Where there is a will, there is a way, and Max always finds a way.
Max may have found his newest calling in London on New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 12, and it consists of him being a back alley street doctor.
Yes, you read that right.
You know what, if the writers are having fun with this season, then I love that for them. One can’t pretend that the narrative choices they’ve been making as of late aren’t unique, to say the least.
It’s hard to say what we’re supposed to do with all of this and some of these storylines, but the series has taken some interesting directions that make it difficult to place.
Funny story, I got fired, by my girlfriend, for starting an insurrection.
Max
If we start things with Lauren, she had the most relatively normal arc of the hour treating Nico. As someone who grew up in an area where there are a plethora of superstitious diehard sports fans, his devotion to the Knicks was familiar.
The man had a heart of an octogenarian (despite his kale smoothie regimen bless him) and had an aneurysm shortly after learning that they were losing. It was safe to say that the Knicks really were killing him.
His treatment was simple enough, but the man not wanting to get his surgery done because of the Knicks was insane. Lauren gets kudos for finding a way to appease him, but we’ll have to ignore how unrealistic it is that she wore that dingy, dirty, smelly jersey anywhere near the operating room.
It had its amusing moments. Nico survived and Lauren got to point out that he’s addicted to the Knicks, and it qualifies as such.
But on a personal front, we got some information on Leyla, and what are we supposed to feel about it?
Leyla is out of the program, which sucks all around. Lauren may have pulled some strings to get her into it, but Leyla proved why she should be there time and again.
She shouldn’t let Lauren and her feelings about what her girlfriend did ruin this opportunity for her. But things aren’t official until all the paperwork is done, and Leyla didn’t leave any forwarding information to resolve the matter.
It’s to be expected after everything she went through and all, and she probably doesn’t want Lauren to have the information. Unfortunately, one of the residents slipped Lauren the information after Lauren’s plea earlier in the day.
It’s a shame you can’t hire another you.
Max [to Helen]
She felt it was the right thing to do, and maybe it will be, it’s early yet, but at the moment, it doesn’t feel right that she did. Clearly, Leyla didn’t want Lauren to have her information. Otherwise, she’d have shared it.
Lauren is tenacious, and we know that now that she has this information, she’ll make her big move to get Leyla back or at least talk to her. And as a fan of the relationship who wants the two of them to work it out, you root for that.
But as a fan of Leyla, individually, and understanding why she’d want her space, it feels like Lauren could cross boundaries again, which defeats the point of everything.
It’s an insurance company, so we’ll likely have to hold out to see what’s to come from this new information and how Lauren intends to use it. Hopefully, she’ll tread carefully with the woman she loves.
Iggy’s storyline also had some strong points and felt a bit like a traditional New Amsterdam installment. It’s always best when he directs his attention toward his patients and his helping however he can.
The hour took to task both how burnt out, and over their heads police officers can be in their line of work and how ill-prepared they are to respond to calls for the mentally distressed.
The overall message they tried to hit home was that it’s patently unfair that police are assigned so many duties and do not have the training nor are prepared for all of them.
They’re stretched too thin in their line of work, expected to respond to things out of their depth, and when that happens, they become burnt out and ineffective at their jobs. On top of that, it causes them to react quickly to things and makes them dangerous to themself and others in the field.
That idea isn’t too far off from the usual discourse on the topic. And it’s arguably something that most people can agree upon regardless of how they’re feeling about police these days.
Officers are not equipped to handle mentally unstable people, that’s not your job. That’s my job. That’s a social worker’s job.
Iggy
However, the execution of the storyline itself was off and clumsy.
They tried very hard to make Iya sympathetic. She’s a woman battling some previously undiagnosed PTSD, and her behavior had become enough of an issue that her job mandated therapy with Iggy. She was resistant to it for most of the hour, too, but she made a turnaround in the end.
But it was disturbing to witness this woman who was battling some demons and issues of her own out in public policing. She manhandled a mentally ill homeless woman, and the interaction worked her up and triggered her, but like, it did the same for the homeless woman?!
And if Iggy hadn’t been there and intervened rather than remained in the passenger seat while Iya drew her weapon on that mentally ill man outside the coffee shop, someone could’ve gotten killed.
Aya: I fractured her shoulder in three places, and all I felt was —
Iggy: Angry.
We were supposed to derive many conclusions from this arc, but the main one that kept glowing in neon lights was that Iya shouldn’t have been on the street at all in her current state. Whether or not she had the proper training to de-escalate the situation or not, that part doesn’t change that conclusion.
You can’t peacekeep or look after others until you can do the same for yourself. We’ve seen this — we’re still seeing this — in so many positions and fields right now, including healthcare.
