The bad thing about the NBC show New Amsterdam is that it isn’t very realistic. On the other hand, it is well done and week after week, manages to surprise. In this essay I am going to tell you about one of the best surprises. I watched it again as soon as I could.
Setting
This is New Amsterdam, Season 1, Episode 17. It is called “Sanctuary.” The piece of it I cared about has to do with a convict named Burl (Olafur Darri Olafson) from Rikers prison. [1]. When we meet him, he is stuck in an MRI machine because the hospital power went off. Burl, his psychologist remembers, know how to fix stuff like that so they go dig him out of the machine and take him to the emergency generator. It is broken too, so the hospital has lost both heat and light and the winter storm continues to rage outside.
Before and After
The contrast I want to draw for you—the basis of title for this essay, “Something happened!”—involved these two scenes. Here is the BEFORE scene.
Burl: If you want me to, I can fix it. I’m going to need a set of plans…and…um…a reduced sentence. A pardon from the governor works too.
Max Look, Burl, I’m not in a position to negotiate terms.
Burl Well then I guess people are going to die.
And here’s the AFTER scene.
Max: Hey…did you fix this?
Burl: Welding wasn’t gonna fix that. I couldn’t tell you that or Reyes would have dragged me off. I just figured that if this place had an old swimming pool, it might have a fuel pump system I could switch out. It did.
Max: What do you want? Anything. I’ll make it happen.
Burl: I wanna get better.
Some things we can see clearly. Burl says that the hospital’s clout is a tool he can use to get a reduced sentence. Nothing else matters to him. Max says that his position does not allow him to “negotiate terms.” Nothing else matters to Max either. They are stuck.
By the end, Burl has not only saved a lot of lives at the hospital, he has also outwitted the guard, Reyes. He asked for a welder and warned that there might be an explosion when he started welding. He knew a welder wasn’t going to do the job, but he had to close the door so he could “escape” to the pool area to see if there was a replacement part he could use.
By the end, Max has changed from “I’m not in a position…” to “What do you want? Anything.” Max wasn’t any more willing to bargain that Burl was and now, confronting the solution to the hospital’s problems that Burl has produced, he has nothing but gratitude. It is the gratitude that produces, “What do you want?” Burl is a scary-looking dude, right? And in the early scenes, lit from below. He looked like a goblin in handcuffs.
So what happened?
The short answer is that Burl has a change of heart. My guess is that the way he has been seeing himself is just not compatible with the daring and the generosity he has shown in fixing the hospital generator and saving all those lives. To continue to demand a reduced sentence in exchange for what he has already done simply throws away the meaning of his heroism and he is not willing to do that.
I think that is what happened.
But I also think it was helped along by Iggy, Burl’s counselor, who took something Max said to Burl and turned it into a tool Burl could use and making the transformation we see at the end.
Max: You could be a hero tonight, Burl. I’m trusting you to come through for everyone.
Iggy: Has anyone ever said that to you before. Has anyone ever given you that opportunity? Burl, you said you wanted to change, right? This is it. This is where it starts.
In this scene, Max offers an alternative narrative. “You could be a hero tonight” is not an event that is possible as part of the bargaining setting. So long as Burl is saying that he gets a reduced sentence or people will die and Max is saying that he is not in a position to propose such changes, there is no narrative space at all for a hero. It is not possible. Max escapes from the limitations of the bargaining narrative by offering Burl hero status.
And Iggy, who as Burl’s counselor, knows more about what Burl wants that anyone, knows that Burl has said he wanted to change. We learn that at that moment. There is not a hint of it elsewhere in the episode. But because of what Iggy knows, he can make Max’s offer a good deal more powerful. “This is it,” he says. That process you said you wanted to begin has to start right here. Your hopes to change will be set back seriously if you walk away from this chance. Iggy here, (left) with Reyes, the guard.
So…what really happened?
We don’t know. I’ve offered two possibilities, one of them supported by some dialogue in the show itself, the other just my own construction. But I really like mine better. That may be because I have experienced it myself. When you do something really good, you are reluctant to follow it up with something tacky or tawdry. You really want to keep that sense of yourself as a hero just a little longer. And I think Iggy helped by tying the “want to change” with the “this is where it starts.”
But whatever happened, I was taken completely by surprise when Burl, who was offered whatever he wanted, jettisoned the whole bargaining process and chose his own wholeness. Burl and Max, in their negotiation, had talked only about what Burl could force the hospital to do. But Burl and Iggy had talked about what Burl’s hopes for himself and in the end, Burl chose that conversation as his best choice.
[1] Technically “the Rikers Island Prison Complex”
The Death With Dignity Act is an instance, however, of why it is good to have a referendum as a possibility.
them noticed is part of the business, but headlines like that first one also get the President noticed.
This could be “the tribe I belong to” as is the case for the white working class generally. [5]
You play your “cards”—cite the various elements of the tradition you know—at the place in the narrative where it will do what you want. Matthew makes a collection of the teachings of Jesus and has him deliver it on a mountain to make the parallel with Moses unmistakably clear.
and the interrogations and the trials and even during the crucifixion.
