Screen and Streams: The Afternoon Tea Reunion ft Jadé

[@mrangemystere1216]

Mes Chères Amies: C'est moi, René: I had enjoyed participating in and taking in the deeply insightful, resolutely detailed, and often poignant analysis by you both and many of the Teapot's contributors regarding New Amsterdam in particular. In truth, I found the production team's inability to convince Freema to stay in some capacity, even if in guest-starring roles, the death-knell for the series. I did not even bother watching the final season, except for the last few minutes of the series finale. It did not help that the show's production team knew in the penultimate season that Freema would leave after completing it. The reasons are manifest and too numerous to list here at this time, save for these points: 1. Freema and Ryan, Helen and Max, were the dramatic and allegorical core of the entire show. As good as the ensemble cast was, they reacted to and evolved within the New Amsterdam World that emanated from Helen's dazzling intellectual mastery and cultural brilliance and Max's idealism and aspirational ambition and the incandescent love between Helen and Max 2. The chemistry -- erotic, intellectual, spiritual, all of it-- between Helen and Max, Freema and Ryan resonated from an entirely unique space, and the allegorical power of it in the face of such Right-wing, anti-democratic, and deeply racist phenomena as Trumpism or Brexit elevated the entire show from a mere worldwide hit to a work of popular art as a cultural, social phenomenon. 3. Freema. She's the heart of it all. The show producers meant to create a run-of-the-mill "White Savoir" vehicle centered on Max/Ryan, but it was and will always be Freema/Helen who is the absolute centre of the show: it is SHE, Helen, who transform's Max's perspectives from "savior" to partner, from "ally" to follower; and it is SHE, Freema, who not so much as dragged Ryan from the very good actor he is into something better but rather inspired the dependable, charismatic Ryan into excellence, giving us a Max who was brave, absurd, inspiring, heedless, resolute, comical, poignant, powerful. We could laugh at Max's Million-Idea march straight into Helen's office, always Helen's office, but at the same time, we can absolutely understand it: OF COURSE, he was deeply and utterly in love with her, and she was the Source, the Light, the Way for bringing about the New Amsterdam of allegory and reality. I will not comment on Helen and Max's adventure in Britain, other than to repeat that however "older" lower Manhattan appears to American eyes, this former Manhattanite who spent his childhood growing up in Britain resolutely states the irrefutable fact: Lower Manhattan simply exits within and as another architectural universe than that of London, let alone of the wholly separate universe of history, politics, cultures, and society. It goes without saying that the producers' ending of the penultimate season with Helen jilting Max is as utterly ridiculous as their substituting Lower Manhattan for London location shooting: a woman who loves a man so deeply as Helen loves (present tense) Max to the point of not just risking her life but of her giving of her body and soul to saving, indeed resurrecting his, Max's body and soul, that woman would NEVER, EVER jilt that man on the day of their impending wedding. It is an artistic and series production failure so staggering that it literally killed the series: no Helen, no New Amsterdam. My final comments on the matter come to this: had the show's writers remained true to who and what Freema had so brilliantly unleashed and that to which Ryan so intuitively responded, they would, I argue, have made the "surprise ending" thus: the young woman doctor who turns out to be the adult Luna, taking up her father's legacy, would, in her series-ending speech before the assembled doctors, have then introduced two young women doctors as her co-leaders of New Amsterdam. These young women would turn out to be her two half-sisters by Helen and Max: such a denouement would allude to how Helen resolved her crisis of choice when running the London clinic: instead of the traditional, patriarchal dictatorship model of one sole director, Helen chose all of her leading candidates as a body of leaders, each representing some part of London's diverse society. Therefore, in Luna and her two half sisters running the New Amsterdam, we would see that Helen's transformational, democratic vision of London as a "family" would live on through her own daughters and adopted daughters: New Amsterdam's legacy of reconciliation, transformation, and community/family would be that of both Helen and Max in blood, culture, and ideals. I argue that such a denouement would have delivered more of the "surprise" while restoring the singularity of Helen and Max to the New Amsterdam world: 1. It would confirm that Helen and Max became, after all that is said and done, only who could be for each other: intimate, world-changing life partners. 2. It would confirm that the "New" Amsterdam legacy as it really is: an allegorical universe transformed by Helen's and Max's vision for a better world and love for each other. 3. It would embody what the allegorical power of Helen in that legacy has always been: Helen Sharpe, Transformer, Redeemer, and Uniter. 4. It would logically, morally, and artistically restore to the New Amsterdam show's own legacy "Les Trois Unités" of drama -- unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time -- upon which all enduring world drama, the European, African, Asian dramatic traditions, for example --all strikingly adhere to and embody. 5. It would evoke what Helen and Max/Freema and Ryan achieved for and during their partnership throughout the show's run: the power of transformation, The Crossing, as it were. So, in making my after-the-flood arguments, I conclude by sending you both -- and the entire Purple Teapot ( how I LOVE that riff and spliff!) fam -- my warmest regards, greetings, and well wishes. And I look forward to following you, the Purple fam, and following up, as it always is both a pleasure and moments of illumination participating in, listening to, and taking in the Purple Teapot's "moveable feast."