As the adventures of Max Goodwin come to a close, the final two episodes of New Amsterdam attempt to come full circle.
Max and Elizabeth are happy. Super happy! But it feels forced and on unstable ground. Max says he hasn’t had fun in a long time, and while I love to see him happy – didn’t he spent the previous episode literally running away from his problems?
Both Floyd and Iggy also have romantic issues. Floyd’s girlfriend Gabrielle is leaving soon, just when he’s realized he really likes her. Iggy insists on dating Martin – his ex-husband – again, despite them not working out last time. I’m not sure if he’s clinging to the past or desperate to regain his family when he seemed to realize last week that it was time to let Martin go. Either way, here we are.
Lauren has decided a fresh start is just what she needs, and I love this for her. Part of me is sad she and Leyla didn’t work out because I would’ve loved to have seen them happy and thriving together. But Lauren is moving on to better things. She’s sold her apartment and is on the hunt for a new one to create new beginnings and new memories. She enlists Casey and a couple of paramedics to rush her to an apartment showing.
Iggy sees two cops speaking to a homeless woman he knows as he’s treated her before. He decides to designate himself as her hero, rescuing her from jail – and herself. But Carla doesn’t want to be saved. Iggy drags her to care court (Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment) under the guise of getting her help – but not telling her she is required to give up her rights. Not cool, Iggy. Carla leaves court with her rights intact, though Iggy is sad she won’t get the care he wanted her to receive.
Floyd discovers one of his patients had gotten tired of waiting for a lung transplant and travelled to Honduras. The man bought the lung and had the operation done in a proper hospital, but that hasn’t stopped his body rejecting the new lung. I understand Floyd’s frustration at his patient going behind his back to do this, as now Floyd has to clean up the mess.
Meanwhile, Max is having a fancy lunch to announce a partnership with a pharma company on a lymphoma drug. Everyone is happy and excited until Elizabeth arrives to inform Max the drug is a sham – it hasn’t gone through proper testing. How did Max miss that? Surely he read all the documentation before agreeing to this…
Lauren, Casey and the paramedics treat a juggler with an injured hand and then get diverted again to a car accident, where she saves the life of a man named Paul. Lauren seems to really enjoy the high energy paramedic job out in the field, and while she has a job I could see her doing more field work in the future.
Max goes to Karen to inform her the drug isn’t the miracle they all thought it was. Karen fights that it saves *some* lives. Max points out the drug was only tested on white people. The big pharma guy tells them that none other than Dr. Helen Sharpe set the parameters – which to me just reads as this show dragging Helen through the mud again after episode 11, and I hate it. Unnecessary.
Max and Elizabeth discuss Helen’s motives – Max asks how Helen could’ve done this. It takes Elizabeth to point out the obvious: Helen did it to save Max’s life. Despite this not being the drug that cured Max’s cancer, it may have been useful. So she rushed the drug through trials. To me… this doesn’t add up. Helen would’ve gone back and fixed the trial after it became apparent the drug wouldn’t help Max. She wouldn’t risk other people’s lives. Bad writing.
As Lauren and Casey are walking, they come across a place with a new “for sale” sign. The apartment is a bare shell, Casey points out she’ll have to renovate it and choose all the fittings and fixtures. Lauren loves it. She wants to renovate it herself to really create a home of her own, and I think it’ll be a great project for her.
Iggy meets Martin for their “first” date. The two go roller skating, acting like they’ve never met before. It wears thin with Martin, but he decides to play along. I just don’t know what these two getting back together is going to achieve, as they got divorced for a reason.
Onto the second half of the finale: A flashback shows us Max as a young five-year-old, watching over his sick sister in hospital. A doctor approaches him and asks his favorite question: How can I help?
Throughout this episode, we see flashbacks of each of the central cast. Max, Lauren, Iggy, Floyd, even Elizabeth. It shows us why each of them became inspired to become doctors in the first place, and where they’re at now. Young Iggy grew up on a farm while his family members told him their problems – whether he liked it or not. Floyd went through a similar home life in the city, with parents fighting and him trying his best to help his mom. Lauren was working in the stock market trade when a homeless man collapsed outside her offices and she realized she had no skills to help him and had to watch him die. Elizabeth was happily going trick or treating as a doctor on Halloween when another kid takes her stethoscope, telling her she doesn’t need it as she can’t hear. Her determination leads her to become a doctor anyway. Good for her!
In the present day, Max tells the staff that moment in the hospital as a kid was when he knew he wanted to be a doctor. Luna sits on Elizabeth’s lap, watching on as Max gives his goodbye speech; he’s leaving the hospital to take a job with the WHO in Geneva, running their global health policy division. Definitely a good fit for him.
He promises to take Luna to the mermaid parade, but is quickly recalled to the hospital when a patient comes in showing signs of a rare disease only Max has experience in treating. It takes the whole hospital to work together to save this woman, who has a young non-verbal son. The pair are from Ukraine, having run away from ongoing war.
Throughout all this, we meet a woman who is seemingly Max’s replacement. A blonde woman who seems oddly familiar, but her identity only becomes apparent at the end of the episode.
Iggy tries to get the young non-verbal boy to talk, telling Lauren he has selective mutism. It’s not that he can’t talk, but he chooses not to. Iggy tells the boy he understands why. That he didn’t talk much as a kid either. He wasn’t quiet because he loved listening, he was quiet because he hated talking. Being seen. Being quiet means being invisible. On some level, the boy understands. He later speaks only after he’s sure his mom is going to be okay.
Life goes on for our group of doctors. Lauren sits in a meeting. Floyd has dinner with his family and girlfriend. Iggy and his husband… get remarried? That’s a choice. Max tells Elizabeth it was not how he wanted his last day at New Amsterdam to go, but Elizabeth says it was better. Max doing what he does best on his last day definitely feels fitting to me.
Max tells her Luna looks forward to the mermaid parade every year. But every year he lets her down. He’s missed so much of her early life working and needs Luna to be the center of his life now, even if that meant giving up everything else he loves. Elizabeth says he’ll be back someday – we all know Max can’t stay away forever. Max hands he the keys to the hospital, picks up a sleepy Luna and heads out one last time.
In the future, the blonde woman we see throughout the episode wandering the hospital addresses the staff. She grew up at New Amsterdam. Her mother died in this hospital. Her father spent every waking minute in it, doing whatever he could. She remembers his last day; they missed a mermaid parade. She saw how hard everyone worked that day (she was asleep for a lot of it, but sure) and decided she wanted to be just like him.
Surprise: Luna is now the Medical Director, many years in the future. In true Goodwin fashion, she asks the room full of staff: How Can I Help? A neat twist, and a good ending to the series.
In some ways I wonder if season 5 was necessary – maybe the show should’ve let Helen and Max have a happy wedding in the season 4 finale and called it a day. A lot of fans certainly feel that way, and I can see why. Making Helen some sort of villain this season was also unnecessary. That said, I’ll miss Max and his co-workers.
