Casey makes everything better.
Casey’s return was a breath of fresh air on New Amsterdam Season 5 Episode 6 and led to a chuckle or two as well.
But the hour also saw two prominent cases, one of which was a frustrating take on how ableism can still run rampant in the healthcare field.
We can get the weaker points of the hour out of the way first.
Oddly enough, the weakest storyline of them all was because of Max, who spent the entire episode working with an amusing and obnoxious ambulance chaser named Callie.
As usual, Max wasn’t aware of an issue; it was staring him in the face or affecting him or those close to him. After his fun and potentially flirty jog with Wilder led him to physically remove her from the path of a moving vehicle and witness an accident impacting a grandmother and her son, Max found a new quest.
It’s not unusual for Max, albeit a bit redundant. The biggest issue was how it was something so beyond his purview that you wished he was back at the hospital coming up with some of his hare-brained plans to save the world from the walls of New Amsterdam.
Max going from place to place, attempting to get people to put down a crosswalk, felt too reminiscent of his back alley, Oliver Twist adventures in London outside the scope of a hospital or clinic.
It isn’t hard to connect how the absence of a crosswalk landing many in New Amsterdam’s E.R. is a healthcare and human care issue for Max. But I didn’t want to stretch too far to make the connection.
The entire arc served well in showcasing the comedic chops of an amusing character like Callie and allowed her to pull a Max.
Sadly, it was the least exciting aspect of the hour, making the only notable aspect of Max’s arc the series’ attempt to expedite a slow burn between Max and Wilder, cutting a few corners in the process.
Regardless of one’s sentiments about the potential of this pairing, and I know how controversial and polarizing it is for many, it’s a bit of a disservice when they don’t allow Max and Wilder to have something that’s uniquely theirs instead of pulling from previous relationships, especially those that no longer exist.
And it’s not solely a Sharpwin thing either, as Wildwin has also had similar moments as previous ships like Leyren and whatever it was folks called Floyd and Evie.
Comparison is a thief of joy, and it would help an already delicate and controversial decision if they didn’t invite constant comparisons and criticism with maneuvers like that.
Wilder isn’t some copy-and-paste substitution. She’s her own character and deserves to be treated as such. Too often, with the portion of her relationship with Max that gears toward romance, it’s like they’re recycling the same notes of his previous relationship.
People are getting hurt, and it would be so easy to just fix it, and all they keep telling me is how they can’t. Can we get something done? How can running the largest public hospital in the city easier than fixing a street corner?
Max
It’s not fair to Wilder’s character or this pairing if that’s what they intend to establish because it should be able to stand on its own. And it’s obviously not a pleasant experience for the other angry shippers.
Nevertheless, they’ve provided us with these special little moments between the two. I’m genuinely wondering what the pacing will be like for their evolving relationship within a shortened final season.
It’s hard to grasp it at the moment because Max and Wilder are simultaneously moving too fast in regards to pushing us into this romantic territory while also moving too slow in simply pulling the trigger on them.
Floyd’s arc with his father is another difficult arc at times. They’ve taken this mentally ill storyline for Horace and ran with it since before it had legs, so it feels like they’re back-drafting the story, and now what they’re presenting us with can accommodate what they were selling us before.
By now, it’s apparent Horace has mental issues and requires a good check-up and help. But they introduced the concept of him having Bipolar before there was anything that supported the notion.
The diagnosis resulted from Iggy speaking to the man for a minute and basing everything on Floyd’s description of their fishing trip.
And since then, Floyd has behaved as if it’s a legitimate prognosis with some form of standing, and he can shape his entire view of his father and his actions around what amounts to a theory by a professional shrink who should know better.
But something is wrong with Horace, and his behavior of standing in the street causing a commotion and almost getting hit was nerve-wracking. Floyd putting his father on a 72-hour hold is bound to be a doozy.
Lauren going to A.A. instead of tracking her sister down at that bar was growth, and it’s evident that Casey is in full possession of Lauren’s brain cells at all times.
Her admission to Casey was the sweetest because it is obvious how much she admires and respects him. She can’t seem to function in life without him serving as her voice of reason.
Ironically, that’s something they could explore more with Lauren. Casey does so much for Lauren, and his conversation tends to revolve around her all the time.
But Lauren’s dynamic with Casey always feels one-sided. Is anyone else ever curious about what Casey gets out of the friendship? He’s her support network, and we haven’t seen him get any of that energy back.
Her honest admission about how much she missed him was the cutest. A solid number of Cabloom scenes was fun, and it almost made up for Lauren poisoning half the E.R. staff.
Lauren can’t let her sister go, and that much is clear. Maybe they’ll find themselves making up, and Lauren can feel she made her amends in due time.
But for now, it’s good that Lauren is learning to put her needs ahead of her sister.
We also got a brief Leyla mention, and it sounds like she’s relocated to another hospital and is doing well. The single line referencing her stung. It remains frustrating that they decided they didn’t know what else to do with her and dropped the character, her storyline, and that relationship.
But the best part about the installment was the cases.
Wilder’s was a bit heartbreaking, mainly when we realized that the grandmother would be paralyzed for the rest of her life after surgery.
The surgery was already a risk, but that was too heavy a decision for Rafael to make on his own. The kid was a healthcare proxy before he even knew what it meant.
