S2E6: 'New Amsterdam' Pilot Review

Bushra: Yeah, they're like, "Push Mary [inaudible 00:00:01]" and I'm like, "She's not . . ."

Margaux: Why would you do that? I don't watch it for all that.

Bushra: We're going to figure this out.

Margaux: I don't know anything about this fiction. Anyway, okay. Everyone, welcome to the Bundle of Hers. Margaux and Bushra are in the house today. Leen and Harjit, we're going to give them a shout out. They're studying for their surgery and internal medicine shelf, which they have tomorrow. So they're studying.

Bushra: Good luck, guys. You'll do great.

Margaux: Yeah, but they're literally just sitting outside the studio. So they're here in spirit across the glass. In our last couple episodes and always we kind of stress the importance of wellness and part of that is taking time when you get home, not only are you exhausted and don't want to study but you just need to turn your brain off for a little bit. Now's the time of year when all the good shows start coming back on air. Right, Bushra?

Bushra: Yep. It's not pilot season but it's the beginning of premier season. New episodes of everything and there's a new medical series that we decided to give a looksy.

Margaux: Yes. It's called "New Amsterdam" and it's supposed to be based on a failing public hospital in New York and they kind of are exploring the retransformation, or what I imagine the rest of the series is going to be exploring the retransformation and development of this failing public hospital in New York City. So we gave it a watch and we're going to talk about it today just from our perspective and what we liked and didn't like. And as a side note, "Grey's Anatomy" starts again tonight.

Bushra: I will be watching.

Margaux: Because you just can't go wrong.

Bushra: Fourteen seasons? Or 15 now?

Margaux: I don't know. I lost count.

Bushra: You can't be a great show 15 seasons in without it being good.

Margaux: So true, so true. So we'll see if this new show, "New Amsterdam," can hold up to "Grey's Anatomy" because we probably have two of the biggest "Grey's Anatomy" fans, at least at the University of Utah, here.

Bushra: You know a funny story, though? Yesterday I was walking in the hospital and there were two nurses talking to each other and one of them says, "Did you watch 'Grey's Anatomy'?" Then the other one goes, "Oh, it's not until Thursday. It's only Wednesday." And I so badly wanted to say, "I know, right?"

Margaux: It's so sad when it's Wednesday and you wish it was Thursday. But we did have this "New Amsterdam" show to watch and I think it started out pretty interesting for me. The scene of this new medical director coming into . . . well, it didn't exactly start this way, but the scene that kind of grabbed my attention is when the new medical director walked into an auditorium full of physicians at this failing hospital and he said, "How can I help?" was his main question to the audience and no one responded and then he responded by asking the cardiothoracic people to raise their hands and then he promptly fired them. That was pretty deep.

Bushra: Yeah. Imagine just coming in a new hospital, you're the new guy, new director, and you just fire a straight up whole department. That takes some guts.

Margaux: Totally. Then that got me thinking, "What if this main character, this supposed hero that's swooping in to allegedly save this hospital was a woman and she had just fired the whole cardiothoracic department?" Do you think that all those majority men physicians would have gotten up, in real life and then in the show, would that still have been as captivating?

Bushra: I think it probably would have been more captivating. You brought up that the auditorium was filled with mostly male physicians. I didn't even realize that until you just brought it up. I think to be a strong woman in a position of power and to exercise that power is a rare thing. I don't know, I think I would have liked it to be a woman, me personally, because I like to see women in those positions. Do I think it would have been meaningful to more than other women? I'm not sure.

Margaux: Or ratings for the show. That's the part that gets me thinking is are we still, as a society, not there yet where a show . . . a female hero can come in and do these things is not going to be as high rating as the part that they chose. And who knows, because the show isn't that way so I don't know. But that was kind of how it started for me and caught my attention and got me thinking in that regard. But I did like this, "How can I help?"

