On New Amsterdam's First Three Episodes
I have seen the three episodes of Fox's New Amsterdam that have aired so far. The first knocked my socks off. I'm told that it is greatly re-tooled -- not only re-edited, but re-shot -- from the original version the critics saw and panned late last summer. The day after watching it, I burbled at much-madness over the phone, and she said she could not recall the last time she had heard me so excited about a new show (I nominated Young Blades). Unfortunately, the second and third episodes were more pedestrian -- not objectionable, pleasant enough, but no particular spark. I imagine that they would have benefited from the same re-tooling as the premiere, and I hope that subsequent episodes are more and more in the spirit of that.
Is "NA" available to use as an abbreviation, or does it already belong to some other show, and would cause confusion?
The formula has me in its sights. History plus mystery plus fantasy. It's very, very me ... as long as they remember to include what we in Forever Knight customarily call "angst." I need a little grief, a little guilt, a little loneliness, a little hopeless struggle against impossible odds that continues every day regardless. (You get up in the morning and you can be all-powerful ruler of a demon dimension, or you can go to gym class. Your choice. Make it well.) The first episode had it. The second and third did not quite. We'll see.
You know the premise, of course. Immortal homicide cop. Detective mystery present with historical fiction flashbacks. Believes that finding "the one" will turn him mortal when his soul and that of "the one" are "joined" -- all this from a few words by a Native American woman, whom I will bet the script describes as "shaman," who may or may not have meant precisely what he thinks she did (and I will note for the record that she did not use a pronoun in her statement; no gender). He thinks she meant his One True Love, and that's his quest. Differences from your average fictional immortal? He can father children, and he does not seem to have a kryptonite yet (that is, a hunger for blood, people coming to cut off his head, etc.). The actors are all doing fine work so far, to the limits of my ability to judge.
Episode 1, "Pilot"
John Amsterdam is a truth-teller. One of the first things I noticed about him was that he tells the literal truth when questioned; he lets others suppose it a joke, but he doesn't lie, and this has held through all three episodes so far, in things large and small (in the third episode when he must fill out a false identity -- birthdate, etc. -- on a government form, he narrates the true answers aloud as he writes). In a beautiful, horrible scene reminiscent of Highlander's beloved "Studies in Light," he holds his tongue rather than tell a lie. Many an easy, facile remark would have gotten him out of that uncomfortable situation; the truth would not have; he said nothing.
He went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and that clicked in my mind with the truth telling. Is that a correct connection to make? He stood up and gave a large number of days since his last drink, a number so large I couldn't process it, and most of the people at the meeting clearly had the same reaction, hearing only "big number" and applauding. But one guy's brain worked a bit differently, and he leaned over and whispered, "Hey, jerk, I can do the math. You would have had to have taken your last drink in 1963." "I look young for my age," Amsterdam said.
He is a wood-worker, an artist in wood, his private craft and evident joy. I gather that they replaced "musician" with this when they reworked the series; this is an innovative choice and, I think, a wise one, with storytelling potential. He likes puzzles. He likes closure -- something he can give to others, but not himself, he feels. He's fey! The man longs for his right to join the rest of us in the right to eventually die, to be back inside the flow of time.
I had thoughts about the longstanding "best friend" character in this episode, but I shall save them for the revelation in the next.
The whole "true love" thing is deeply problematic, of course. But it was smart, in this episode, to let a newly bereaved secondary character from the mystery plot articulate it instead of the hero, making of it a kind of curse. I came out of that first episode feeling that the series wanted to do over N&Nism, as seen by a smart, strong, cynical and wounded N&Ner -- say, Chris H. on her best day, but post-LK. (Consequently, I suspect that the real "the one" is not the doctor he supposes, but his partner. That's the N&N paradigm.)
I recommend the premiere episode.
