New Amsterdam season 2 episode 15 review: “Double Blind” tackles the opioid crisis

This week, New Amsterdam tackled the opioid crisis, but much of it got mired in unnecessary stories and a lack of follow through on previous storylines.

In this week’s New Amsterdam episode — titled “Double Blind” — Max is tasked by Brantley to end the opioid crisis. For two seasons, Brantley has been struggling and failing to rein in Max’s wild ideas to help people. But this episode she has no problem letting him Goodwin the situation when it comes to opioid addiction and the hospital’s part in it.

It’s not difficult to arrive at the conclusion that Brantley is personally connected to the crisis through a loved one. She’s vehement that Max do something and frustrated when his methods are not making the kind of impact that will immediately up end a system that profits off of prescribing extremely addictive pills to patients.

Brantley has charged Max with an overwhelming task, and one would think that the narrative would make room for this to be an all-hands-on-deck situation, but that’s not what happens. Max attempts to make change on his own. With exception to conferring with Bloom about closing the ER, Max’s ideas on how to stop the hospital from spending over $100 million each year on opioids comes from his own brainstorming.

Max threatens the job security of doctors prescribing opioids to patients by requiring their distribution numbers drop to 0 percent within a year or else they’re fired. He closes the ER and redirects patients to other hospitals in a stance against opioids, which brings media attention to the issue. Max also holds a meeting with his fellow medical directors across the city, urging them to tear up their contracts with the Nylers, a family that earns $1 billion in revenue each year through the opioid purchases the hospitals make through their company.

“Double Blind” acknowledges that it’s not just the drug companies that are poisoning the well, it’s the hospitals and the doctors who have not held the companies accountable due to the amount of money they donate. Max freely admits that New Amsterdam is a part of the problem, but his solution is not one that the other medical directors can accept.

But after Max places the picture of his assistant Adele and her late sister on the wall of the Nyler wing in New Amsterdam, his actions inspire other people who have lost loved ones to opioid addiction to put their pictures on the wall, too. The commiseration and public display of grief and sorrow is enough to get one fellow medical director — Dr. Florence Brighton — on Max’s side.

Brighton rips up her contract in solidarity, citing the Nyler family’s efforts to shut New Amsterdam out by indefinitely delaying shipments of medical supplies the hospital needs. It’s the kind of move that endangers patients for the sake of greed, and she won’t stand for it.

As a viewer, I can’t stand that an episode with addiction at the forefront was seriously lacking in Bloom. Yes, Max conferred with her, and she did have a scene where she admitted to a patient that she, too, is an addict and encouraged her to seek help, but it wasn’t enough. Nor was dinner with her mother.

“Double Blind” marks the second episode where Jeanie Bloom makes an appearance, but there isn’t much done with her character once again. We learn that she doesn’t remember what she did to her daughter when she was growing up, and then the moment peters out. I just do not understand how an episode about addiction shunted Bloom and her relationship with her mother to the side in favor of a forgettable case with Vijay and a couple’s counseling session with Iggy that focuses on an engaged couple — Chris and Jenny — who just found out they’re siblings.

Couple’s Counseling With Siblings

I cannot stress enough the inappropriateness of shoehorning Chris and Jenny’s identity crisis into an episode about the opioid crisis. It was distracting and pulled focus. Max is out there trying to topple Big Pharma pretty much on his own, and Iggy is mediating accidental incest? What?!

There are at least five burning questions we have for this season, and Iggy’s potential eating disorder is on that list, but it’s a storyline that’s been moving at a snail’s pace. And instead of delving deeper into Iggy’s own struggles with his self-image and his home life, we get handed this case.

It’s incredibly disappointing, and to add to that disappointment, Iggy makes the crux of Jenny and Chris’ problem Jenny’s inability to see her fiancé in the same way. And the point of the counseling session becomes getting Jenny to change her thinking so that she can be with the man she loves, a man she’s spent nearly a decade with, by bypassing the fact that he’s her brother.

There’s no discussion of Jenny’s clear trauma surrounding this discovery. There’s no discussion of how hurtful and confusing it must be for Chris not to have a problem with it and therefore making her out to be the bad guy for reacting negatively. The onus is put on “fixing her” instead of addressing the real issue.

Chris and Jenny are siblings. Jenny is repulsed by that fact. Having Jenny read her vows, so she can see Chris in the light she did before they took that DNA test is not a long-term solution to the bigger problem. They’re getting married; they’re planning to spend the rest of their lives together. What Iggy did was stick a band-aid over a deep wound for the sake of professional objectivity and being open minded.

This was not an issue of Jenny worrying about what other people would think; this was an issue of Jenny’s whole world being upended, Chris acting as if it’s not a big deal, and her struggling with being in love with her fiancé whilst processing that they’re siblings. Jenny said point blank that love is not enough, and she got convinced otherwise.

It’s incredibly frustrating that Chris and Jenny’s situation got romanticized into some kind of love-conquers-all plot that positions Chris as right and Jenny as wrong and refuses to tackle the clear problems they’re going to have now that they’re knowingly engaging in a romantic relationship despite being related.

And on top of all that, Iggy stress eats after the session. I threw my hands up in the air at the conclusion of Iggy’s portion of the episode, I truly just could not even. In an episode about opioid addiction, New Amsterdam went with this storyline. Disappointing.

Helen vs. Valentina

In other happenings, “Double Blind” brought to a head the workplace tension between Helen and Valentina. Concerned that Valentina was hiding the worsening conditions of her drug trial patients so as not to stall or completely end her research, Helen broke protocol and looked into Valentina’s files.

Though Helen was incorrect about what Valentina was hiding, it turns out she was right to be suspicious. Valentina lied about the severity of her patients cancer so that her drug would seem to be working remarkably well. At this point, when it comes to this storyline with Helen, Valentina is worse than willfully ignoring her patients’ quality of life; she’s endangering the lives of others for her own personal gain.

What’s unfortunate about Helen and Valentina’s season-long battle is that there is nothing to Valentina as a character. She is an obstacle, an ambitious doctor, and dangerous. There is no nuance to her or the situation. She’s just plainly an antagonist, and not one that’s used well at all. The one thing I am happy about concerning this whole plot is that finally Helen has the means to do something about Valentina’s behavior toward her and New Amsterdam’s patients. I am anxiously awaiting the show’s return on March 10.

What Else Happened?

• Max and Reynolds briefly talked about Reynolds leaving for San Francisco, but since Max cannot handle losing anyone else this year, he’s pretty much freezing Reynolds out. I understand Max is grieving, but there really needs to be a discussion on Max’s avoidance issues and how they blow back on his work family.
• Alice and Max kissed. I’m indifferent to these two. The moment was not unexpected to me, but I really would like to delve deeper into their connection as grieving spouses and single parents before going anywhere serious with their attraction to one another.
• Once again no ending Sharpwin scene. The bitterness has raised by a point.

What did you think about this week’s New Amsterdam episode? Serve up your thoughts in the comments below!