‘New Amsterdam’ EPs on Reynolds’ Relationship, Bloom’s Secret & Iggy’s Choice
Preview
Drs. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) and Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) finally getting together wasn’t the only major moment of the New Amsterdam Season 3 finale. Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) accepted a promotion, only to find out it came from the husband of the woman he’s been seeing, Dr. Lyn Malvo (Frances Turner). The pair have an open marriage. Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery) risked her career to get her girlfriend Leyla (Shiva Kalaiselvan) a residency spot at the hospital. And Dr. Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) decided he’s done seeing patients.
“Everyone’s in a hopefully beautiful place by the end of the season,” executive producer David Schulner tells TV Insider. “Everyone has exactly what they always wanted. [But] sometimes a new beginning or getting everything you wanted is going to be a lot more than you bargained for.”
So what’s next? It won’t be an easy journey for anyone.
Reynolds’ Complicated Love Story
Despite initially fighting his attraction to Lyn because he knew about her (open) marriage, by the finale, the two were very much … as together as they can be in the situation? Then, the Chair of General Surgery, Dr. Claude Baptiste (Andre Blake), offered him the position of Deputy Chair of Surgery … and Reynolds met his wife, Lyn. As you probably expect, he won’t be handling this all that well in Season 4.
“We live in a world where storytelling in film and television is so much about relationships, about longing,” executive producer and director Peter Horton says. “So much of our storytelling is about love stories. We already did Reynolds falling in love with Evie [Margot Bingham] and being engaged and all of that stuff.” (Fun fact: Season 2 originally ended with Reynolds and Evie getting married in “a big wedding, a big celebration,” Schulner reveals. The pandemic changed all their plans.)
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Just like happened with the chemistry between Eggold and Agyeman in the pilot, they took note of what they saw when Sims and Turner were on screen together and that allowed them to do something different and unpredictable. “We just figured we have to go down that road and tell that story and see where that relationship can go,” Horton explains. “You see in that scene under the umbrella in Episode 13 the longing, and so what’s a good obstacle for the longing in his relationship? How about she’s married to another man, but it’s not illicit in that it’s an open marriage, but as with anything like that, it’s so much more complicated it’s initially intended to be.”
This situation results in quite a few questions for the writers to tackle moving forward. “What’s it like if you have someone who’s agreed with their husband to have an open marriage, but has never done anything about it before and is ambivalent herself and yet she’s really drawn to Reynolds? And here’s Reynolds, who has this idea of what he wants for a marriage and life but is magnetized by this woman and he can’t let her go. How does that work? Where does that go?” Horton asks.
Bloom’s Major Risk for Love
Upon facing her girlfriend potentially moving away when she didn’t score a residency spot at New Amsterdam, Bloom went to see if there was anything she could do — and found out there was: a bribe. It would mean risking her career, she argued, but by episode’s end, Leyla had a position at the hospital.
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“I think Bloom did the wrong thing for the right reason,” Schulner says. “Hopefully everyone feels for her in the same way that the writers did and the way Janet portrayed her. My heart goes out to her. It’s easy to judge her decision, but coming out of this last year and a half, I’m not going to judge anyone’s right to happiness or desperate attempts to hold on to the good things in your life.”
While Bloom has been doing well (she was happy this season!), we can’t forget her past struggles. “Bloom is a former addict,” Horton reminds us. “She’s not good at depriving herself of what she wants and she’s really found something she’s never had before with Leyla. She’s found a genuine love. When she’s faced with doing the right thing and losing her or doing the wrong thing and keeping her, she just can’t help herself. She’s got an addict sensibility, but she’s also a good person. So she knows what she’s done is wrong.”
Expect to see this weigh on their relationship going forward as Leyla begins working for Bloom and remains in the dark about just how she scored that spot. “How does a secret like that eat away at the foundation of a relationship and a love affair? It’s a little like having an affair. Once you have a secret in a relationship with somebody, it’s not benign, it eats away, it lives, it impacts things,” Horton continues. “It’s full of potential conflict and pending disasters because of the decisions that she’s made.”
Iggy’s Drastic Decision
In the penultimate episode of Season 3, the patient, Chance (Luke Slattery), Iggy had taken a restraining order out against broke into his house. To keep him calm and get him to leave, the psychiatrist had to lie. (“You finally put yourself first,” his husband Martin, played by Mike Doyle, told him.) As a result of that trauma, Iggy decided in the finale that he is no longer going to see patients.
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“Chance made Iggy rethink his entire life,” Schulner explains. “The speech that Aaron [Ginsburg] and David [Foster] wrote for him at the end, where he’s looking at his family, making smores around the campfire, and realizing he doesn’t want to make that trade anymore, he doesn’t want to absorb other people’s pain if it means sacrificing from his own joy — and because Iggy doesn’t know how to be a different therapist because he can’t help but opening his heart to everyone — I think he’s making a really healthy decision. Why should he keep practicing and keep hurting himself?”
