led to a woman combatting a new set of issues for the rest of her life because a nurse didn’t administer the appropriate drugs at the right time.
Wilder took the initiative to override the system and get the proper drugs when a nurse wouldn’t, but we all know that the doctors are protected better in the first place, so they’re not assumming the same risks. It was utter madness, Wilder wasn’t standing for it, and neither was Max. But they also wouldn’t be the ones facing the same risks which is something else to unpack.
The hospital faced gridlock; without the nurses, we all know that the hospital couldn’t function. But despite valid fears and concerns, it was also disturbing that an entire hospital of medical staff got so rattled that they were foregoing their oaths to essentially protect themselves.
I’m not exactly comfortable with the depiction of that and how the solution to avoid possible legal trouble consisted of gross, actual negligence that would and should require some ramifcations. It was very messy.
Max couldn’t even get the D.A., who somehow compared the nurse’s error to police officers who shoot unarmed civilians, which I don’t even know how to unpack, especially since they don’t face the same legal consequences, to understand. It proved pointless when Andrea took that shocking ten-year plea deal.
It took a classic rousing Max Goodwin speech that encouraged people to practice medicine fearlessly, do their jobs, or quit altogether for everyone to behave as they should. It was something Wilder couldn’t wait to show Max. But it still felt dismissive of the actual issue.
Given the seriousness of this case and its reality, one wishes that they put more thought into it. It deserved more than a Max happy speech to prove a point. Perhaps it required a deeper dive and more nuanced storytelling.
And yet, it was the case, and Max’s time with Luna that proved to be the more solid arc of the hour and most interesting. My investment was there.
Max and Luna are precious, and a bit of daughter/daddy time can do the body good. She’s such a busybody and pure chaos like her father.
The second Max turned his back on that knife, it was obvious where things were going, and Luna cutting herself could’ve been much worse.
It was cute that her Aunt Lauren was the one to stitch her up at the hospital.
Max’s conversation with her at the end, while pulling at some heartstrings that belied his loneliness as a man who has lost everything and has no family left, didn’t necessarily require the desired outcome.
Kids need boundaries and to learn not to touch everything they lay their eyes on, and Max didn’t need to apologize to Luna for disciplining her regarding that.
Nevertheless, they were undeniably adorable together as he allowed her to make a smoothie by herself in a safe, albeit messy, way.
The other storylines are where things fell apart.
Iggy’s adventure in the woods with the teenagers was frustrating on many levels. It makes you wonder how Iggy still has employment with some of the unusual and unsuccessful things he does. His storylines have truly been godawful.
Patients first, and if you can’t do that, then you should quit. And with everything that’s happening, I wouldn’t blame you.
Max
He should’ve had another adult with him for that outing. No reasonable, logical adult would get so discombobulated by teenagers calling them out that they opted to leave their phone behind too.
It was a contrived storyline that grew more outlandish the longer time ticked by, right up to the teens building a fire and discovering that Austin had access to his iPad the whole time.
Iggy’s not wrong about the effects of phone and technology addiction, especially on teens. But he took things to an extreme, which was unrealistic and cost them. And Gen Z’s entire existence has consisted of processing traumas and information in a way unlike those before. Iggy just felt like the out of touch old guy.
Floyd’s storyline was a headscratcher.
The grotesque, unlivable conditions those poor tenants were experiencing by a downright slumlord were upsetting. Their apartment required many repairs, and the owner never got around to making them, leading to a host of issues that caused health crises for many tenants.
It’s prevalent, disturbing, and something we’re readily trying to combat.
Floyd took it upon himself to find solutions that only showed how out of touch he was about the situation.
No one in their right mind would approach these people who were likely living in these conditions because they couldn’t afford alternatives and claim that with 50% increase of their rent, they’ll finally have the repairs they deserve.
As the woman said, it’s not on them to pay extra for what they already should’ve had. It made it their responsibility and not the owner’s.
Turning around and making the place a co-op, making all of these people owners, and somehow getting the hospital to loan them the money, still demanding that they pay the same increase for ownership, doesn’t solve the problem.
The owner still didn’t take accountability for anything, and it doesn’t address that these people likely couldn’t afford to pay that money even under the guise of it being a long-term investment. What about their freaking finances, Floyd?
Floyd sounded incredibly privileged to make such propositions to these people, and the math simply wasn’t mathing.
Things with Gabrielle fared better for him, even though he almost fumbled that as well with taking back his date offer when he found out she was a traveling nurse.
Floyd’s requirements and expectations for women in his life are ridiculous. But he’s always drawn to women outside his means who cause issues for him. Gabrielle at least gives him a run for his money, and he needs that. She has more game than he does, which is amusing to watch.
Lauren’s situation with her sister isn’t the easier to watch either.
Montgomery and Prescott’s performances were stellar during their final moments. You could feel the years’ worth of issues and these sisters’ respective traumas spilling through in their every interaction.
Lauren’s choices are so frustrating. She’ll have progress and growth and then do something questionable that undoes some of it.
I don’t know how she thought lying to her sister would have the desired outcome, and it’s bothersome that she routinely makes these unilateral choices about her relationships that could jeopardize everything in her attempt to cling to someone, only for it to backfire because of her dishonesty or deceit.
It doesn’t matter how well-intentioned she is if the results are always the same. This hare-brained plan to pretend she was still a suffering addict to bond with her sister was doomed to implode.
Vanessa learning the truth led to an inevitable confrontation. Instead of the two of them getting to work through things from a place of honesty, it became both behaving defensively and escalating things.
Max: You, you’re all the family I got. Maybe that’s why I get so scared. But the world is reminding me that fear isn’t something that goes away. It’s something you face, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Vanessa felt like the screwup sister again and wanted to use, and Lauren became self-righteous about her sobriety.
However, the hurt between the sisters was palpable. Vanessa was a classic younger sister whose abandonment issues overrode logic and reason. She couldn’t grasp that Lauren, as a teenage addict, was in no position to take Vanessa with her to save her from their mother.
Vanessa blamed Lauren for that, but it wasn’t fair. And Lauren underestimated how much of an impact her departure had on Vanessa because she was stuck with the same fate that Lauren actively escaped.
I believe these sisters could’ve gotten around to this and tried to mend their relationship and work things out without this foundation of Lauren misleading her sister, which stifled her growth and had her repeating the same problematic elements in literally all of her relationships.
When does Lauren grow? How does she keep ending up here time and again? It’s frustrating how stagnant it is for her character, especially when it’s the final season and one would hope that her previous experiences would have her learning from her mistakes.
Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics. What did you think about the handling of this case? Sound off below!
You can watch New Amsterdam online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.