YMMV / New Amsterdam (2018)

• Alternate Character Interpretation: Are Max's season three manic attempts to solve every problem even tangentially connected to medical care at New Amsterdam with more and more extreme ideas, with his friends frequently getting irritated, a coping mechanism to try to regain control after dealing with his cancer, Georgia's death, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the months long separation from his daughter all in rapid succession without ever taking the necessary time to process any of it?
• Critical Dissonance: Despite subpar reviews from professional critics the series has been very popular with its audience, it as of the time of writing has 8.1/10 on IMDB and it has got high enough ratings to get renewed for up to a fifth season as early as the middle of Season 2.
• Funny Moments:
  • Episode 6: Dr. Lauren Bloom is at a fundraiser, and is trying to drink and talk to people about getting over Dr. Reynolds. At one point she's seen drinking and talking to someone about Reynolds. It turns out to be the hospital's septuagenarian dean of medicine, who deadpans "Are you sure I'm the right person to talk to about this?"
• Harsher in Hindsight: Max and Helen finally get together in the fourth season premiere. They proceed to stay together for the entire season and even get engaged...only for Helen to call him in the finale and say that she can't come back to New York from London to marry him. Soon after that, Freema Agyeman announced that she won't be returning for the show's final season.
• He Really Can Act: Pretty much nobody expected Tyler Labine to be cast as a psychologist who has to deal with heavy hitting topics like PTSD and child abuse and to deliver a pretty solid performance in the process.
• Nightmare Fuel - The wolf hallucination sequence towards the end of Episode 11 is legitimately terrifying.
• The Scrappy: Veronica Fuentes. Most fans blame her for the downturn in the fourth season.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • Season three veered into more episodic territory, with characters coming across as parodies of their former selves and Max having to learn essentially the same lesson all over again with every one of the social ills he tries to fix.
  • Season 5 is probably the stupidest of the seasons, as Max’s attempts to improve life for everyone at the hospital, while well-intentioned, end up doing more harm than good and usually backfire for him in disastrous or unpredictable ways. Given that he’s dealing with the fallout of being left at the altar, however, it’s hard to fault him for this.

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