There are lots of reasons to like McTiernan’s Hunt for Red October, including Alec Baldwin’s imitation of Sean Connery’s attempt to sound Russian, but I keep thinking of Courtney Vance as Seaman Jones, the sonar operator.
what is going on.
less than punitive ones (or than no programs at all) and you and I ought to be on the same side of those issues, working together to achieve mutual success.
Well…the “help” in “help him” is a different “help” than “How can I help?” They have helped Andy Keener in the sense that they have ruled out, each and every time he has come in, some more serious possibilities. That’s a help; sort of. And they treated the presenting problems each time. Max rattles off four on his way to a “solution.” The four are fatigue, heart arrhythmia, stress, and malnutrition, but we know there are more. So it is not true that Max and Colleagues have not helped, but they have not dealt with the fundamental problem, which is that Andy lives on the street and bad things happen to him.
several days now.
So in Henderson’s world, the commandment about killing is just an instance of his commitment to all the commandments, including the one about stealing, which is what gets him killed in the next turn of the plot.
The little badger invented by Russell Hoban and brought charmingly to life in the illustrations of Lillian Hoban, has been my favorite badger for a long time. [1] I have liked all the Frances books, but I have had reason to use this particular one—A Bargain for Frances—because it is a finely drawn instance of a situation I have to deal with a lot. The situation is the conflation of strategy and tactics.
been played for a sucker, she ends a little song she is singing to herself, “…Mother told me to be careful. but Thelma better be bewareful.” This is a different matter entirely. Mother’s advice is good, but it is general, and, being parental, easy to ignore. Frances’ threat “better be bewareful” is not only specific, but Frances is saying the she, herself, needs to be taken account of. She is, herself, capable of wreaking vengeance. This is a transformation of Frances’ character [3]
This same transformation is caught in the substitution of “halfsies” for “backsies” Backsies is crucial to the con game. You make the deal and when you find out you have been defrauded, “no backsies” is a crucial part of the deal. That is why the sucker is required to accept those terms first. So Frances and Thelma take the pathetic dime that Thelma has given Frances as part of being cheated in return, and they go together to the candy store and each spends half of the dime on candy. “Halfsies” is a perfectly appropriate deal among peers who are friends and “backsies” are completely unnecessary.
basketball (not pro ball), and professional tennis. I’m not going to try to justify those. They are just the ones I most enjoy watching.
ran the same play three times in a row, delivering the ball to a different receiver each time. It is a considerable strain on the defense to defend “the same play” time after time, only to have it work differently time after time. So theoretically, I could have started with a leftover, “old style” preference for Los Angeles, and have been won over by the smart play of New England.
It works the same way in tennis. If I can pull the opposing player a little wider with every cross court shot, eventually, I will get him to where he just can’t make it all the way back and if he commits to the long trek too early, I can just hit it behind him. On the other hand, if the defensive player does more with my shot than just returning it, he can break up the whole sequence and capture the offense for himself. I like both of those and whoever is doing it better is the one I would like to be appreciating more.
Toward the Scrupulous.” [1] So “weak” in this context means “scrupulous,” or as we would more likely express it, “overscrupulous.” Paul is clear that what he means is things like refusing to eat meat and drink wine and and honoring special days. These very particular things are part of the faith of “the weak;” they are the style of the faith of the weak. They are completely authentic. They express their sense of what God requires. [2]
And this is where it gets good. The obligations are symmetrical in the sense that we owe them something and they owe us something. But what we owe them is different from what they owe us. And the difference is acute when you look at it psychologically. The weak are not to “condemn” the strong. The verb is krinetō and it does not mean “judge” in the sense of “come to a decision about,” as one would judge one wine to be better than another. And the strong are not to “disdain” the weak. The verb is exethenetō and I think a good modern approximation would be “to diss.” The strong are not to diss the weak. Both verbs, by the way, are imperatives and both have the sense of a continuing action. So we would be perfectly within our (hermeneutic) rights to say, “Don’t keep on condemning/ don’t keep on dissing.” or even “Don’t keep harping on…” So obligations are mutual, but they are not even remotely symmetrical.
condemnations, exactly. They are insults, but they are not serious insults. They are “lookings down upon;” they are trivializings. They are objections launched from the moral heights against those toiling in the lowlands. They are disdain. [4] Archie Bunker, for instance, was supposed to be a laughingstock. He was supposed to be the excuse for the disdain of “the strong.” Except that America loved him. More oops.
And I think it should. Paul’s time horizon is very short. He believes that we are living in the very last days of our era, that the return of Jesus is imminent and that, therefore, there is no need to adopt long-term strategies. I have been saying to my class that Paul is a sprint coach and the marathoners don’t know what to make of him. This is the duty of the strong as they think Paul would see it in the long run.
difficult experiences.
And that is what happened.
I am arguing here that when I exercise excessive prudence [4] I am answering this unavoidable question in a way that affects me.
in fact, an old man.
The Dilettante's Dilemma 