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Can you hear the people? Can you hear the people sing? Rejoice? Celebrate?
Blessed be everything and everyone because Veronica Fuentes is finally freaking gone! It only took all season.
One can’t think of a better outcome for New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 20 than Veronica crying her crocodile tears as she walked out of New Amsterdam forever. Good damn riddance!
They threw a few different things at us for this hour, but fortunately, it wasn’t as frustratingly jam-packed as New Amsterdam Season 4 Episode 19.
For reasons I didn’t quite follow, we opened with the coveted few who got the ax and opted to work at UMI, having new badges flung at them.
After commotion with the urgent care fiasco, Fuentes took in the staff and taunted them with the cold, hard fact that they all had a three-year non-compete, which meant they could practice medicine at New Amsterdam or not at all for at least three years.
Everyone sucked it up and chose to stick it out at New Amsterdam under this wretched woman’s domain.
And the idea of some of them returning sucked when you consider that they were doing better elsewhere. Gladys is the perfect example of this.
She was living her best life. Nurses are a hot commodity and actually getting paid what they’re worth these days with the right negotiation power.
But now, she’s back to serving as the voice of reason and conscience to Iggy. Bless that woman’s soul; no one should get stuck with that duty anymore.
Iggy is exhausting. Trying to keep Iggy on the straight and narrow is tiresome.
Gladys took on the tone of an exhausted but impossibly patient mother of a petulant toddler when she had to tell this grown, professional man how inappropriate it was that he was lying to a potential patient via a video game about who he was and his occupation.
Iggy’s therapy isn’t working fast enough because what is he doing? The only thing that made Iggy’s behavior less creepy was when we saw that the person he was playing with that whole time was a bit older than they sounded and not some fragile pre-teen.
I feel like you’re the only person in the world who understands me. I trust you. You’re the only person I trust.
Kid
It’s only by pure luck that things turned out okay for Iggy after he told the truth. And his initial intentions (maybe?) of helping this fellow gamer came to fruition when they showed up at his office for a much-needed appointment.
Wilder and Floyd had the most exciting medical case of the bunch. The two of them make a kickass team together!
Once again, they both had the arduous task of ensuring a risky procedure that could’ve gone wrong 1000 different ways was a success.
It doesn’t even seem possible for doctors to remove twin fetuses from the womb, excise their tumors, then place them back inside without a hitch.
But somehow, Wilder and Floyd managed it, and without any help from a fetal surgeon either. But it was trippy when they saw that the sac would only fit one of the babies.
It took some quick thinking by Wilder and an unprecedented and innovative concept of turning one of the pregnancies into an ectopic one to save both twins. Everything about that felt downright outlandish.
However, it’s always a blast to see Wilder in surgery, and she and Floyd kicked butt and pulled off the impossible. How can you not root for them! It was such a relief that everything turned out okay, and they got an incredible win under their belts.
The surgery was fascinating, too, with those incredible life-like tiny dolls that served as the fetuses. The special effects department is so good.
But not every case can be a successful one. The situation in London with Helen, that child, and his parents was utterly heartbreaking and shocking.
The one doctor wasn’t wrong when he pointed out that Helen was making it harder for the parents when she resuscitated the son despite the unlikelihood that he would wake back up again.
But instinctively, you do whatever you can to save a child. And these cases hit closer to home for Helen now that she’s a parent, too.
The parents should’ve had the right to keep their kid on life support if they desired, but apparently, the British system works differently.
Helen and the parents trying to relocate this kid to America was the type of farfetched, out-of-the-box Max Goodwin type of plan. We could guess that she wouldn’t succeed in it because how could she?
But nothing prepared for the authorities racing to them before they could take off with the child, the head of healthcare threatening to unleash the full scope of the government on them and arrest them if they continued with their plan.
It was utterly insane!
Despite Helen and the parent’s wishes, the government could intervene and decide that the child could get removed from life support, and that was that.
Lauren and Walsh’s case with Burgess was more of an opportunity to explore the change in roles. I loved that we got to see Walsh, someone Lauren mentored, running the department in his own way.
Yes, we know the ED is Lauren’s domain, and she’s seemingly irreplaceable in that regard. It was both amusing and refreshing to see someone familiar like Walsh in charge and exercising his authority over Lauren and Casey.
Walsh’s reaction to how casually Lauren went along with things was hilarious. He expected the drill sergeant version of her and couldn’t understand why that Lauren never showed up. It messed with his mind, too.
