Stream It Or Skip It: ‘New Amsterdam’ On NBC, Where Ryan Eggold Tries To Make A Large Public Hospital Care About Their Patients Again

Do you miss Ryan Eggold since he left The Blacklist? Well, your favorite sensitive hunk is back with the medical drama New Amsterdam, based on the real life stories from Bellevue Hospital. Will Eggold be able to make a medical procedural watchable?

NEW AMSTERDAM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Five AM. A man’s phone alarm goes off, and we see his wallpaper is of him and his significant other. He wakes up alone in his loft, takes clothes out of his suitcase, and starts jogging across the Brooklyn Bridge. All the while we see an ambulance driving out of Rikers Island, a young African man walk through the airport alone and an evacuation from the U.N. All while we hear James Brown’s “I Got You (I Feel Good)” plays.

The Gist: The man jogs directly into New Amsterdam hospital, the oldest public hospital in the city, which has a prison ward, a psychiatric ward, and services the UN, and changes with the nurses and janitors. He’s Dr. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold), the new medical director of the hospital. He cares and wants the hospital to care about its patients again. So in his first meeting with the staff, he immediately fires the entire cardiac surgery department, because they’re more worried about billable hours than patient care. To the rest, he asks the same question over and over: “How can I help?”

We then see him float around the hospital as he helps doctors with different cases: Emergency department head Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery) as she tries to figure out if the African man has been infected with Ebola; he hires back cardiac surgeon Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) to rebuild the department, because he’s the only one who cares about patients; he encourages the slow-moving veteran doc Dr. Vijay Kapoor (Anupam Kher) with a terminal cancer patient with Parkinson’s, until the doc tells him why he’s moving so slow; finally, he also helps the psychiatric department lead, Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) figure out how to get a patient he’s had since she was a kid get into a foster home she won’t leave.

There’s other backstories: Lauren and Floyd are hooking up, but he won’t get serious with her because she’s not black; Max’s estranged and pregnant wife bleeds out and comes to the emergency department; Max tries to get one of his best doctors, Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) reduce her media appearances and speeches and actually see patients; and he finds out what he already knows about his constantly sore throat. What a first day!

Our Take: New Amsterdam is based on a memoir from Dr. Eric Manheimer, longtime medical director of Bellevue Hospital, so there’s some truth to how Max Goodwin’s first day might go. But, holy hell, we were getting whiplash seeing how he just seemed to be everywhere in such a large hospital, and how all this stuff went down on his first day.

To be honest, there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before. It’s a typical network medical show, with multiple befuddling cases per week, some interpersonal drama between members of the medical staff, and big dramatic emergency scenes. And EP David Schulner (The Event, Reverie) has a good lynchpin in Eggold. We liked him in The Blacklist and that spin-off we have already forgotten about, and he brings a calm charisma to the chaos. When we mentioned that he emoted via his eyebrows and smirks, we weren’t being snide; he saves scenes that would be otherwise schmaltzy and maudlin with his easygoing manner and ability to express himself non-verbally.

It’s just that the pilot was so by the book, including the idea that he’s helping solve every doctor’s problems in a single day plus dealing with his wife’s problem pregnancy plus dealing with a devastating diagnosis, it’s hard to see where the show goes from there.

Sex and Skin: We were getting tired of Lauren and Floyd talking about “getting drinks.” We’re not idiots..

Parting Shot: While looking at the ultrasound of his still-unborn (but healthy for now) child, Dr. Sharpe tells him how excited everyone is to “be doctors again.” But then she tells him to slow down, because he has cancer. “But you knew that, didn’t you? How can I help?” Now we know why Max moves so fast — he feels he’s running out of time.

Sleeper Star: We’ve been fans of Tyler Labine since Reaper, so we were pleasantly surprised to see him playing the earnest Dr. Frome. He still provides a little comic relief, which helps on such a sincere show.

Most Pilot-y Line: The not-so-coincidental coincidence that Max is leading the hospital where his sister died decades ago is annoying at the very least.

Our Call: SKIP IT. The acting is fine, but this feels like every other medical show, in a format that’s changed little since ER started 24 years ago.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch New Amsterdam on Hulu