‘New Amsterdam’ Recap: Season 5 Premiere, Episode 1 – Helen’s Letter

Warning: The following contains Tuesday’s spoilers New Amsterdam Premiere. Proceed at your own risk!

New Amsterdam‘s Max didn’t get exactly the closure he was looking for from his ex-fiancé Helen in Tuesday’s fifth and final season premiere.

The episode began with a montage spanning the months following their breakup, during which Max celebrated Luna’s birthday and his friends comforted him. Meanwhile, former cast member Freema Agyeman’s voice could be heard over the sequence reading a letter Helen had written to Max.

“What I did was unforgivable, for you, for our friends, for sweet Luna. It was never my intention, none of this is my intention,” the note said. “Everything I ever said to you was true, everything we had was real. But that’s also what kept me in London, what kept me from marrying you. I wish I knew what it was. I wish I could tear it out of me, erase it so I could be with you because you deserve all the happiness in the world. I wish I had an explanation to ease your pain, but none came.”

Following that letter further will be “a slow process” for Max, executive producer Peter Horton says in the video above. “It does not work so fast”

In the premiere, Max can only remember the good times with Helen. But once he started recalling all the red flag moments in their relationship, “I think finally he’s able to answer those questions for himself, allows him not to obsess over it, allows him.” to move on,” says showrunner David Schulner. “It’s not something we’re going to play for the entire Max season [being] like ‘why did she leave me?’”

For the heartbroken doctor, “It’s not entirely clear why she left that letter, and I think we might get into that later,” adds star Ryan Eggold. “But I think [he’s] to realize that he’s kind of looking at it through rose-colored glasses, that he’s focused on those moments that were perfect and that everything was always great, and not really aware of any problems that existed or their desire to somehow withdraw or something like that. I think he wanted it to work so badly that he was a bit blind to it. I think waking up brings him very much into the present, and I think it allows him to move forward again instead of being stuck.

While even Helen can’t explain in her letter why she couldn’t pull off the wedding, the signs were there all along that something was amiss between “Sharpwin,” as attested by the countless flashbacks in the episode that go all the way back for the premiere of the last season. So was it just coincidence that the producers had these scenes in their pockets?

“We didn’t even know we were going to have Freema for Season 4. Freema was thinking of going after Season 3. So Season 4 was a gift for us,” Schulner previously told TVLine, adding now that “we planted those moments all over Season 4 so we had them as an explanation. The signposts were there if you were watching.”

Eagle-eyed viewers may also have noticed that all of Max’s friends who supported him in his time of need, especially he and Dr. Elizabeth Wilder (played by Sandra Mae Frank) shared a few looks that could be interpreted as having chemistry.

“Oh no. There’s nothing there,” Horton says (sarcastically?) with a smile.

Eggold, who directed the season opener, says, “We pushed her and that look [at the end of the episode], and I couldn’t ‘Cut!’ because she was so amazing and alive and connected in it and it was adorable to watch her in that moment. I think I rolled on it for about 10 minutes. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, we need it for two seconds, right.'”

“So speaking of Sandra as Ryan, I can say that she is an absolute delight to work with and she is so talented and so smart, she brings great things to the stage and is so much fun,” continues Eggold gone. “In terms of Max and Wilder, Wilder was even there as a friend for Max, I think it was Wilder’s first episode, she gave him advice about Sharpe and said ‘don’t let her go’ and stuff. I think there was a cool connection with them from the start.”

New Amsterdam Fans, press PLAY above to hear more from the trio on Agyeman’s return, then share your thoughts in the comments!