'New Amsterdam'

There’s a new show that takes place in a hospital. There have been plenty of these shows before, ER being arguably the most successful, but this one is supposed to be different. Spoiler alert, it’s not.

New Amsterdam opens with a new medical director, Dr. Max Goodwin, who fires a majority of his staff because they cared more about making money than they did helping their patients. He was able to “figure this out” by looking at their records and seeing how often they do surgery. He tells the rest that any department that puts billing before medical care would be let go.

This was all great but it didn’t seem believable. The problem is if you really wanted to help patients, why would you let go of the majority of your staff? He threatens to fire another one of his doctors who travels the world doing lectures because even though she was bringing attention and money to the hospital, she wasn’t helping patients.

The part in episode one that made me really hate the show and stop caring was when a patient showed up with signs of the Ebola virus. It seemed as if the writers of the show decided "let’s throw as much drama into the show as we can." This is made even more clear when government agents show up to the hospital stating that ISIS claimed they sent someone to the US with the Ebola virus in an attempt to spread the disease. By the end of the episode they determine it’s not Ebola, it’s a deadly virus that’s treatable with medication.

Then they have another patient who is dying but they can’t figure out what is wrong with her and she says that she wants to go see parents. Problem is they crossed the Mexican border illegally and would be arrested if they went back. So Dr. Goodwin takes it upon himself to speak with the ambassador to see if they can go back, which works and they are reunited.

For more drama, Dr. Goodwin’s wife is pregnant and calls him because she is bleeding. Luckily she gets to the hospital and the baby is okay.

They also focus on a psychiatrist who treats patients he “cares” about. Again either the writing for his scenes are bad and the actor doesn’t have much to work with or they cast the wrong guy. He seems irritated and almost as if he doesn’t want to be there.

The first episode ends with the doctor who specializes in touring around doing lectures coming back and saying that Dr. Goodwin changed her mind and she going to work in the hospital. She also somehow knows that he has cancer, which wasn’t mentioned before, and asked how she could help.

This show, while it tries being different from ER or Grey’s Anatomy, is nothing new. The writers decided they wanted drama and tried to shove as much of it as they could into the show with the goal at tugging at the viewers emotions but they miss the mark. You can tell where the moments are suppose to build to something because they play sad music but with everything they try paying off, none of it connects.

If you want a hospital style show that works I would recommend watching Scrubs. Every episode has a new story while not trying to force too much drama. This makes the emotional moments actually effective. In that show I actually cried watching. Watching New Amsterdam, I couldn’t help but wish it would just end.

If you enjoyed New Amsterdam, find me on Twitter at @theLoganMSnyder and tell me why. Tell me what I’m missing in this show. Maybe I wasn’t their target audience.