Episode 2, "Golden Boy"
"Golden Boy" felt formulaic to me in a way the pilot did not. Shall I spoil you terribly? The 68-year-old longstanding best-friend character, Omar, is in fact the protagonist's son, child of a mixed-race marriage in times very hard on that. And yet the only moment in the episode that struck me as stale, right out of the pile of current television cliches, was the too-easy use of the "oh, this suspect has a different sexual orientation than we supposed; guess he didn't do it" trope in the police mystery. The rest was fine. No flaring spark of passion for the story, or nit-picking. Just pleasant enough, fine, no firm complaints.
I appreciate that he has longstanding relationships. I'm curious to learn whether there are many or few -- that is, does he trust only someone so close they share bodily fluids or DNA?
A sensible, pleasing nod to Highlander came here. Truth-teller John tells a very small boy -- his own great-grandson, by the way -- that he can't die, and lists a number of things that have happened to him that didn't kill him. The child asks what will happen if someone cuts off his head. John answers that no one has tried that -- yet.
Being the second episode, it tried to address the romantic love element, which is so important to the premise. It asked, pivotally, so what about all these people you have loved who turned out not to be "the one"? What does that say about them? About you? How dare you not find that love enough for your magic spell!
The man reads poetry, by the way. Omar Khayyam, here. His son's namesake.
Episode 3, "Soldier's Heart"
Didja have to do Whitman? And so soon? ~sigh~ Not that I don't love to read Whitman, especially aloud, but -- early skinny Leaves of Grass, not Drum Taps, for a Civil War referent? Well, yes, at that moment, I suppose. It's historically sound. But -- gah. I'm not big on the dragging in real historical figures. They all do it, though...
And yes, yes, every fictional immortal was an army medic at some point. It's a rule. We know that. But John Amsterdam just walked into Nick's role in the "Unreality TV" flashback, not only as a Civil War doctor on the Union side, but dealing with a character named "Sullivan"!
This episode wants to deal with the nature of memory and accumulated trauma. I respect that. But it failed to make sufficient use of its fantasy elements to achieve a parallel and/or a metaphor to bind the elements together and reach a larger truth.
Am I asking too much of it? First-season FK did that all the time! But no, I don't demand that standard. The episode was, again, just fine. Perfectly respectable. Nice. I'll tune in again next week, no question. But ... I would like to see the fire of that premiere again.
Is "NA" available to use as an abbreviation, or does it already belong to some other show, and would cause confusion?
The formula has me in its sights. History plus mystery plus fantasy. It's very, very me ... as long as they remember to include what we in Forever Knight customarily call "angst." I need a little grief, a little guilt, a little loneliness, a little hopeless struggle against impossible odds that continues every day regardless. (You get up in the morning and you can be all-powerful ruler of a demon dimension, or you can go to gym class. Your choice. Make it well.) The first episode had it. The second and third did not quite. We'll see.
You know the premise, of course. Immortal homicide cop. Detective mystery present with historical fiction flashbacks. Believes that finding "the one" will turn him mortal when his soul and that of "the one" are "joined" -- all this from a few words by a Native American woman, whom I will bet the script describes as "shaman," who may or may not have meant precisely what he thinks she did (and I will note for the record that she did not use a pronoun in her statement; no gender). He thinks she meant his One True Love, and that's his quest. Differences from your average fictional immortal? He can father children, and he does not seem to have a kryptonite yet (that is, a hunger for blood, people coming to cut off his head, etc.). The actors are all doing fine work so far, to the limits of my ability to judge.
Episode 1, "Pilot"
John Amsterdam is a truth-teller. One of the first things I noticed about him was that he tells the literal truth when questioned; he lets others suppose it a joke, but he doesn't lie, and this has held through all three episodes so far, in things large and small (in the third episode when he must fill out a false identity -- birthdate, etc. -- on a government form, he narrates the true answers aloud as he writes). In a beautiful, horrible scene reminiscent of Highlander's beloved "Studies in Light," he holds his tongue rather than tell a lie. Many an easy, facile remark would have gotten him out of that uncomfortable situation; the truth would not have; he said nothing.
