Fanatics, help a girl out because she is confused.
What is there to say about New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 14? We got brief cameos by the beloved supporting characters we lost, said goodbye to Kapoor (again), Veronica’s devious arse returned, and oh, yeah, Floyd became a snitch a** b*tch.
If that wasn’t enough, Lauren hit a dark place, and now Max is staying in NYC to fight for New Amsterdam with Helen’s blessing, which essentially pushes us back to where we were, like, eight episodes ago?
We’ve hit a confusing era of New Amsterdam where everyone acts their hineys off, but virtually nothing makes sense anymore. The season is more than halfway over, and not only is there a lot to process, but a girl’s wary of what the rest of the season will consist of now.
It’s unfathomable that the Fuentes arc is something that’s still lingering, and it’s safe to say that this woman and her plot have overstayed their welcome.
Fuentes: So what do you know about the so-called Resistance?
Mia: It’s funny you should ask about that.
The weird segue ways into other things have drawn this out longer than necessary.
For example, the Kapoor storyline is still a bizarre situation. We already said goodbye to him during New Amsterdam Season 3, so killing him offscreen when they haven’t so much as mentioned him up until this point lost all impact.
The montage of his service with everyone sharing beautiful words and memories of this once beloved character was sweet, but it didn’t pack the emotional punch it should’ve because we’re well past the time when it’d have the desired impact.
It was great to see Agnes again and hear her talk about how Kapoor prepared her for a time without him, but on the other hand, she’s gone now, so we aren’t exactly seeing that anymore.
A blonde Casey was a sight for sore eyes, and his words in both English and Spanish were sweet, but it’s not as if we ever saw him spend any significant amount of time with Kapoor, and he barely had a moment with Lauren.
Iggy got the most emotional, understandably so, since Kapoor was his best friend at the hospital. And he certainly looked great standing up there with his fresh-cut and teary eyes. Labine remains one of the actors on this series who can sell us anything, which worked to our advantage.
But overall, Kapoor’s death is just one more thing on a long list of choices they’ve made that are puzzling.
It led to Rohan Kapoor’s return, which could’ve been more interesting than it was if they layered it with other things. He never got to make amends with his father before he died. Rohan is still battling his addiction, and they brought him in because he was overdosing.
Rohan has a child with Ella, and it was a missed opportunity to have the two of them share screentime or something. Instead, Rohan’s sole existence during this installment was to initiate Lauren’s storyline, which was arguably the only arc in this installment that made some sense.
It’s believable that Lauren is on the verge of hitting some form of rock bottom after so many events have stacked up and taken their toll on her. It’s more comprehensible that her decision to quit New Amsterdam had more to do with feeling burned out, triggered, or looking after her mental health and sobriety than solely for Leyla.
It was apparent during that beautiful scene with Helen, and Montgomery and Agyeman were fantastic and it was a perfect reminder of how close those two women are with each other.
Helen always keeps Lauren honest and she knows her well enough to cut to the chase. She was able to pick something up that no one else has in months.
Truthfully, while it’s no secret that Lauren would do anything for Leyla, they should’ve led with that angle instead. The navigation of the issues between the two women has been messy at best.
Helen: And how is Lauren?
Lauren: The truth?
Helen: Preferably. What are these?
Lauren: They are Black Beauties. Enphetemanines. They’re Rohan’s. I didn’t —
Helen: OK.
Lauren: This whole place is like a trigger for me, and not even for my sobriety, for my sanity. I wanted to leave. Leyla said that she would quit if I left. The E.D. needs me. New Amsterdam needs me.
Helen: Well, that doesn’t seem very fair.
Lauren: Fair. Who says I deserve fair?
Helen: Lauren, whatever you’ve done you have to let that go. You have to forgive yourself.
Lauren: I can’t. I don’t want to.
Helen: So you’re just going to keep punishing yourself?
Lauren: It’s what I deserve.
Helen: Lauren, look at me. Come here, sweetheart. Come here. Now, you listen to me. If you need to leave for your sobriety and your sanity, then you go. Do you understand? Because nothing is more important.
It places Lauren in this spot where for objectivity’s sake, you cannot help be critical of her actions because of the execution of them. Lauren went out of her way to apologize to Leyla to atone.
Lauren: Why are you doing this?
Leyla: Because I’m not going to be your reason for leaving.
But by offering to quit for Leyla’s comfort when the truth is that Lauren has deeper, personal reasons for why she feels leaving New Amsterdam is best clouds her intentions.
And it unwittingly shifted things where the burden got placed on Leyla to beg Lauren not to leave, basically. In that sense, the execution of what they intended to show and how it came across worked.
Fortunately, Lauren’s love for Leyla came in the form of her willingness to stay at New Amsterdam despite her vulnerable moment with Helen because Leyla wanted her to, and the hospital and E.D. needed her. Sadly, none of that mattered when Fuentes accepted her resignation anyway.