If we should sympathize with Iya, whose PTSD comes in part from her breaking a person’s shoulder from the hold she had to put people in, then can we at least expect her to make the right call and remove herself from the public if she’s not equipped nor in the mind frame to police them?
Iggy found a Max-inspired solution to the problem. He intends to teach the NYPD how to handle mentally ill people they encounter on the streets in helpful ways. I don’t know how he plans to do that without running it through all the channels and so forth. It sounds nice, though.
Meanwhile, Wilder is still the most Max person in New Amsterdam.
Willow’s return was a pleasant surprise, and her hesitance to embrace Wilder felt realistic. Helen had weeks to prepare for her departure to London, yet the topic of how her patients would react to this news wasn’t broached until now.
It must feel like a slap to the face by some of her patients. It’s different when it’s cancer. Those patients spend a lot of time with their oncologists. You can’t just refer them to someone new, and that’s the end of it.
Willow had a hard time with the transition, and she wasn’t making things easy on Wilder. It wasn’t surprising that she wanted to quit her treatment and let nature take its course.
I genuinely don’t understand how everything with Willow and trying to resolve that and cultivate a relationship translated to referring her to Mia, but okay. Wilder admitted that she doesn’t trust Mia, but she took WIllow there anyway, and Willow seemed to appreciate Willow’s services.
But we got no follow-up on whether or not Mia figured out what was happening behind Fuentes’ back and her feelings about it. And in the most baffling move ever, Wilder invited the new woman Fuentes hired with the money she saved from firing a million people to her secret insurrectionist movement against Fuentes.
What sense does that make?!
We don’t even know if Mia is a friendly? She could report everything back to Fuentes, and they’ll get in more considerable trouble or lose their jobs? What is this?
Meanwhile, the real Max couldn’t find a job in London, so he basically created his own.
Max is just as chaotic in London as he is in the States, but he gets to do it outside the realm of a hospital or clinic. No one wanted to hire him, as we saw in that poor montage where our hapless hero sat in his underwear and a suit jacket, begging people to hire him.
As a Sharpwin fan, I love getting Helen as the boss, running things. She deserves to thrive this way, and it’s refreshing that Max gets to serve as her support when she’s spent years letting him lean on her so much.
This is my life. I don’t know you, and I don’t trust you.
Willow
All of that is great. The problem is that Max doesn’t have anything else to do in the interim. Helen never stopped doing her job or having that to direct her attention to while juggling her role as Max’s confidant and so forth. Max is just… there.
And now we have Max in a hoodie stealing supplies from the clinic his girlfriend fired him from, and I don’t know whether to laugh and how adorable he is or roll my eyes at how absolutely ridiculous this is.
Now, Max is a back alley street doctor with the help of a series of cab drivers. What even is this storyline?
It’s good to see Helen in this leadership role. She tried to consider everyone when she planned to hire her second in command. For some reason, they made London sound like it was out of space or something and strangely regressive with the comments regarding the limited female representation.
Instead of choosing who she felt was the best person for the job, she decided that all three candidates were essential. But the confusion comes in the salary situation. If they were all the highest caliber, doesn’t that mean they’re costly?
How are three people sharing one job and salary? Was there room in the budget for all three of them?
The domestic Sharpwin moments are the cutest, but so much of this storyline in London is getting more ridiculous by the second.
And that’s saying something when this godawful Floyd, Lyn, Claude thing is happening.
Do I need to say anything else about this one? It sucks, and it needs to die a quick, painful death. It should’ve never started in the first place.
Floyd and Claude rotated taking care of Lyn while she rested or something, not that anyone cared. And the two guys talking about Lyn and how to take care of her is awkward. It’s been awkward. It has never stopped being awkward.
It’s weird when he even brings it up to Lauren at work, and sometimes I forget that he’s told her half of this stuff he’s into right now in the first place.
Somehow, it took Floyd sifting through her wedding album at their home that he’s never been to for him to realize that she is married, and he is the outlier in this marriage. I mean, yeah, that’s always been the case, so what’s the epiphany?
Floyd: You guys looked so young.
Lyn: We were.
Floyd: And happy.
Lyn: We were.
It sounded as if he made his decision to step back from this married couple by the end of the hour. Please, God, let it be so. Is the baby his or not? Who knows?
Would Floyd be the type of guy who’d step back if there is a possibility that the child is his? Once upon a time, one would say he isn’t that man, but we also never anticipated he’d end up in an entanglement with a married lady, so who knows?
Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics.
Max is a street doctor now; what are your thoughts? Do you think the Floyd debacle is over? Should Wilder have let Mia into the revolution? HIt the comments.
You can watch New Amsterdam online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.