Julie HindsDetroit Free Press
In “Five Days at Memorial,” a young doctor (Cornelius Smith Jr.) talks to investigators about the hellish ordeal that took placeinside a New Orleans hospital in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina. “It doesn’t take much for everything to break down,” he says. “And what happened next, we couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.”
Once you start, you won't be able to stop watching this eight-part limited series from Apple TV+, which premieres Friday with the first three episodes. Itis the most important streaming experience of the year so far — and the most difficult to endure.
Like 2019’s “Chernobyl” from HBO and 2021’s “Dopesick" from Hulu,it hasthe urgency of a hard-hitting documentary andthe emotional pull of a tragic novel thatwon't end well, yet is impossible to putdown.By the time you reach the fifth episode, you’ll wonder how Oscar-winning screenwriter John Ridley and Carlton Cuse of "Lost" fame, who developed the project,had the courage to recountscenes so heartbreaking without softening or sentimentalizing them.
Adapted from the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalistSheri Fink, "Five Days at Memorial" focuseson what happened before, during and after 45 bodies were discovered inside the hospital,which waited days for a full evacuation from the devastating flooding that resulted when the city'slevees broke.
Questions pile up as Memorial staffers, unprepared for what isto come, keep working valiantly to save gravely ill patients as they await a government or corporate effort to rescue them — and as fear and despair envelop them when, hour after hour, only sporadic help arrives.
Why doesthe hospital have no evacuation plan for flooding? Why isthe helicopter pad in such bad shape and only reachable by several flights of metal stairs?Why is there no coordination between the hospital and aseparate long-term care facility located inside the hospital?
And then there arethe biggest questions posed by the docudrama:How canthings spiral out of control so quickly at a place that ispart of a corporate health care system? What leadsto a subsequent inquiry that has forensic experts concluding at least someof those deaths were caused by lethal injections of drugs? And who, if anyone, should pay for such a devastating loss of life?
The first five episodes — each devoted to the events of a single day —are a study in how people behave in intolerable situations.There are no easy villains here,just a group of human beings facing the sort of pressurethat results inboth heroic actions and haunting decisions.
The final three episodes follow the investigation into why so many lives were lost. Like the rest of this fact-based narrative, theconclusions aren'ttidy or satisfying. Kudos again to Ridley and Cuse for not pulling their punches on the complexity and dysfunctionat the core of this disastrous event.
The cast is superb all around, from Smith (an alum of Detroit's Cass Tech High School) as idealistic young doctor Bryant King, who is shocked by attempts to limit the care and shelter being provided,to Adepero Oduye as dedicated ICU nurse manager Karen WynntoCherry Jones as dogged nursing director Susan Mulderick, the hospital's emergency response leader.
Mulderick soon realizes that no one above her— either from a government agency or the hospital’s corporate office— will be taking charge and giving exact instructions.In a scene where a state health official insists their makeshift evacuation strategymustswitch from getting the sickest patients out first to concentratingon themost able-bodied, black armbands are designatedfor those least likely to survive. Says afrustrated Mulderick:“So that’s how we’re going to decide who lives and who dies, by colored armbands?”
More: GM seeks Green Bond loan to fund past and future zero emission projects
Vera Farmiga conveys both thededication and thecreeping sense of being overcome by the horrible conditions while portrayingher character, Dr. Anna Pou, who later becomesthekey figure in the investigation of the deaths. As the assumption grows that some patients will be left behind ina fullevacuation (either because they're too ill or too challenging to move),the series shows Pou concluding there is nothing left to do beyondmakingthem comfortable. Eventually, as later episodes detail, a special grand jury is formed to weigh what'scompassionate care and what's criminal.
Like the fog of war, a cloudof inaccurate information sweeps throughMemorial. One sequence illustrates the spread ofscary rumors about an attack on a staffer that didn't happen.There also are overly optimistic assessments of the sort that managers make to preserve calm. One of the more chilling moments is when Mulderick tells Pou that “corporate is doing everything they can," not realizing just how inaccurate those words are.
The dividing line is sharp between the old face of health care — as embodied by kindly, aging Dr. Horace Baltz, who's played byRobert Pine (former “CHiPs” co-star and father of actor Chris Pine)—andthe new financial realities. In one scene, anemployee ofthe health care company that owns Memorial has lunch at a golf club with a potential investor who asks obliviously if events like Katrina are good for business. For anyone who has evergone up against a hospital or health insurance company with even a minor problem, the indifference seems too close to home.
The series also uses a subplot about a son (JD Evermore)searching for a way to reach his elderly mother in the long-term care facility to skewer the slowness of government bureaucracy. When he reaches a small army of first responders and private boat owners who've gathered to begin rescue attempts, he is thwarted by the fact that theymustwaitfor an official go-ahead before entering flooded zones.
Ultimately, "Five Days at Memorial" exposes not just the social and racial inequalities that plagued the relief efforts tied to Katrina,but the brutalfact that it is likely a prediction ofour future. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us how hard it is to coordinate a mass response to a health crisis — and how even high death tolls aren't enough to convince some people to make precautions a priority.
As temperatures soar andfloods, fires, droughtsand famines grow increasingly fierce with climate change,the world could soon bein a state of global triage. By then, it will be toolate for having debates on medical ethics and taking stepstoward catastrophe preparedness.Who willbe saved once crisis becomes the weather norm? Willsurvivalbe determined byhealth, wealth, the color of a person’s skin orthe luck of being born in a first-world nation instead of a third-world one?
To their storytelling credit,Ridley and Cuse offer no easy answersfor how theunthinkable occurred at Memorial — or for what may come next. But they'vecreated somethingthat points to the possibility of learning frommistakes.
"These poor folks, they had no idea what was happening to them. They had no way of defending themselves," says the lead investigator (Michael Gaston) into the 45 deaths. "Five Days at Memorial" shows that having empathy isn't enough to stop the worst from happening. But refusing togive up or turn a blind eye to past errors might be.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
'Five Days At Memorial'
The first three episodes began streaming Aug. 12 on Apple TV+. New episodes will arriveevery Friday through Sept. 16
Rated TV-MA