But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for him to stick to that decision. On the one hand, “the peace he has with his family is everything to him,” Schulner says. But on the other hand, “there’s the problem of his nature,” Horton adds. “His nature is to help people directly. That is who he is. It’s one of the reasons that he and Martin have adopted so many kids from foreign countries because he can’t help himself. He’s made a conscious decision that goes against his very nature. He’s determined to follow it, but those liminal conflicts where your nature is your nature and you’re trying to impose a will on it eventually have to collide with each other — that’s what his next season is going to be about. How does he resolve that conflict? It’s a powerful conflict.”
New Amsterdam, Season 4, Fall 2021, NBC
Conversation15 Comments
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I can’t wait to see Dr Sharpe and Dr Max get a child together, these guys are in true love.
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I love that show and Dr. IGGY and Janet Montgomery
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It used to be a show about medicine and now it is General Hospital and One Life To Live combined.
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I officially like New Amsterdam more than Grey's Anatomy. Kinda tired of those big speeches in Grey's Anatomy.
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I really like the show. It is the best medical drama that I have ever seen The story and the actors are awesome
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To be honest when Dr. Lyn Malvo told Floyd that she was engaged why didn't he just back off and found another woman that's not taken to get romantically involved with instead. If a man told me that he was engaged I surely wouldn't pursue him romantically anyways as a friend maybe but to be more than that not at all. Well, it's about time for Max and Helen to get together romantically, I've thought that Floyd would of been interested in Helen romantically but I guess they weren't each other's type or maybe they were like a brotherly sisterly type of relationship between them.
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I too had actually hoped that Helen and Floyd would have gotten together in the early season. But I guess the writers just had another plan for that and, of course, for the titular character's, Max and Helen, to get together. Seems like that was the plan from season 1. I actually liked Helen with the other medical director, (Dr. Panch??) It will be interesting to see how S4 unfolds with Sharpwin
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Speaking of season 1 wasn't Max interested in the that lady with the baby of course that he met was the laundry room or in day care either way I've thought that he was interested in her? And yes in season 1 I've thought that Floyd and Helen were interested in each other as well, Floyd is fine though. Didn't Floyd get married at one time?
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I was really disappointed with New Amsterdam this year. I miss the medical aspect of the show. It has gone to far into the personal aspects of the characters lives that I really didn’t need or want to know. Like Reynolds…. I was cheering him on when he was being true to himself and walking away from the “open” relationship. Then the next episode they are together. No thanks. New Amsterdam has lost integrity and a previous devoted viewer. The show used to be good.
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Totally agree with your comment about Reynolds. And that's the whole point, he is not being true to himself now as he was initially and it really isn't logical or rational. The writers have just gone for drama for drama sakes with him. Count me as not a fan of his character (now) either.
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Wholeheartedly agree, especially due to Reynold's values, which he felt strongly about in the previous seasons. I take a commercial break now when the three doctors who are in a relationship together come on the screen. Truthfully, I thought that Reynolds and Bloom may find their way back to each other, but that is not the case; Bloom did find her true love though, or so it seemed. In any case, I guess the moral of the story here is that people change, even when it comes to their values/their previous outlook on life...
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One of my favs on tv.love Max
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I abhor and despise the polyamorous relationship that Reynolds is in currently--this is SSOO NOT WHO HE IS, ethically, morally, respectfully. I wished/wanted so much for Evie and him to marry and see that big wedding. If that actor, Evie, it's still available, they need to bring her back pronto! He needs to be happy and they were. Plus his love interest looks like his mother to me, and I see absolutely ZERO chemistry between them--even though the writers are pushing this storyline. I'm currently re-watching Seasons 1 & 2 and the writers need to make sure that they're staying true to how the stories/characters originated but with a little more normal, natural change. Please don't character assassinate these folks and have them waiver too much from who they truly were at the beginning.
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The storyline is so messy but intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing where they take it. I like seeing Reynolds trying to find his footing personally and professionally. It’s so much more interesting than anything they’ve ever written for him. I disagree, he has way more chemistry with the new doctor than he ever had with any woman he was supposedly romantic with before. I didnt think Reynolds and evie had chemistry. They were just polite and unproblematic, but that’s not chemistry. Reynolds and the new doc sizzle and they look so good together. I’m curious to see where it will go. Same with Bloom and Layla.
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I could care less about Iggy or Bloom's dilemma/predicament. They are both rather boring characters, in my opinion. Iggy has been a horrible psychiatrist/therapist for most of the seasons and Bloom has been unethical. She definitely needs to be fired for what she's just done. The only couple I'm excited and eager about, of course, is Sharpwin so I'm hoping you give them some true joy and happiness for a while. I am probably in the minority but I do not approve or appreciate the situation that Reynolds is in. That is not who he is. He has more integrity, morals, and self-respect to go down this particular road. I felt he and Evie were soulmates and that they really got and understood each other--more like Sharpwin--and I saw chemistry there. I see and feel zero chemistry between Malvo and Reynolds other than it being forced upon me to like this manufactured, dramatic "attraction". I wish you would bring back Evie instead of having him in the relationship with Malvo. But I guess it's asking too much to have two happy couples on the show!
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