New Amsterdam (1.4)

Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 9 PM

FOX

New Amsterdam, Season 1 - Episode 4 - "Honor"

FOX

Manatee: Let’s talk about New Amsterdam from last night. I'd rather watch New Amsterdam over TRoJJ, but I think New Amsterdam has the worst cast, hands down.

Marmot: New Amsterdam is absolutely ridiculous. Last night's episode was just incomprehensible. Well, maybe not incomprehensible. I could understand what was going on. I just didn't understand why it was happening.

Manatee: I know. I'm not sure I really got the story - the theme was honor... but killing your own daughter?! I am catching on to the fact that the flashbacks correspond to the crime each week, though that is super weak; he’s got a story for everything. I could do without the flashbacks. Last week you mentioned that he sees an old object and that transitions us to the past, but this week he just relived a moment in the past during the present.

Marmot: This was a terrible, terrible episode. The flashbacks are so, so lame. Why are all of them blown-out and hand-held? I don't get it. Is that how memories look? I laughed out loud after he slapped the guy with the glove and said, "I demand satisfaction." Actually, I'm laughing now just thinking about it.

Manatee: Well if nothing else, the show is good for some laughs

Marmot: They dueled.....that is so ridiculous! It wasn't 1700s France, it was 1820s America. Did people still duel? So stupid. Don't the writers realize that the concept of a duel has become so cliché that it's only played for laughs now?

Manatee: I'm not sure. I wish they still did now though. That's a good point, last night's episode was all about clichés. It was so full of them. Like the “without honor, there is no life” line and the line about outliving your kids. Cliché themes.

Marmot: He should flash back to a point in his life where he was a cliché, like he is now, a know-it-all TV detective that doesn't play by the rules.

Manatee: What did you think about his gf in the flashbacks? A little young, no?

Marmot: That's how they did things in those days. But yeah, 15? 16? What a perv. What got me about this episode was that they spend all this time with the Indian girl who was raped, set her up so that we sympathize with her as a character. Then brutally murder her midway through the episode. Then, do we see the rapist get what he deserves? No, he goes to jail off-screen.

Manatee: Which never really resolves the issue of him murdering the nun.

Marmot: Instead, we find out the father is her killer. Because she was raped, and is no longer virginal. What a punch in the throat to Indian culture. What was the point of the murdered nun?

Manatee: So were those bad accents. The sister's was pretty bizarre. Why do they insist on accents on this show? The nun did not really matter; ultimately the killer goes away and the focus is on a family killing their daughter. Because rape is a "family matter."

Marmot: Do you realize that in the shows we watched, they made light of cancer, killed a nun and then made a complete mockery of a misunderstood foreign culture. You stay classy, FOX network. As far as accents go, why doesn't he have an accent 200 years ago?

Manatee: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is a foreigner himself, so maybe it's all he can do to speak in a contemporary American accent.

Marmot: You would think that they would have re-written his back-story then, to fit his strengths.

Manatee: Or just gotten a better actor?

Marmot: That, too. Also completely ridiculous: the doctor's relationship with her husband.

Manatee: I thought they were together at the end of the last ep? Now they are separated? Did I miss something?

Marmot: I think everyone missed it. She had a phone call at the beginning of the episode that showed they were having problems, but it didn't seem like enough to sleep with Johnny East Village.

Manatee: I did see the phone call, but I felt like that should have been set up in a different way. One ep they are happy and getting dinner and then all of a sudden separated... were they always separated or it happened when John came to town?

Marmot: I think they were separated some time during the episode. Probably exactly when he figured out that they were separated. Couldn't their relationship have used a few more episodes to set up? I mean, I don't particularly like either of them, but a little more sexual tension wouldn't hurt this show. And a little less flashbacks. And a lot less of him. And cancelation.