The main doctor, this doctor that's swooping in to save the hospital allegedly, he also said, "We are the system and we need to change it." That also really resonated with me because I feel like I feel like in medical school and maybe in our whole education, we're kind of meant to think that we're in the system and we can't change it and things just get done to us and the curriculum is the way it is and you just have to do it and jump through these hoops and you kind of feel hopeless and build the mentality that there is no way to change and it's just the system's fault. But this kind of new perspective is like, "No, we are the system. We are the voice and we can change it if we want." I don't know if you got that same feeling, Bushra.

Bushra: I mean, I definitely got it from the show's perspective but in my head, it's a show. It's not real life and part of me is like, "Yeah, right, somebody's going to come in and just fire a whole department." I don't know. I wish real life was more like that. Harjit always says this, "You can't change a system. You have to dismantle it and rebuild from the foundation up." I think in that regard it was a bit too idealistic, which it's a TV show, it's fiction, it's not real life. Yeah.

Margaux: But don't you think in a sense that is what he was doing by firing the whole department? He was tearing it down and then keeping the one doctor, Floyd Reynolds, the one doctor who had the "lowest" billing rates because he was only doing cardiothoracic surgery on the patients that actually needed it. So this new doctor, Goodwin, recognized . . . well, he was told by another doctor to really look at Dr. Reynolds' track record of this. So in a way, to me, it does seem like he tore down the system and then is now starting with this new perspective and new foundation.

Again, it is idealistic. There's no way it would ever be kosher and passed by the HR department to just walk in and fire people.

Bushra: I know. A lot of people were on the phone with their lawyers. Did you see that?

Margaux: Yeah.

Bushra: One thing that Dr. Reynolds tells Dr. Goodwin is that, "Hey, they're not just going to let you come in and start helping people." Then Dr. Goodwin says, "Well, we should do as much as we can before they catch onto us," and I thought that was more . . .

Margaux: Aligned.

Bushra: . . . with real life. Let's just do stuff before we get caught and help as many people as we can. I felt like that was more real.

Margaux: I think that is true and usually when you do that and there's a positive outcome at the end, then you don't get in as much trouble and people start to change their mindset and start thinking, "Oh, maybe that is the right way to do it," so I think you're right. That is maybe more realistic.

Bushra: And then the other doctor, Dr. Bloom, who's an emergency medicine doctor answering Dr. Goodwin's question of, "How can I help you?" and she says, "Let's get rid of the waiting room." I thought about it, and I was like that's so idealistic to be like, "Hey, no waiting rooms." But emergency rooms are usually filled with patients so if there's no waiting room, the incoming patients, what are they . . . I don't know, man.

Margaux: That kind of thinking got my ideas about how Airbnb and Uber kind of came into these industries and totally disrupted the system and the way of thinking. Before Uber it was like always taxi drivers and if you wanted to drive people for a living, you were going to be a taxi driver and go through that system and they had a very, almost monopoly and you had to rent the car and there wasn't very good benefits and treatment of their drivers. But now all of the sudden, Uber, you can be your own driver and the customers were even more satisfied. So it's like what kind of totally . . .

Bushra: What app can we start to decrease waiting times in the ER? We should start on that.

Margaux: Totally. We will have money to pay our loans off right away. But that kind of thinking, I was like, yeah, it seems like somebody eventually is going to think of it and then we're all going to be like, "Well, duh." So we need to start that app.

Bushra: I feel like the character that they're trying to portray with her, she's a department head of emergency medicine. She is a brilliant physician in her own right. She's not afraid to, like, disrupt social norms or whatever. So I really liked her character.

So we find out in this episode that Dr. Bloom and Dr. Reynolds, who is the new head of the cardiothoracic unit, do you want to talk about their relationship?

Margaux: Yeah, we don't really know too much about their past history, only that maybe they . . .

Bushra: They're having a . . .

Margaux: A swirl.

Bushra: So to speak.

