Healthy suspense
‘New Amsterdam’ season finale a cliff-hanger
Ryan Eggold is a bloody mess.
The star of NBC’s “New Amsterdam” looks so terrible that a woman walking by asks if he’s all right. Since realistic glass shards jut from his head, it’s a legitimate question.
Why Dr. Max Goodwin, medical director of New Amsterdam Hospital, looks this way isn’t revealed until the final minutes of the series’ cliffhanger Tuesday night. Although seasons often end leaving viewers wondering who survives, this takes that formula a bit literally.
The Daily News was granted exclusive access (and asked not to spoil the ending) to the taping. Like the previous 21 episodes, it crams in several tense story lines.
Goodwin is in his apartment, sick from chemo, when his wife — after a markedly prolonged gestation, even by TV standards — goes into labor. But it won’t be easy. She’s losing blood. He’s so weak, he can barely stand. The physician needs a lot of help.
Inspired by the memoirs of Bellevue’s former medical director, the series films a number of scenes inside the country’s oldest public hospital. Plenty is also shot in front of the massive complex.
As actors mill about E. 28th St. and Mount Carmel Place in Manhattan, many acknowledge how iffy they had been about the job.
Eggold recalled thinking, “Why do we need another medical show?”
Tyler Labine, who plays Dr. Iggy Frome, a child psychiatrist, said he was “a jackass” for initially refusing to read the pilot, adding he’s grateful his agent insisted.
It seems the only actor immediately onboard was Jocko Sims. “I wanted to be a doctor,” he said. “I used to be smart.”
Sims didn’t want the long haul of med school, though. After graduating from UCLA’s theater department, he landed his first audition and has been acting since.
When Sims got the part as head of cardiology, he called McSteamy from “Grey’s Anatomy” for advice.
“The most important thing I learned,” actor Eric Dane told his friend, “is you are not a real doctor.”
One would hope fans remember that distinction, given how often they stop the actors in the street.
Although he doesn’t mind wearing scrubs, even the fake blood feels too real for Eggold. While his parents are doctors and his sister is a nurse, the bloody details of the medical profession leave him repulsed.
“This stuff freaks me out,” he admitted. ”All of it.”
Granted, medical shows routinely linger on gross procedures. And focusing on doctors’ private lives is hardly novel.
But “New Amsterdam” must have done something to break out of the pack. It’s the No. 2 new prime-time drama on broadcast television, and the top show in its Tuesday time slot for the coveted 18to-49 demographic.
To be fair, it followed “This Is Us” earlier in the season, and now comes after “The Voice.” But lead-ins aren’t an automatic win. Anupam Kher, who plays Dr. Vijay Kapoor, has a theory for the show’s success: “It is about good people, and it is a very rare thing.”
And that is true. Eggold’s Dr. Goodwin is the doctor everyone wants. Brilliant and empathetic, he champions health care for all, regardless of ability to pay. At Bellevue, that’s not a fantasy, either; a public hospital, it takes care of everyone.
These characters are, essentially, selfless, except for the hospital finance officer, played by Broadway staple Debra Monk, who adds some imperious heartlessness.
The show also features another veteran, Kher, so popular in his native Mumbai he has 13.4 million Twitter followers. Kher said he has yet to pay for a taxi ride from an Indian driver in New York. He also has another theory for why the show has caught on.
“It’s a Greek tragedy people relate to,” he said.
Each character wrestles with tough issues. Dr. Kapoor is estranged from his son. Dr. Frome is accused of touching a patient inappropriately. And, Dr. Helen Sharpe, played by Freema Agyeman, is mulling over whether, as a widow of about 40, she should freeze her eggs.
“People are ready for real stories that they can identify with,” Agyeman said. “There is always a place for superheroes and escapism. People are talking about health care constantly.”
After working on 13 series that lasted just one season, and a couple that lasted two, Labine handicapped the odds of “New Amsterdam.”
“I know what it feels like to be on a failed show,” he said. “This is a show that could go somewhere. I can see it entering into the cultural lexicon likeE`R’ or `Grey’s’. It has the ingredients to do that.”
NBC is banking that the recipe of classic melodrama and topical issues will keep fans coming back.
“I’m the first to acknowledge it’s a TV show and it’s not changing the world,” Eggold said.
“But we can tell the story of the people who are changing it.”