Day Three

We live so close to New Orleans in the Dallas area and didn't know how bad this was. Just awful.

My husband noticed a blooper.... In the managers office in the Tenet home office the Dallas poster had a picture of the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge built in 2012. Not built during the time of Katrina.

Episode 3 of Five Days At Memorial starts with Dr King being interviewed following the incident in Memorial hospital. He tells the interviewer that circumstances show who you really are, and the focal point here comes from Anna and whatever happened to her in the hospital. Wow, what a tense episode! There are so many moments in this chapter that stand out and you can really feel the frustrations and angst for all those stuck inside the hospital. Seeing the corporate side of things is a nice touch too, especially given how long it took to actually get people out and evacuated. It's Day three inside the hospital and Susan contemplates whether they should leave completely. With the water pumps in the city broken and the water rising, she's concerned that this could go all the way up to the second floor. The only solution here is to get out. But then with the water continuing to raise and some of these patients needing to go, the helipad on the roof hasn't been used in years and there may not be a way to get these patients out through ambulances. It's definitely a precarious situation. The thing is, there's friction between Memorial and Lifecare, with the latter in a much more precarious situation when it comes to evacuating patients. Diane heads over and speaks to Susan, wanting to know exactly what's going on. Given they're a private hospital, most of their patients are in critical condition and moving them isn't a possibility. A bunch of businessmen in Dallas - including a guy called Michael Arvin - receive emails from Memorial asking to evacuate. While a couple of his coworkers shrug this off, Michael speaks to Steve, his boss, about whether it's possible to get it done. Michael senses that things could get really bad and sets to work trying to get medical services on hand for Memorial..This series has done a fantastic job so far with humanizing this awful disaster and those unaware of Hurricane Katrina and its devastating impact will be in for quite an eye-opening shock with this show, which is both absorbing and incredibly moving. This tension reaches fever pitch in this episode, with the situation seemingly hopeless and everyone inside the hospital forced to cling to those loose shreds of hope - something made all the worst by them losing patients. With no power inside the hospital, it's clear that things are about to take a really bad turn.

I think the story and overall "day an episode" format is working well, but there is an expected jolt to happen at E106 through E108 focusing on the post-activities of the eventual evacuation and what happened in that hospital.

Reading the book of a same name and knowing the countless articles behind this crisis, I do have a benchmark on how to judge this series against the rest of the information known about Memorial/Tenet Healthcare during this time.

The one thing that I notice is different is that it does not appear the series is putting both Memorial/Tenet Healthcare or the Dr. Anna Pou character up against that much scrutiny as the situations unfold, even though they were most at fault of what happened here.

I'm not sure if E106 and beyond will explore this, but I really hope they do not fall for the easy storyline and paint Vera Farminga/Dr. Pou as the eventual protagonist since she is the top bill. She is no hero, nor the absolute antagonist here, as Tenet was beyond grossly negligent more compared to everyone else and paid big in civil court. The Tenet storyline is already a joke as the BizDev guy (or salesperson) being the one protagonist voice at Tenet corporate is inaccurate and untrue. Even a company as screwed up as Tenet has COO's, Legal and Risk that deal with catastrophes back in 2005.

As for the production, Vera and the rest of the cast along with the set production is doing a good job so far, but I'm starting to see the cracks and rationale of why Ryan Murphy abandoned this project with his ACS series even though I think this would have been a better presented series with him at the helm. This is a really complicated story to tell, as Dr. Pou is one of the most complicated characters to write and is still abrasive (i.e. Lawyered up) to this day on her exact role and what actually happened in that flooded hellscape.

I'll tune in for the rest of the episodes for sure, though.