Been There, Done That
If you've been living in Manhattan for 400 years, you'd probably have a pretty good nest egg saved up and just live off the interest, right? Or at the very least, a killer deal on a rent-controlled apartment. So why would you need to work? And even if you wanted a job simply to fill up the downtime between Mets games and last calls in the Meatpacking District, why choose something totally depressing like homicide detective?
New Amsterdam, Fox's new drama about the oldest cop to hit prime-time since Abe Vigoda's Fish, hasn't answered these complicated mysteries yet, but at least it's explained the simpler one. John Amsterdam, who initially came to the New World as a Dutch soldier in 1642, saved an Indian maiden from death by sword. She rewarded his chivalry by casting a spell that gives him immortality until he finds his one true love.
In retrospect, a nice turkey dinner may have been a more appropriate gesture. Amsterdam, it seems, is the kind of picky Manhattan bachelor that once bedeviled Carrie Bradshaw and her pals on Sex and the City. It is taking him so long to find his true love that he's gotten cynical; he wears his immortality like a hair-shirt rather than, say, an awesome cashmere sweater from the city's finest menswear shop.
The conceit of a jaded, world-weary detective who really has seen it all -- multiple times -- is a good one, and New Amsterdam shows moments of promise. On the one hand, John Amsterdam should be the rival of Columbo, using centuries of accrued knowledge about the city's geography and inhabitants to solve cases that leave mere mortals baffled. On the other hand, as human beings keep doing unspeakable things to each other, year after year, decade after decade, how does Amsterdam keep apathy and despair at bay?
So far, however, New Amsterdam has yet to reach its potential. It almost seems that because its creators have thought of a novel way to twist the typical police procedural, they think that's enough. And then give us the typical police procedural. Naturally, Amsterdam's partners never last for too long. Naturally, the series commences with him getting a new partner, a beautiful young woman who comes from a family where police batons served as pacifiers -- Dad was a cop, brother's a cop, uncle's a cop, and no doubt, the obstetrician who delivered her moonlighted in the bureau's narcotics division too. And, naturally, Amsterdam is not pleased about being partnered with a woman, especially a hot woman, because for some reason, television cops hate that.
The cliches unfold one after the next, but perhaps the most limiting one is the show's depiction of immortality as curse. It's understandable while Bill Murray's character in Groundhog Day hated his virtual indestructability -- he had to keep living the same day over and over, in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. For conscientious vampires, eternity seems similarly hellish -- but what's so bad about living forever, in the world's most vital metropolis, while dating a never-ending string of women to determine if one of them is your true love? If New Amsterdam were set just forty or fifty years into its main character's odyssey, when presumably he was still enjoying the novelties of endless youth and death-proof bachelorhood -- eternity as a blessing so wonderful it's even better than we dream it is -- the show would be a lot more fun. And certainly this would be a fresher take on a conceit that is beginning to show its age.
A frequent contributor to Las Vegas Weekly, Greg Beato has also written for SPIN, Blender, Reason, Time.com, and many other publications. Email Greg at [email protected]