Notes for Episode 21: "New Amsterdam"

Another month's here! And notes are actually on time... thanks again for bearing with us through our very intense start of the year. You might think that a show we loved as much as New Amsterdam might lend itself to a less fun set of notes, but New Amsterdam is that delightful combination of really good and really goofy. So enjoy some goofy notes from Esther & Hannah. We talk about The Sarge a lot in these, she's so captivating. See you all later this month, when we'll be talking about Believe!

• Plot / Structure Stuff:

  • He was doing SO WELL and then he just ate shit with no proximate cause on a subway platform. I hope that happens to him every episode. I hope the show was cancelled before we learn why

    • It was not meant to be. We learned why

  • You’d think one time someone would call him on his endless “jokes” about being 400 years. That someone, instead of saying “Ha ha, very funny” would say “What the fuck are you talking about John, I need you to stop saying weird shit”

  • I really like that he takes a photo of the same intersection every year, that’s a very sweet little bit to include

  • This might not end up being the best one overall. But it’s the one that might understand Lost the best

    • Which is fascinating because it’s so clearly a corner case, but like… the use of flashbacks, for one. The ability to fill out a world

    • There was that exactly ONE flashback in The Event that had this same type of juice. With Ian Anthony Dale of course

  • Both eps so far have concluded with The Most Admissible Confession of All Time

    • He lies to a suspect literally once an episode and it always works

    • The big shakeup for season two was gonna be that all the criminals in the city were gonna start comparing notes and realizing that Amsterdam is always, forever, 100% full of shit

  • I didn’t expect him to just fucking GO for it in episode four, romantically speaking

  • If the show went on long enough, 60% of New York City would be related to him

    • I’m also, like… fascinated by what a plan for 22 episodes would be like. Do you not eventually just fill in every little era of his life? You’re gonna be scraping the bottom of the barrel soon enough… like what he was doing in 1655 versus 1658

  • Amsterdam sired a crime family!! That’s so sick!

    • “The line goes back to… Theo Spoor.” “What about his father?” “We don’t go back that far”

    • I love the idea that John lives long enough to actually see the butterfly effect of his life play out

  • The whole premise of the romantic tragedy in the finale is genuinely so cool. This show knows how to bring the goods with the character drama

• Character / Performance Stuff:

  • I’m kinda fascinated by what a loser they’re making Amsterdam come across as

  • In one of these 1800s episodes he should be like “I can’t WAIT until they let me marry black girls”

    • Obviously they’re gonna make him unusually woke for a 400 year old guy, but it really does make sense for him to be that way. If only as a way to be smug at people for being less enlightened than him

  • Omar got more and more lightskinned as he aged. It’s like the old idea of people’s hair turning white when they get frightened

  • The Sarge character is fascinating. They were obviously flailing for a renewal with an episode 5 shakeup like that, and… not to be sexist but I’ve never seen a character exude less authority

    • She’s so, like… roommate coded

    • She’s a refugee from a show called like. The Madhouse. And it’s about four New York roommates with hectic lives

    • Yeah that’s the daughter of the lady who owns the building. She does this bit where she pretends she’s the Sarge

  • I think a testament to the level this show operates at is that you could drop Fusco from Person of Interest into the precinct and it’d take me several episodes to realize he wasn’t supposed to be there

  • The Sarge grew on us over time. She still comes across as a sitcom roommate, but now it’s more believable that her job we never see her at would be “cop”

• Technical / Aesthetic Stuff: 

  • One of the lowest-rent opening 60 seconds in one of these… surprising that the rest of the show is not like that! Tacky crime scene photo montage

  • Honestly what this most reminds me of thus far is Brisco County Jr.

  • Decemberists and Death Cab in the pilot… 2008 was a different planet

  • A nonzero part of why this works is John Amsterdam is a cool fuckin name

  • You know not even Lost was cross-cutting the flashbacks this intensely 

  • The score of this show feels like it was meant for a immersive sim game. I’m flashing back to Liberty Island in Deus Ex

  • The Amsterdam POV shots in episode 7 are really good, bit of a blown out digital look to them, bit of an Inland Empire vibe

    • Also the score on the heart to heart with Omar, also the strange slow zooms, also he’s acting a little like Coop this episode…
      

• Notable Quotes:

  • One of the first things Amsterdam says in the whole show is “DON’T kill women!” 

    • We know he’s one of the good guys bc of that

  • “Trust me, all of it gets old……. except me”

  • “It’s seven years of bad luck.” “Only seven?”

  • “But what made Matt special wasn’t the 4:25 mile he ran… the race he was really into was the human race”

    • AND they’re doing Bobby Briggs at Laura’s funeral

  • John Amsterdam sat that bitch down and KILLED him

    • “You have nothing that I want”

  • Eva making fun of John by saying he has a key to “Babe Ruth’s secret hot dog locker” really hits lol

  • “Talk about blue wall, we hit the Great Wall”

    • Show’s a liiiiiiiittle racist

• Cute Things We Said:

  • “In 1912 I learned how to do a Super Jump”

    • Episode 4 is the first time they don’t show his Super Jump in the previously on

  • The moment he pulled his gun a woman said “HEY!” like he’s in an immersive sim

  • John Amsterdam probably remembers a time when pigs roamed the streets of New York… snuffling… munching… making themselves useful

  • He has a rare Native American blood type?? Oh man Steven Seagal dreams that he’s John Amsterdam every night

  • Episode 2 was taken from a Canadian broadcast and episode 3 was taken from Fox Chicago. This was assembled from so many pieces

    • Now it’s Fox 53…………..it’s a different network EVERY TIME

  • Man if I was John Amsterdam in the 1700s-1800s I would have been basically grinding duels. I would duel over literally anything.

  • I should’ve FUCKING watched this when I was 18. FUCK I missed out so bad

  • When Sara’s asking John what his dad did, he should finally reach the breaking point of his snide honesty policy and say “he was a slaveowner”

  • Hannah has had to correct both the Wikipedia and IMDB pages for this fucking television show. We are, truly, the only people in the world who care about New Amsterdam

    • They rejected my IMDB update because they are CORRUPT

  • Need a little discussion of how an odalisque, as described by Amsterdam, is exactly how Hannah sees herself

  • What if the show had gone on for five seasons and we learned that for like two years in the 80’s, Amsterdam was a woman. Wouldn’t that be great