Tuesday’s season premiere of “New Amsterdam” weaves the fatal ambulance crash that ended Season 1 with its emotional and physical toll on the show’s lead characters.
“I think the trajectory of this season is about grief and recovery,” says series creator David Schulner. “The [ambulance] accident … has forced each character to re-evaluate their lives — even for characters who weren’t directly involved in the crash, like Iggy (Tyler Labine), who makes a shocking announcement to his husband.
“Every character is going to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment, for lack of a better phrase, with the aftermath of the accident.”
NBC’s hospital drama — one of last season’s few freshman success stories — will continue its three narrative threads: series protagonist Dr. Max Goodwin’s (Ryan Eggold) ongoing battle with throat cancer, while running Manhattan’s New Amsterdam hospital, and juggling fatherhood duties. (His wife, Georgia, gave birth to daughter Luna in last season’s finale.)
In Tuesday’s opener, viewers will see a much healthier-looking Max — quite a change from his gaunt, sallow appearance in the Season 1 finale, now that he’s changed his treatment regimen under the care of Dr. Valentina Castro (new cast member Ana Villafañe).
“We’re really excited about Max’s new treatment, precision oncology, which is really the next step of cancer treatment, where DNA is sequenced and defective DNA is targeted, as opposed to chemo and radiation over the whole body,” says Schulner. “We’re excited to talk about the benefits of this treatment but also its inefficacy. This treatment has helped Max in a way Dr. Sharpe’s (Freema Agyeman) treatments could not.”
Meanwhile, other New Amsterdam staffers, including Dr. Vijay Kapoor (Anupam Kher) and cardiovascular surgeon Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) are adjusting to new roles at the hospital — in Reynolds’ case, dealing with a hotshot intern, Michael Duke (new cast member Ian Duff), who thinks he’s got all the answers. “He’s going to be challenging Reynolds a lot and Reynolds is up for the challenge,” Schulner says. “But it’s going to be a difficult process [for Reynolds] figuring out how to teach someone who’s so talented and gifted yet isn’t as good a doctor as he thinks he is.”
While it may seem, at times, that some of the scenarios on “New Amsterdam” are implausible and altruistic, Schulner says they’re grounded in reality. “We’re taking all these stories from real-life hospitals. Many of them are stories that Dr. Eric Manheimer shared with us when he was medical director of Bellevue,” he says, alluding to the physician whose book, “Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital,” inspired the series.
“Farmer’s markets in the waiting room? That happened at Bellevue. Bartering for care? That happened at Woodhull Hospital in Brooklyn, where artists donated art for medical care,” he says.
In that vein, Schulner says he hopes Season 2 will continue the show’s underlying message of optimism against overwhelming odds.
“In Season 2, all the characters are in a different place and still … looking for ways to find hope in the world when everything around them is saying there’s no reason for it,” he says.
“That’s what I want to recapture in Season 2, that struggle to find hope in a world that seems hopeless.”
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