Margaux: Got together maybe once or twice before but this kind of dialog that they end up having about Dr. Reynolds turning her offers and requests for a drink down because he only wants to date black women and he is also black identifying, we assume from the show. He hasn't said it.

Bushra: He's black.

Margaux: He's black.

Bushra: It's okay. No need to be PC.

Margaux: He's black and he tells her, "I want to date a black woman," essentially because he grew up on the TV with these football players who had white women on their arms and that was very disenfranchising to his mother and his sister and the black women around him. So he didn't want to fall prey to that same stereotype, and that was kind of a new perspective for me, I think. I don't know, is that something that you've heard of before, had this conversation about?

Bushra: Oh yeah. I mean, I'm Somali, which is in East Africa. We're black too. Most Somali people date other Somalis. It's easier. We have the same culture. We have usually the same religion. Our parents probably interact with each other. We all speak the same language, that kind of thing, right? Cultural sameness.

When he said, "I want to marry a black woman," I kind of understood where he was coming from, from that perspective. I'm glad that she challenged him on that because, what did he say, he goes, "I love black women," and she goes, "Well, I love black women too, but I don't see any black women asking you out on a date." Then she's like, "I still don't understand literally I'm here asking you out . . ."

Margaux: I don't know, it's not organic. He's turning her down for a . . .

Bushra: Not because he wants to turn her down but it was just like, "Oh, this is how I always imagined my life would be." Then he says something along the lines of, "I want my children to be black." And I'm glad that she challenges him on, "What do you mean? I'm not black." Like, explain yourself.

Margaux: I think she genuinely wants to understand his perspective.

Bushra: I think that's something that a lot of people of color deal with, especially if they're raised in America, interracial relationships. I think it's probably easier to date within your own culture, within your own community. Because it is easier. It is. Just based off of fundamental family values, I know that our families are probably going to mesh well and there isn't going to be that . . . I don't want to call it awkward but . . .

Margaux: The navigating of different cultures.

Bushra: Yeah, and trying to smooth things out so they fit, and sometimes people don't necessarily fit into that family dynamic as easily as you'd think.

Margaux: It's also interesting too because they obviously did have some chemistry, allegedly. Actors don't actually have chemistry but they did have this moment together and I think we're supposed to get the perception that he does like her and he's having this internal struggle of wanting to date and marry a black woman but just for that principle of marrying of black woman and denying her, even though he may actually like her. So there's kind of this navigation of . . . I know you don't like the word "navigation." This kind of exploration of . . .

Bushra: That's a good one, exploration.

Margaux: There's an exploration of your own personal needs and wants and desires and attractions and then your principles and your values and all of this other background that plays into it when you're in a long term relationship.

Bushra: I don't think those things are going to be mutually exclusive because he dates a white woman, then his values don't match up. You know what I mean? I think it's good to challenge yourself when you have those kind of set ideals or principles in place. What would it mean for you to go against that? Does that mean you're a bad person? What does it mean for your lifestyle? Is it worth turning away from everything you believe in?

That's a case by case basis for everybody and I think that's kind of what he's dealing with in this situation. So good luck to them. Honestly, I didn't see any chemistry between the two.

Margaux: Yeah. It kind of came out of the blue. Yeah. We'll see.

Bushra: I think it was forced for the script, personally.

Margaux: I agree. Then on the same vein while we're talking about Dr. Bloom, who as we already mentioned is the chief of the emergency department, there's a scene where she's in with this boy from Liberia who maybe has Ebola and she goes in there, he starts crashing, and she goes in there to help him and then freaking Dr. Good is yelling at her what to do from the outside. I'm like, she's the chief of the ED, I think she knows what to do. She doesn't need a man to tell her what to do.