One can’t even imagine the stress he dealt with after being part of that horrific accident and then being forced to make a decision about his grandmother that cost her the ability to walk.
I truly felt for that poor teen, and the only downside to their storyline was that we weren’t privy to what his grandmother was saying to him when she came to, and he faced her.
She wasn’t angry, but man, it’s too bad there wasn’t more there. It would’ve been nice if they had ever found out who ran them down and caused all this.
And Iggy’s case was singularly the most compelling and frustrating storyline of the hour.
The series is doing wonders with exploring some of the issues that affect the Deaf community thanks to having Wilder as a series regular.
I truly adore that so many topics come to light because of it, and that’s what representation is supposed to be about in the first place.
Iggy’s young patient, Jael, broke my heart. All the adults in his life failed him, which was beyond upsetting. It kept reaching new levels of frustration the more information we got along the way.
The Gonzalezes couldn’t understand why their son was seemingly acting out and behaving as he did, and the answer was as clear as day the moment they shared that he was deaf but couldn’t sign.
Can you imagine going through your life unable to communicate with anyone in any capacity?
I wish I could say it was surprising that the speech therapist, audiologist, and others told this couple that learning ASL would hinder his speaking ability.
Sadly, it’s something that I witnessed before myself.
No one argues that learning a foreign language would affect one’s ability to speak fluent English. However, when it comes to ASL, there are still ignorant people who sell the narrative that if one learns to sign, they’ll refuse to speak because they don’t need to or whatever else they argue.
But Jael wasn’t even speaking 100 words. His vocabulary was less than that of a two-year-old, and he was battling some severe language deprivation.
The hour tried desperately to make his parents sympathetic, but their ignorance was astounding enough on its own, and their inaction was unforgivable.
They couldn’t tell Iggy that they had tried everything to help their son with his supposed behavioral issues when they didn’t even entertain ASL.
The reasoning behind Jael’s behavior was put into more perspective when you consider that his only way of understanding others was reading lips, and the pandemic rendered him incapable of doing that, too, because of masks.
He was living a lonely, alienated life where he didn’t have a voice or any way of communicating with anyone. It’s torturous!
You’re my touchstone. You’re my best friend, and if you had been here, I wouldn’t have done something as stupid as trying to save her.
Lauren
Parents are supposed to advocate for their children. While it’s understandable to some degree that the Gonzelezes would put their faith in the experts, trust their judgment, and not question it, at some point, it was clear as day that it wasn’t working.
At what point do you get a second opinion or try something new? If you sit down long enough and process what these so-called professionals were arguing, how on earth did they expect their child to go through life without the ability to communicate with them or anyone else?
It shouldn’t have taken years and a sit down with Iggy for them to realize how advantageous ASL would be for their son.
To Iggy’s credit, he made his case a few times, taught Jael some signs, and managed to utilize that to communicate with him, and better yet, he got Jael to see ASL in action by watching Wilder.
The kid also got to see that he doesn’t have to be limited in any way. He saw a woman like himself thriving in her surroundings using this beautiful language.
I hate that he didn’t get to meet Wilder personally. It could’ve done him so good.
It was important for his parents to see what he could be capable of too. No matter how much they loved their son, they were stifling him and causing such severe damage by keeping an option like ASL from him.
You could tell that they were holding out some hope that he’d speak like the average person and that, deep down, they wanted to buy into this concept of their son being “Normal.”
If he learned ASL and used that as his primary form of communication, it would hinder their ability to view him a certain way. The negative stigma and notion that ASL is somehow an inferior language were clearly at the root of why this poor child got deprived of the help and resources he needed- the early intervention he deserved.
And he got set back longer than he should’ve because of it.
I don’t know why there wasn’t an available school and resources for Jael in the city. It felt a bit off that Iggy could only wrangle something up in Massachusetts, prompting this child to get sent four hours away from home for the needed resources.
But it is what it is. Yet again, it was frustrating how resistant the parents were to the concept even after everything they learned and discovering how this could benefit their child.
Understandably, the idea of sending their child four hours away to a Deaf and Hard of Hearing residential program is overwhelming for them, and a big ask for someone so young.
But it’s something that Jael needed and wanted to do. He’s spent his entire life with his parents as his whole world and is still unable to communicate with them.
It’ll be a huge adjustment for a child of his age. However, he deserves the opportunity to get immersed in Deaf culture, and if it requires a crash course in it with a program out of state, then so be it.
Because it’s not just about learning sign language, the Deaf community has a distinctive culture of its own that transcends their ability to communicate using this amazing language.
He can figure out the perfect balance of the hearing and Deaf world as he ages, but this school would give him the necessary tools to start down that path.
Of all the storylines, that one was the most interesting. I appreciated little things like how the sound would get muffled or how the camera would focus on body language when we saw things from Jael’s perspective.
Those were nice touches for the depiction of his experience. I hope we’d get an update on the situation, as it seemed like the storyline ended abruptly.
Outside of that arc, Iggy’s personal storyline is still a chore to get through as he tries to figure out whether or not he made a mistake with how he ended things with Martin to pursue whatever it is he’s doing. Spoiler alert; he did.
Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics. Which storyline did you enjoy the most? Were you happy to have Casey back? Sound off below.
You can watch New Amsterdam online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.