New Amsterdam is a new series on Fox that stars a man named John Amsterdam who lived in New York, NY as a detective with a little bit of experience on his side.
About 300 years worth.
John is a Dutch soldier who saves the life of a young Native American woman back in the 1600’s, and in doing that, he took a sword through the heart. But the woman returns the favor, saves his life and puts something like a curse on him: Immortality. He will live eternal until he finds the woman who is wedded to his soul.
New York City was actually called New Amsterdam in 1653, but in 1665 it was changed to New York. He steps in front of the sword in 1642 and has new life. Since they don’t tell you, I am assuming his real name isn’t Amsterdam, but he took it for the place he’s living in now. Perhaps he uses different names through the years since people would likely start getting suspicious.
So with three centuries of living under his belt, this makes John a pretty good detective. Not only does he have all those years of just gaining life experience and wisdom, but he’s apparently done it all within New York, and thus has an insane knowledge of the city. Case in point, he hears the name of some bar and immediately knows it’s where a speakeasy used to be back in prohibition days.
The pilot basically lays this all out, but with one key element that happens to him for the first time in his long stinkin’ life. He dies. From a heart attack in a subway station.
Well, he sort of dies. They pronounce him dead at the hospital. But of course, he wakes up and walks out a bit later. The big question is what the heck happened?
He believes it means that he’s found her. The woman that the curse was waiting for him to find. It was almost an alarm going off to tell him, “She’s right here!”
So that’s the mission of the series, the mythology or underlying plot. Will he or wont he find her and when/if he does, what happens?
I liked the show alright, but I really want to get to the obvious comparisons that came to me while watching it. It’s almost exactly like the show Life, which I totally dig.
Life stars a police detective named Charlie Crews, who is framed for murder, goes to jail, studies Zen and returns a wiser man. Suddenly his newfound Zen-like thinking helps him solves crimes better than anyone else.
John is in essence the same thing. His experience of 300 years gives him the ability to think on a whole other level than those around him.
Crews is on a mission to find out who framed him. Once he does, he’ll feel complete and done.
John is on one too, and when he finds HER, he’ll be complete as well.
Both have Latino partners. Okay, this one is just a major coincidence, but it’s so interesting how spookily similar these two shows are.
Oh yeah, both have a close friend who knows their secrets and history, and will stick by them through anything.
So with that being said, was it worth watching? I thought it was, but we’ll need to see a few more episodes. Like I’ve said before, it’s hard to judge pilots because there is so much focus on setting up the overall story.
I think the scenes of him back in the past could get cheesy, just because the money they spend on making it look real can’t be as much as they need to. So it could appear fake at times and perhaps take away from how good it could be.
But I liked the lead actor, played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and the idea of being around for so long is intriguing. One cool thing from the show was that he’s been taking pictures of Times Square for over 100 years, once a year. He takes it looking at the old Flat Iron building that’s stood there for almost a century. He has all the photos along his wall in order, and it’s kind of neat.
The only nitpick about that is…he really had no idea how huge Times Square would end up being, so why did he take his photos there?
The second episode is on tonight, Thursday March 6th, so we’ll see how that goes.
Did anyone watch it or give it a shot? What did you think?
I was looking forward to this show and actually did enjoy it for the most part. I think it has a lot of potential.
Having said that, I did have a few issues with it. The biggest one is the curse or whatever that was placed on him. The Indian women say that everyone has a true love they are meant to be with, so they put this “curse” on him so he’ll live until he’s found his. Okay, fine. But from what we saw, there’s no way they could have known that he didn’t already have his “true love.” And what does that have to do with saving the woman in the first place? There’s no correlation between the two whatsoever. Furthermore, how can you believe that everyone has someone whose soul they are meant to be “wedded” to, but that person doesn’t even live in the same century?
I also failed to understand how he could live in the same city and frequent the same bar, work the same job, etc. for any length of time without people figuring out something weird was going on with this dude who never gets old.
Speaking of which, it was refreshing that he just comes out and tells people the truth all the time about how he’s had 600 and something girlfriends and such, but if someone said all the things he was saying he’d be in the nut house.
But I did like the show.
And now Fox is stupidly airing the second episode opposite tonight’s episode of Lost. How does that make any sense whatsoever? Regular airings will be Mondays against Two and A Half Men and Christine, so why air an episode tonight?
Yeah, Fox is retarded…I don’t get that. It’s like they want these shows to fail or something.
I agree though, the whole point of the curse didn’t make sense. And I’m sorry, but I think if you live the next 20-30 years, you’d find that one meant for you. I think most of us do.
Unless there is just something special about this other one. Perhaps there is more to the story than what we know. I dunno. But yeah, the curse didn’t make sense.
A better backstory would have been good. Something that made the immortality better believed. Like….perhaps his true love DID die and so the woman makes him immortal until he can love again, truly.
Now that would make a better story.
And yeah, loved the fact that he told the truth.
Did you noticed he called his dog like “36″ at the beginning?
Your idea for the backstory would definitely have been better. Of course, we may not know the whole story so I guess we should give them the benefit of the doubt for now…
I did notice that he called his dog by a number. I thought that was funny…and telling. He’s grown so accustomed to loss that he doesn’t even bother to name them anymore.
I think this shows got potential, we’ll see how they continue to lay the story out, but it was a good start. Reminded me bit of the movie Highlander, which was awesome, only without the beheadings…damn.
Obviously having lived in NYC for so long he literally lived the history. I’m guessing we’ll find out that he’s had many jobs over the years and being a Detective is only the latest. I’m also hoping we’ll learn a bit more about the curse and that it will make a bit more sense. Maybe we’ll also see dog’s 1-35 via flashback…that would be funny.
Scotty Dub’s last blog post..Best office product ever…
Dogs 1-35, hilarious
I’ll bet the first one had a name though…
Well, we already know that he’s a famous table maker.
[...] first was the immortal New Amsterdam and the second was the comedy Unhitched, starring Rashida Jones from Office fame. You can read [...]