The downside, however, was that Walsh suddenly wasn’t capable of taking charge and got flustered and doubted himself once Lauren returned.
I didn’t make this personal, Max. You did. That’s on you. So you just tell me what you decide.
Veronica
It’s nothing wrong with highlighting Lauren’s invaluable presence in the ED, but it sucked that it came at Walsh’s expense. He came across as incompetent just to sell that message, which was irritating.
But Lauren took everything in stride and had many amusing moments, whether it was her time with Walsh, the plethora of Cabloom that we all love, or a lighthearted approach to the payment situation with Leyla.
I’m glad she matched the silly, covert, weird brown bag exchange with the humor it deserved because that’s how ridiculous the handoff came across in the first place.
Now, we learn that Leyla no longer has to owe Lauren anything because the extent of the loan is finished. Leyla’s immigration case isn’t winnable, so she doesn’t need to undergo extensive procedures that cost thousands.
I guess we can look at all of this as a story arc that allowed Lauren an opportunity to evolve and come into her own. But frankly, it’s annoying that we got any of this in the first place.
In hindsight, I just don’t see the point of the immigration issue, the money debacle — any of it. It still feels like contrived drama to put Lauren and Leyla through, only for them to essentially end up where they were months ago.
It’s like they wrote themselves into a corner, and then waved it all away, and we’re supposed to go along with it just because.
A positive spin on it would be to suggest that they needed to go through these trials to come out of it stronger than ever as a couple. But it mostly feels pointless, and now they’re in a good place again, and it feels like they mostly swept all of their issues under the rug because we didn’t spend enough time on them to resolve anything properly.
Mom, I want you to help me find my father.
Floyd
But as long as the two of them are happy now, I suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s similar to the contrived and unresolved drama between Helen and Max this season.
By now, we can probably suspect that Helen is turned off by how medicine is handled in London, and she’ll welcome a return back to New York City, so I’m back to wondering why we needed the London arc in the first place.
Of course, Max isn’t aware yet if Helen would want to come back to New York. He spent much of the hour defeated after his failed attempt to get rid of Fuentes.
And by then, all he wanted was to return home to Helen. He would’ve gone back to not practicing medicine if it meant he could be with her. Fuentes presented it as if he had to make this massive choice of choosing medicine over Helen and their future together.
You could tell the whole situation was eating away at him when he wasn’t the most receptive to helping others when he got stopped in the halls.
But fortunately, he set that aside in the locker room and managed to render healthcare to all the janitors and other medical staff, which put him on a path of learning how poorly treated they were at New Amsterdam.
Their healthcare was atrocious, yet Fuentes demanded more than their job descriptions and capabilities, pushing them to poor health.
When you consider it deeply, it shouldn’t be a surprise that everything started and ended with the essential workers. No one factored them at all throughout this whole journey, yet they were the ones to shut everything down and get rid of Fuentes once and for all.
Karen: Until these employees come back, you’re shut down from top to bottom, and that has never happened before. Maybe that’s why they’re called essential workers.
Veronica: What do you want me to do?
Karen: I’m pretty sure the people are telling you exactly what to do.
They were the invisible ones who did all this work that the hospital depended on, but no one ever paid any attention until it was too late.
I cannot believe that we could’ve gotten rid of Fuentes ages ago with a protest. If only the Rebellion had extended to more than just fellow doctors!
Karen’s moment of gloating was priceless and one of the best moments of the hour.
All the janitors, orderlies, and other essential staff got the hospital shut down, the board talking, and Fuentes resigning in a few hours when it took months of failed schemes with Max and the others.
Orderly: Who treats their employees this way?
Max: Oh, I can guess.
While it was the workers’ gratitude toward Max and appreciation for him that contributed to some of their actions, it was generally refreshing that this longstanding battle wasn’t something that Max won on his own.
They were the ones to save him, New Amsterdam, and themselves.
It was the power of the people, something that resonates more when we’ve seen recently the good that comes when workers unionize or come together. It was beautiful.
It’s no way Max can go back to London after this, right? He and Helen have to be on the same page, though, so hopefully, it won’t cause more drama between them. Over to you, ‘Dam Fanatics.
Are you grateful Fuentes is finally gone? Will Max return to London? Are you happy Lauren and Leyla are back together? Hit the comments.
You can watch New Amsterdam online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.