Spoiler alert! This story contains plot his points for the series finale. New Amsterdam.
So Long Good Doctors of New Amsterdam: A drama about an old public hospital from the creator/executive producer David SchulnerDirector/Executive Producer Peter Horton Universal Television ended its five-season run on NBC on Tuesday. Launched in 2018, the series was inspired by the book 12 Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital By Eric Mannheimer.
Here’s a look back at what Schulner and Horton did and didn’t do in the final episode and why. road It’s too early to wrap up the starring drama Ryan EggoldJanet Montgomery, Jocko Sims, Tyler Rabin, Debra Monk, Matthew Jeffers, Sandra May Frank.
Deadline Do you have a checklist of things you want to include in the finale, like a chainsaw accident?
Peter Horton Yes, that was the basis of everything in the episode. We thought chainsaws. What can you do with a chainsaw?
David Schulner We only thought about the core cast. How do you pay homage to the characters you’ve come to know and love over the past five years?
DEADLINE Did you know how this was going to end from the beginning?
Schulner We knew the ending had to come out from the beginning, just because it was good storytelling. And I found what a satisfying but surprising conclusion was.
Have we talked for a while about killing DEADLINE Max (Eggold) with cancer?
Schulner It felt a little too easy. And ER did it with Dr. Green. There are many shows that have come before us. I just wanted to avoid duplication.
Houghton And we could never go back and do it again.
Deadlines Was it difficult to understand what your final medical condition would be? Did you go back and forth about it?
Houghton Every case in the history of medicine has been exploited by TV shows, including ours…
Schulner We were stuck all day. We couldn’t think of anything right. We banged our heads all day and finally kicked everyone out. I said, “I’m leaving Zoom. It’s going to take an hour, two hours. Then we’ll all go back to the room and pitch something. Just have one thing that I think will be a great final surgery.” Told. I came back with $5 million of weird stuff, computer-generated like laser beam surgery. We were all trying to find something big and crazy. And our writer’s assistant, Jay, is the one who suggested the surgery that required fifty people. It’s not about crazy surgery. This is about every character who has been on the show for his five years in 92 episodes. And this surgery was the way every character who had ever operated in New Amsterdam could be revived for one unique operation. was about our characters.
Houghton Our Covid team wasn’t thrilled.Other than that, it was a really great idea. The show is basically character work. The medical cases are there so we can talk about these people and themes. It was how his 12-year-old daughter first pitched it to him. [Max’s daughter] come back as an adult. So it was a group effort.
Schulner And a week later, I received an email with the same ending from another writer. A week after that, I was on set with Erica Green Swafford. So over the course of three weeks she had this collective vision of three people.
Deadline I really expected that the drunk woman Iggy had failed to commit to the system would be found dead on the street somewhere.
Houghton I think one of the reasons you feel that way is because she’s such a good actress. She’s just that she doesn’t really connect with our people. The ending had to be about the people we lived with for her five years. It wasn’t about our case, it was about our people.
Schulner And by the final scene it’s very clear that she dies on the street.
Deadline Did you know that I want to finish this with hope no matter what?
Houghton It had to leave the desired taste in people’s mouths.
Deadline Assuming Max and Elizabeth (Sandra May Frank) were together?
Schulner It’s up to you.
Deadline Do you think you had enough time to finish this the way you wanted it to?
Houghton I don’t I still think I could have done this and should have continued for a few more years. There are still so many stories to tell and these characters are so interesting.David came up with so many great characters that I want to know more about all of them.Currently he is number 3 on Netflix. I don’t think the audience is ready for it to end either.
Schulner And we’re still lined up for number one in our timeslot.
Houghton To tell you the truth, it’s a bit of a mystery why it was cancelled.