He went to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and that clicked in my mind with the truth telling. Is that a correct connection to make? He stood up and gave a large number of days since his last drink, a number so large I couldn't process it, and most of the people at the meeting clearly had the same reaction, hearing only "big number" and applauding. But one guy's brain worked a bit differently, and he leaned over and whispered, "Hey, jerk, I can do the math. You would have had to have taken your last drink in 1963." "I look young for my age," Amsterdam said.
He is a wood-worker, an artist in wood, his private craft and evident joy. I gather that they replaced "musician" with this when they reworked the series; this is an innovative choice and, I think, a wise one, with storytelling potential. He likes puzzles. He likes closure -- something he can give to others, but not himself, he feels. He's fey! The man longs for his right to join the rest of us in the right to eventually die, to be back inside the flow of time.
I had thoughts about the longstanding "best friend" character in this episode, but I shall save them for the revelation in the next.
The whole "true love" thing is deeply problematic, of course. But it was smart, in this episode, to let a newly bereaved secondary character from the mystery plot articulate it instead of the hero, making of it a kind of curse. I came out of that first episode feeling that the series wanted to do over N&Nism, as seen by a smart, strong, cynical and wounded N&Ner -- say, Chris H. on her best day, but post-LK. (Consequently, I suspect that the real "the one" is not the doctor he supposes, but his partner. That's the N&N paradigm.)
I recommend the premiere episode.
Episode 2, "Golden Boy"
"Golden Boy" felt formulaic to me in a way the pilot did not. Shall I spoil you terribly? The 68-year-old longstanding best-friend character, Omar, is in fact the protagonist's son, child of a mixed-race marriage in times very hard on that. And yet the only moment in the episode that struck me as stale, right out of the pile of current television cliches, was the too-easy use of the "oh, this suspect has a different sexual orientation than we supposed; guess he didn't do it" trope in the police mystery. The rest was fine. No flaring spark of passion for the story, or nit-picking. Just pleasant enough, fine, no firm complaints.
I appreciate that he has longstanding relationships. I'm curious to learn whether there are many or few -- that is, does he trust only someone so close they share bodily fluids or DNA?
A sensible, pleasing nod to Highlander came here. Truth-teller John tells a very small boy -- his own great-grandson, by the way -- that he can't die, and lists a number of things that have happened to him that didn't kill him. The child asks what will happen if someone cuts off his head. John answers that no one has tried that -- yet.
Being the second episode, it tried to address the romantic love element, which is so important to the premise. It asked, pivotally, so what about all these people you have loved who turned out not to be "the one"? What does that say about them? About you? How dare you not find that love enough for your magic spell!
The man reads poetry, by the way. Omar Khayyam, here. His son's namesake.
Episode 3, "Soldier's Heart"
Didja have to do Whitman? And so soon? ~sigh~ Not that I don't love to read Whitman, especially aloud, but -- early skinny Leaves of Grass, not Drum Taps, for a Civil War referent? Well, yes, at that moment, I suppose. It's historically sound. But -- gah. I'm not big on the dragging in real historical figures. They all do it, though...
And yes, yes, every fictional immortal was an army medic at some point. It's a rule. We know that. But John Amsterdam just walked into Nick's role in the "Unreality TV" flashback, not only as a Civil War doctor on the Union side, but dealing with a character named "Sullivan"!
This episode wants to deal with the nature of memory and accumulated trauma. I respect that. But it failed to make sufficient use of its fantasy elements to achieve a parallel and/or a metaphor to bind the elements together and reach a larger truth.
Am I asking too much of it? First-season FK did that all the time! But no, I don't demand that standard. The episode was, again, just fine. Perfectly respectable. Nice. I'll tune in again next week, no question. But ... I would like to see the fire of that premiere again.