Bushra: Can we just go back for a second and talk about this scene? Yeah, the kid is in isolation because they think he has Ebola virus, right? She has to basically get suited up in hazmat wear so she doesn't get the virus. She was like, "Oh, the patient's crashing, I'm not going to bother doing that," and goes into the room. I had a huge issue with that. I had a huge issue with that. I get it. It's sensationalization for the TV or whatever, but you don't expose yourself to danger. I don't know, I feel like protocols are there for a reason and medical shows showing doctors breaking these protocols, is that just like annoys me to no end when I see that on these shows, and I don't think it sets a good example for young impressionable people who are watching these shows.

So she gets into the room, she's exposed to the virus and she's trying to resuscitate this kid. I didn't get the same impression as you as like, "Oh, he's telling her what to do." She's in there by herself and he can see things that she can't because she's focused on the patient, she's by herself. They had a disagreement about how much epi, "adrenaline" they called it, to give the patient and she's like, "Oh, it's too much," and the doctor goes, "No, with this virus you can give 10 mg," or however many it was.

Margaux: Right. But it wasn't even Ebola anyways. It's like he's just mansplaining to her.

Bushra: I honestly didn't get that from it.

Margaux: Well, part of the issue I had is that they kind of portrayed her in panic mode. It was part of the reason why she didn't even finish putting on her full hazmat suit is she just saw the patient coding and was like, "I need to get in there," and panicked, as females are typically portrayed in Hollywood, as irrational and panicky. So she runs in there and is trying to save him and doesn't even know how much adrenaline to give him.

Then this calm doctor of course, he's calmly putting on his suit while he's explaining, "Oh, get the adrenaline out of that drawer and do 20." I was just like, "This is not helping." I don't know. That's why I took issue with it but I see your side too.

Bushra: I don't know. I guess maybe I was just like, "Oh, the patient's crashing," and then there's one person that can see from literally outside looking in and she's up close and personal. She gets airway and she's bagging the patient and he's like, "He's going to need epi because his blood pressure and his heart rate was tanking."

I don't know. I felt like it was a collaborative effort.

Margaux: That's fair. I could be too hyperfocused on it, and that's why we have different perspectives.

Bushra: That's true. We were watching two different shows also.

Margaux: If you have Ebola and you start the hemorrhagic vomiting, you're already dead. There's no need for a doctor to go in there. Unless if you have Lassa virus, which he actually did have, you're not doing that. Just a side note.

Now let's transition to the third prominent doctor in the show who's the neurologist, Dr. Kapoor, and his interesting patient is a patient who presents to the emergency room with Parkinson's.

Bushra: No, she presented dead.

Margaux: That's true. She presents with death.

Bushra: So basically she was in rigor mortis. She had stiff joints and she's in the emergency room so they thought, oh, she's dead. They didn't have a heart beat or anything like that and Dr. Bloom realizes that she's taking breaths or something. Anyway, they resuscitate her and they take her up to neurology and literally this case is so weird because they literally thought she was dead and Dr. Kapoor is tasked with diagnosing this patient, kind of investigating and figuring out what's wrong with her.

His main thing, which I really love, and he says this to the patient's husband, "We're going to take it slowly. We're going to talk about literally everything. I want to know your story, your wife's story." Basically get a really good history is what he's trying to do.

In the history he finds out that she was taking haloperidol, which is an antipsychotic for depression. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and she was basically taking a bunch of other meds. To the patient's husband's frustration, he's not really doing anything for the patient.

Dr. Goodwin eventually gets involved and Dr. Goodwin is the new director for the hospital and basically is like, "Well, I'm taking this patient over because you're obviously not doing your job." Very aptly, Dr. Kapoor says, "Well, if I would have just started treating her Parkinson's disease, she does not have Parkinson's disease, she would have gone into cardiac arrest and died." Then he shows him imaging, a former PET scan that she had and she had specks or something in the media sinum.

Margaux: I didn't even see those. I was like, "What are they looking at?"

