New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 19 Review: Truth Be Told
So, that was something.
We got our first in a double dose of the series with New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 19, and the wheels were spinning, but not much happened.
Oh, yeah, and Max’s latest attempt to get rid of Veronica got thwarted again.
Um, so what is there to say about this hour? A bunch of random little things happened, and it felt like a busy hour, but it was also difficult to follow at times and rather dull.
And there was something distinctly off about the editing of this installment, which was its own kind of maddening.
Let’s see; for Floyd, we got him telling one of his sisters that he had a child on the way. It felt a bit random to see him pull up his fancy car that we had no idea he had until literally New Amsterdam, and maybe they wanted to get some more use out of it.
He told his sister about the baby he’s having with this married couple, who now live across the country. And his sister rightfully stared at him like he had two heads and wondered what possessed him to think it was a good idea to tell their mother about this whole situation.
It’s not a traditional way of having a kid. We don’t even know if he’ll get to see the child at some point, and what good is telling his traditional, Christian mother that she has a grandchild coming that she won’t ever know or get to see?
Mama Reynolds doesn’t need to suffer from this knowledge like the rest of us have. SPARE HER!
On the professional front, where Floyd shines best, he had an interesting case with Chase, played by the darling Frankie Muniz.
Genetic disorders and anomalies abound in this brother/sister duo. We could’ve guessed that a brother who was by his sister’s bedside in the hospital would’ve had a decent reason for why he vehemently opposed donating a piece of his liver to her.
The poor man was a functioning alcoholic battling alcoholism since he was a young teenager, and as he suspected, he had destroyed his liver.
Yet, it didn’t stop him from offering what little viable liver he had to save his sister. When he implied that if his sister died, he’d soon follow, it was hard not to get emotional. It spoke to how close the siblings were and the dependent relationship they had with one another.
Why would you authorize a secretary with no training to hand out drugs?
Max
Things got nerve-wracking on that table when he nearly died, but then we found out that he didn’t realize he had a spare liver due to some genetic anomaly that he didn’t even know he had in all these years. I don’t know. It sounded cool, if not far-fetched, for all of this to happen within one case.
But the opposite of joy would’ve been watching Malcolm in the Middle die on New Amsterdam, so as long as we got a happy ending, who cares?
Iggy’s patient thought her family wanted her dead or something. To be honest, it wasn’t a compelling case, and I checked out. My apologies to you all.
But I tuned in long enough to see him draw a boundary with Trevor too late into the game. For one, Trevor didn’t have a right to get upset about Iggy’s plan to speak to HR.
Trevor is incredibly unprofessional and inappropriate, and it’s something he needs to nip in the bud, so he doesn’t carry that behavior to other jobs.
It sounds like an HR clusterfuck anyway because Iggy’s reason for hiring and firing him is an HR nightmare, too. The whole thing is a mess.
Iggy’s lucky that Trevor opted to quit, but the man went off before he did. And you know what? It was hilarious!
I feel like we need to have a memorial service for the character that Iggy used to be because he’s a hot mess now. Did Tyler Labine piss off the writers in addition to all the Sharpwin fans, or what?
Everyone thinks of you as such a nice guy, but you’re not, are you? I quit.
Trevor
Iggy’s husband, his patients, pre-pubescent children, and his fantasy side piece all think he isn’t shit.
Now, the Helen stuff. If only the series committed to Helen’s stroke and recovery the way they have dragged this crushed Veronica storyline on for an eternity.
They just threw a time jump at us, and suddenly Helen fully regained her speech offscreen and was back in London. While the whole premise of Helen getting drugged and being the only one to have a stroke and battle aphasia was not a popular storyline, they further cheapened it with this time jump.
What was the point? Why did we need it in the first place?
If she would recover offscreen, it felt like they truly used a disability for a pointless plot device, which, I don’t know, feels icky.
Helen’s recovered now! Nothing else to see here!
They also brought back her mother, and the issue was that we hadn’t seen Serwa in an incredibly long time, and it was easy to forget where they last left things.
Next thing you know, she’s back and has terminal cancer, except, not really, and then there was a beautiful, albeit random reconciliation for the two women.
You are my greatest joy and deepest pain.
Serwa
Serwa telling her daughter that she was her “greatest joy and deepest pain” was such a powerful piece of dialogue. The beauty of that scene and the profound impact as you watched Helen and her mother connect when they’ve had a long history of distance and trauma between them was fantastic, even if it came out of nowhere.
And Serwa bringing up her love of dance and this tidbit of background she never shared with Helen was a great moment for them. The two dancing Kpanglogo was stunning, but the scene was far too short and ended so abruptly that it irked.
But nothing prepared for learning that all of that was a dream. It was a frustrating mindfuck, and I would’ve preferred the first version rather than Serwa knowing how she’s treated Helen in her dream and still struggling to find the right words to tell her that she loved her when she woke up.
It’s progress for these women, so that’s something. But it’s also a story arc that they could’ve spent more time on instead of introducing and then dropping it for so long that it didn’t feel like we earned these moments, especially crammed into a busy hour like this.
Back in the States, Max had two different fronts he faced.
The situation with the sick kids who got the wrong meds from ill-trained secretaries serving as school nurses was a storyline that should’ve had more exploration.
It suffered from getting crammed into this hour with too many other things happening. If the kids were at the hospital, why did Max respond to them when his jurisdiction is UMI?
And it was another half-baked idea for Max, rushing down to the school to confront those behind the kids getting sick and then tracking down the superintendent.
Chase: I can stop drinking.
Floyd: Chase.
Chase: I will. I have to for her. Because if she goes, I’ll go right behind her.
It was a nice switch to have the superintendent, another person who genuinely took on the job for the better welfare of children but found his hands were tied by red tape and cutbacks.
He did the best he could, which made it sadder. These incidents were the best solution for someone who cared about what was best for the children and tried to do something while facing shortages and poor funding.
I don’t know what to make of Max and Lauren’s solution of training working parents to be CNAs so they can learn how to administer drugs to children properly and safely.
Lauren’s portion of it came from Darby telling her that she has bully tendencies after he saw how she spoke to Casey.
But as usual, they walked it all back after Lauren had some epiphany that she could have those tendencies, but Casey reassured her that it wasn’t. If they intended to walk it all back or downplay how she may or may not be in their friendship, what was the point of bringing it up?
The return of Todd was one of the highlights of this messy hour. He’s always been a breath of fresh air.
You know Veronica Fuentes is the worst when Todd can’t stand her either, and she’s something that he and Max can agree upon. He proved to be an asset in trying to get her out with his contacts and some money laundering thing she was part of with UMI.
Again, it was crammed into this hour with other stuff that it was hard to follow the huge discovery. However, we got to see Veronica squirming for a chance.
Max: So what are we supposed to do now?
Fuentes: Well, you can start by getting out of my office.
She even offered to resign, but Max wanted to go for the jugular and thought he held all the power. Unfortunately, things are so much bigger than Veronica. The pockets and corruption run deep, and despite the findings, the FBI overlooked everything because of the influential people pulling strings.
And with that, Veronica is still freaking there.
I have never known a series to allow a villain to overstay her welcome in this capacity; it’s asinine. No way getting rid of Veronica should have been a season-long ordeal. It’s so cartoonish and redundant that most of us stopped being interesting in this storyline MONTHS ago.
So, Veronica: 10000. Max: 0. Again.
Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics. What are your thoughts on this installment? 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.
