Netflix’s Carlton Cuse-Produced Medical Drama

Due to an unfortunate quirk of timing, you might initially take Netflix’s Pulse for a pale imitation of Max’s The Pitt. Here, once again, is a drama set in the emergency room of a teaching hospital in a major American metropolis; the first several episodes even unfold, Pitt-like, over the course of a single day.

The comparison is not especially flattering to Pulse. This new series is less thrilling and less moving, less grounded in the realities of the job and more invested in the tangled interpersonal lives of its suspiciously photogenic doctors.

In fact, the Zoe Robyn-created series is much more reminiscent of a different hit: Grey’s Anatomy, with its mix of medical drama and soap operatics, its steady hum of romantic tension, its endless supply of metaphorically convenient cases. And seen that way, it’s not half bad — entertaining enough to scratch the same itch, if not yet satisfying enough to claim its own place in the pantheon of hospital shows.

It takes a while to make out the full shape of the narrative, though, since roughly the first five of ten episodes unfold over what will turn out to be an epically stressful shift. As the staff clock in, they’re abuzz primarily with whispers that third-year resident Danny (Willa Fitzgerald) has filed a sexual harassment claim against golden-boy chief resident Phillips (Colin Woodell), and secondarily about reports of a hurricane bearing down on Miami.

Though the latter is more obviously urgent, these doctors have their priorities exactly right in terms of this show. It’s the rift between Phillips and Danny that will reverberate throughout the halls all season long, well after the hurricane trauma victims have been sent home and the parking lot debris cleaned up.

As we’re frequently reminded, Maguire Medical is the best level one trauma center in the state, staffed by young physicians we’re repeatedly told have the potential to be great. As a result, they’re brought all sorts of cases, from the enraging (a private clinic didn’t even bother sewing its patient back up before dumping her on the ER mid-procedure) to the devastating (a 99-year-old is going to die, and probably painfully) to the juicy (an extramarital couple crashed their car because they were having oral sex while driving).

It’s still probably not the kind of hospital you’d actually want to visit if your life were hanging in the balance, unless you enjoy the thought of writhing in pain while your caretakers flirt or bicker or reach dramatic epiphanies over you.

But their self-indulgence does make for pretty fun television, thanks to an ensemble strong enough to overcome sometimes uneven writing. While Fitzgerald and Woodell have both done more interesting work elsewhere, Pulse makes good use of both her flintiness (as seen in shows like Amazon’s Reacher and Netflix’s The Fall of the House of Usher) and his slipperiness (as previously demonstrated on Max’s The Flight Attendant and Peacock’s The Continental: From the World of John Wick) to build an initially intriguing hot-and-cold chemistry between the leads.

Within the main lineup, Jack Bannon confidently balances smarmy and sweet as surgical resident Cole, the show’s obligatory “douchebag with a heart of gold” type. Justina Machado is well cast as Cruz, the director ruling over the ER with a tough but fair eye. And nothing is more winning than the combination of Chan (Chelsea Muirhead), a third-year who looks like she was born with bags under her eyes, and Camila (Daniela Nieves), the relentlessly chipper newbie. Their opposites-attract dynamic is by far the most persuasive and compelling relationship in the series, built chapter by chapter through playful banter, shared vulnerability and the occasional gift muffin.

It seems no coincidence that they also happen to be the two characters least affected by the Danny-Phillips debacle. The sexual harassment storyline provides the drama with structure, building suspense and momentum around the mystery of what really went down between them. The sympathies of the characters waver or shift with every new rumor, and ours do the same as the truth is revealed in dribs and drabs via flashback. But the priority it’s given comes at the expense of some of the supporting players, who are left little room to play outside of it.

It’s refreshing to see a major character like Danny’s sister and fellow resident Harper (Jessy Yates), a wheelchair user who isn’t defined solely by her disability. It’s less refreshing that she does seem to be defined solely by her relationship to Danny. She gets plenty of scenes reiterating her support for Danny’s HR claim or arguing with her about the daddy issues that brought her there. But she’s largely left out of the romantic and professional rivalries ensnaring the rest of the cast.

At least she fares better than their colleague and friend Elijah. Despite Jessie T. Usher’s best efforts, the supposedly ambitious doctor remains a purely reactive role, created to have big feelings about Danny’s Phillips-related predicaments but make no significant moves of his own.

While Pulse ultimately pulls its punches with the conclusion of the Danny-Phillips storyline, it does deserve credit for rejecting clear-cut labels like “victim” or “villain” in favor of thornier conversations about power and consent, attraction and manipulation. But the choice to spread them out over ten hours makes both central figures hard to root for at first, since we’re left to wonder whether either of them might secretly be a monster, and tiresome by the end, as we’re made to watch the pair rehash the same arguments over and over again.

Late in the season, a character contemplates leaving Maguire altogether. “This place is toxic,” she points out to a coworker, and she’s not wrong. Between all the rules being broken and power dynamics going ignored by medical professionals who can’t seem to help falling in like or love or bed with each other, the place seems like a legal and HR nightmare.

And yet it’s hard not to hope the character sticks around, and to want to do the same. Because as necessary as discord and division might be to propel the plot, Pulse‘s truest appeal lies in its moments of connection: two professionals comforting each other after a particularly wrenching loss; a trio of coworkers teasing a colleague about her funny high school photos; the team of nurses (Arturo del Santo anchors a deep recurring-guest-star bench as charge nurse Luis) playing desktop basketball during a rare slow moment.

Maguire Medical may be a bit of a mess right now — but much like the chaotic young people who comprise its staff, it’s a mess with lots of heart and plenty of potential.