- Title: New Amsterdam – Pilot
- IMDb: link
New Amsterdam offers a pretty straightforward premise. With the arrival of a new medical director of the United States’ oldest public hospital things begin to change. Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) shows up with a vision to scale back the medical bureaucracy and focus on simply helping patients. A novel approach in the current climate. Goodwin’s outlook is colored by a mix of a midlife crisis, impending fatherhood, and a recent cancer diagnosis. Given the chance at his dream job, basically he’s got nothing to lose except further alienating the mother of his child to be and driving the doctors at the hospital crazy.
Through the perspective of Max, psychiatrist Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine), and ER Doctor Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery), the “Pilot” gives the audience the lay of the land. Trouble this week comes from Max’s arrival and shake-up of the hospital staff (including firing an entire department), a patient from overseas (Jason Kisare) who may or may not have been infected with Ebola by terrorists, Frome’s struggle in finding a juvenile (Lizzy DeClement) destroyed by the Foster system a new home, a woman with a baffling medical condition whose doctor (Anupam Kher) takes a laid back approach to solve, and Max’s attempts to get through to a doctor (Freema Agyeman) more interested in doing publicity for the hospital than practicing medicine. As a big fan of Dr. Martha Jones, I’m happy to see Agyeman throwing back on a white coat. Given the chemistry we see between the Agyeman and Eggold, I’m curious to see where this relationship might lead.