The only thing worse than realizing how much it could’ve hurt Lauren’s sobriety and sanity if she remained at New Amsterdam when she’s in a fragile state right now is knowing that she’s worse off without New Amsterdam. Who is she outside the hospital?
New Amsterdam is her whole life, and Leyla has become that, too. While she and Leyla are in a cordial place, there’s no immediate change to their relationship status. Without either, and Leyla clearly serving as an example of a healthcare worker who is burnt out, it’s worrisome.
Lauren won’t have the E.D. to distract her from herself, and of all the potential storylines the series is juggling right now, that’s the most compelling.
It’s still worth noting that we’ll likely see Leyla serving as a support to Lauren and a catalyst in dragging her out of any darkness, and there’s always the concern that Leyla as a character will get reduced to that, but we’ll have to see how it plays out.
As for Iggy, one of the most irritating things about this hour is that he forced me to agree with Fuentes.
It’s hard to get upset about him getting demoted from head of the department when he’s inconsistently shown doing his job. And the man canceled appointments and spent an entire day playing video games with an eight-year-old.
As cute as precocious Jack is, and regardless of how ridiculously great Labine is opposite young actors portraying his patients, what was the point of his storyline?
What’s the point of any of them this season? It’s starting to feel like they don’t know what to do with him.
But nothing compares to whatever character assassination they’ve done to Floyd Reynolds this season. Just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse with that terrible “polyamory” storyline, they said, “Hold my scalpel,” and presented us with Floyd, the traitor.
Did Jocko Sims piss someone off or something? Inquiring minds want to know!
As godawful as the Lyn/Claude/baby storyline was, it seems out of character for Floyd (more than him engaging in that relationship in the first place) that he walked away from that relationship and hasn’t batted an eye about possibly abandoning his birth child.
Now, he’s stepped into the role of the Resistance’s antagonist, and we don’t exactly know why because they spent too much time on the triangle and not enough on him outside of that.
I guess we can apologize to Mia for thinking that she’d be the snitch. She held her own, even when Fuentes questioned her about it. It seems Mia isn’t there to step on toes.
But outside of how insane it is that they’ve constructed an undercover operation that should have a medical board revoking all of their medical licenses at the very least, the worst part about The Resistance is that we haven’t seen it.
And I don’t even know why we haven’t seen it since most of the meandering storylines they’ve shown us thus far couldn’ve been left on the cutting room floor for the Resistance.
I was almost as surprised as Helen and Max when I learned about just how much Wilder has done to uphold New Amsterdam’s legacy. Outside of a couple of clandestine meetings they cut away from and one rogue surgery before this one, we haven’t seen the Resistance in action.
Wilder is a real one for putting in the work and orchestrating something in a few months after only knowing Max and Helen for a couple that their own friends who’ve known them for years couldn’t do. She’s the quintessence of Max and Helen, and she deserves a massage after carrying the entire hospital on her back for this long.
Forget peace, this is war. You need to fight.
Helen
It was a lot of pressure on her to keep the best of the hospital afloat, and it’s both impressive and aggravating when you realize how much she pulled off with very little help.
She deserved her kudos, but while it’s questionable why Iggy, Floyd, and Lauren didn’t play an active enough role in comparison, Max’s righteous indignation after seeing the changes at New Amsterdam was astounding.
What the hell did he expect would happen while he was away? Did he not anticipate that Demon woman to continue doing the Devil’s work while he was frolicking around in the back alleys of London like Oliver Twist?
When Max and Helen left New Amsterdam, it was dismal. He didn’t give them an edge when he departed, so his surprise and ire over how bad things have gotten was absurd, and the others had every right to express their annoyance with it.
Max came in speaking a heck of a lot of French with all of this “we” business when he hadn’t been there for months.
Essentially, nothing changed. We haven’t learned anything new that we didn’t suspect from New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 4 onward.
We always knew that Fuentes would worsen things at New Amsterdam and shift it to private healthcare that prioritizes profits over patients like the corporate shill that she is. Max and Helen knew that when they left.
It’s genuinely confusing that both are treating this development as if it’s brand-new information, and suddenly, we’ve gone in a full circle.
Max: What if I lose you?
Helen: Losing me is impossible. Now you get in there, and you show them what you’re made of.
Helen has given her blessing to Max to stay and save the hospital when they could’ve done that ages ago and spared us the weird relationship doubts, angst, and gaslighting that took place before and during London.
It’s like we’re right back to square one, and the majority of the past four installments were pointless.
But hey, let the takedown of Veronica commence, even though I thought we were supposed to be doing that this whole time.
Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics! What are your thoughts on Lauren, Floyd’s betrayal, Max staying, and the rest? Hit the comments.
New Amsterdam is taking a break until after the Olympics. If you want to relive the season, you can watch New Amsterdam online here via T.V. Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.