Season 1, Episode 8 (Season Finale)
Date of release: April 9, 2025 (Apple TV+)
Written by: Samuel Jefferson, Lisa van Brakel
Directed by: Alex Schaad
”I heard you all call us heroes and heroines who perform miracles? And that's not what we are. We're just people who want to help other people, who are exhausted, and therefore, make mistakes too.”
The side plot of the elder care home in the fifth episode was not the only element in this show criticizing the German healthcare system. Now Dr. Parker does the criticizing for the entire hospital, especially after witnessing what Cure Pulse has done to make it harder for nurses to care for elderly patients. I can see the theme going through German stories set in the medical field, and it's that hospitals and care places are understaffed with nurses who are also underpaid, and that needs to be mentioned and criticized, since it's a general problem in German healthcare. And I say what I said back in episode five after watching the Cure Pulse story: I wish the premise had gotten a lot more attention here.
But there was no time, since this episode delivered the mass-casualty event every medical drama has to bring at least once a season. A burning building, lots of patients with third-degree burns, a couple of deceased clubgoers, and even one of the main characters had to pay with their lives, giving the show the one plot that made me roll my eyes out the back of my head. I guess the writers realized that they wrote themselves into a corner with Dom and his inability to do his job – either he would have been revealed as a fraud who doesn't even have the doctorate (that had been a whole different story in and of itself), or he came to the conclusion that he doesn't bring it as a physician in the emergency department. The thing is, he was straight-up committing malpractice that led to the death of at least one patient (his fiancée's father). That would have resulted in a story that gave potential to a TV show that wasn't a gritty character drama set in a hospital, so it had to be excised from the show entirely. I'm both disappointed (for the writers choosing this plot development in the first place) and glad (for ending it prematurely) about it.
I also can't buy Parker allowing Ben to work during the chaotic shift. She knew all about him now, she knew he was suffering from withdrawals, she had to expect that crap was going to hit the fan if she allowed him to work his shift. And then she gave him morphine to calm him down, so that he could operate. Yeah, that was the moment when my eyes crashed out of my head. Lots more malpractice lawsuits are incoming if any of that ever gets to the press. I always thought of Parker being a responsible leader who was capable of making the hard decisions. But then she allowed a drug addict with withdrawal symptoms to shoot up some morphine and work on patients. That was frustrating to watch.
After that, I almost don't want to watch another season of this show, because it just played itself out of favor. But then again, German television doesn't have any other gritty medical dramas pushing for some realism, so I'm silently hoping for a renewal.
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| Have you ever wished for your trauma surgeon to be high on drugs during your emergency operation? |