Bushra: Then Dr. Goodwin says, "Oh, that's an artifact," and Dr. Kapoor says, "No, dude. She got a malignant thymoma." He said it like that too. Basically, she was misdiagnosed and was being mistreated and the way she was being treated was why she presented the way she did in the ED. The fact that he took his time to figure out, to literally investigate, he bought her more time than what she would have had if he continued treating for Parkinson's disease.

I loved his arc of the story because he made a point to say taking your time is not necessarily a bad thing in medicine. To take things step by step, to do things one at a time is not a bad thing in medicine because we are trained to be fast, be efficient. Sometimes those things lead us to missing steps and missing clues.

Margaux: And that definitely resonated with me. Right now I'm in family medicine and I feel like you have a 15-minute time slot to do a very complicated chronic care management patient visit and you can't do it in 15 minutes and I feel so rushed every day, literally running from patient room to patient room and I just wonder how many things are going undiagnosed or unheard that patients aren't getting to talk to their providers about because we are in this health care system that is so about efficiency and time. And this is, like you said, a very nice step back into sometimes it's okay if you don't see a result right away, but to take time and think about it and ask those questions.

Bushra: Yeah. Most of the time a good history is all you need, right?

Margaux: Yeah. While we're on the topic of Dr. Kapoor, one thing I didn't like that he said, because his patient was being treated for depression with haloperidol, which in real life you don't do, by the way. But she has this sort of history of being misdiagnosed with depression and depression that is resistant to medication. When they finally discovered what she had and how she had been misdiagnosed, he said, "You have a strong and resilient mind. I'm sorry you were led to believe otherwise."

That kind of hit a nerve with me because it's talking about if you have depression then your mind is not resilient and strong. But that's not the message that we need to be sending about mental health is that these people who do and are actually suffering from depression can be just as resilient and strong even though they have depression. A depressed person is not a broken person and they are not a non-resilient person. I just would want to reiterate that, and I didn't like that message that they sent.

But I do agree with you, Bushra, I loved Dr. Kapoor's character and his approach to medicine in general.

On that note I think there is a lot more in this episode that we could talk about and we don't have time. This episode just seemed really glued together. They threw a lot of things in there and it was jumpy.

Bushra: Yeah, it wasn't as seamless as I like for a show to be. It was hard to follow. I think there were too many things going on in the first episode. I may get some flack for saying this but I felt like they just put things into the show to be maybe controversial or to be like, "Oh, we're so 21st century. We think about all the things."

There was a little kid from Liberia who might be a terrorist, the new director who's trying to achieve all the things and he also has cancer. There was the immigrant . . .

Margaux: Spoiler.

Bushra: Sorry. Spoiler alert. The woman who was misdiagnosed with Parkinson's disease and she's also an illegal immigrant and there were several other things. I was like, "Too much."

Margaux: Yeah, and I also thought that the show didn't even address insurance and non-insurance, which is what I thought the whole premise of it being a public hospital was going to even address in the first place.

Bushra: Yeah. Honestly, it felt like I was doing a homework assignment watching this. And I don't know that I'll watch episode two.

Margaux: Okay, so that was going to be my next question. So of the medical shows that you will be watching this fall, what are they in order of priority?

Bushra: "Grey's Anatomy." We stand for "Grey's Anatomy." I think the second one is going to be "The Good Doctor."

Margaux: I would agree with that.

Bushra: That's about it.

Margaux: Yeah, don't watch "The Resident." It's not worth your time. And then just for our producer we'll put "Chicago Med" on there as number three.

Bushra: She's obsessed.

Margaux: All right. So that's a wrap on our review of the pilot of "New Amsterdam." If you agree or disagree or want to even start a conversation about one of the pieces that we didn't touch on, drop us a line at bundleofhers on Instagram, on Facebook, or on Twitter. Catch you later.

Bushra: Send us a tweet.

Margaux: What was it I heard you calling it?

Bushra: A twitch. She was calling it a twitch.

Margaux: Tweet us, please.