10 New Amsterdam episodes to help get us through this hiatus

“What the Heart Wants” (written by Y. Shireen Razack, directed by Don Scardino)

There are a lot of moving parts to “What the Heart Wants,” from Max’s shared grief with a patient who loses her baby, to Helen’s risk of supporting a patient through use of a safe injection site, as well as Vijay and Agnes’ discovery of subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSE)–a complication of the measles virus–in an adopted child, to Bloom’s leg surgery. It’s a lot and yet it works so well.

New Amsterdam is excellent at educating viewers without seeming preachy and still decidedly weighing in on an issue like vaccination or letting the audience make up their own minds about an alternative form of care like safe injection sites for addicts.

What the show has not been excellent at this season is Max’s grief. It’s been bottled and pushed mostly to the side, but in “What the Heart Wants” it is very much at the forefront of Max’s arc for the episode and that makes all the difference. Max finally opens up about how he’s been feeling, how he doesn’t want to move past his grief because it means letting go of Georgia, how he’s still trying to keep her alive through talking to her and sharing moments with her that she doesn’t get to have with their daughter, Luna.

It felt so good to hear Max talk about what he’s been going through after episodes of him keeping it to himself. I want more of that for him, and I suspect we’ll be getting just that which is such a relief.