‘Pulse’ review: Netflix attempts its own version of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’
“Grey’s Anatomy” was the second most-streamed show of 2024. New episodes premiere on ABC and, 21 seasons in, the network shows no signs of stopping. It’s safe to assume that will extend the show’s popularity on streaming as well. So it makes sense that Netflix would want to capitalize on that audience with its own 10-episode original series called “Pulse,” a hospital drama so similar to “Grey’s,” the young medical resident at its center even looks a little like Meredith Grey. The show comes from Zoe Robyn, who has logged time as a writer on “Hawaii Five-0” and “The Equalizer,” and she puts those weekly network TV skills to work here.
It doesn’t take a programming genius to wonder why it took so long for streamers to not only license these kinds of shows, but to create a few of their own. Max was first out of the gate with “The Pitt,” which is suffused with unvarnished realism and so grippingly done, woe to the hospital show premiering in its wake. And in this case, there are too many similarities to overlook. Both, for example, take place over a very long shift in the emergency room.
“Pulse” abandons this construct after the first five episodes and it’s a good thing, because the show isn’t up to narrative challenges and limitations imposed by the premise, and improves somewhat when it settles into a more traditional episodic rhythm. Overall, the series is not as bad as I anticipated. And chances are that the average Netflix viewer currently plowing through two decades worth of “Gray’s Anatomy” will give it a try and think: Sure, why not?
The series begins with a scandal: The ER’s chief resident, one Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell), has been suspended after a sexual harassment complaint is filed against him. He’s replaced by Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), who is also the person who filed the complaint. That has everyone whispering.
What the ER staff doesn’t know? Danny and Xander have a messy romantic history that would make any HR department cringe. Their relationship was consensual but secret. Also, he pursued and seduced her, and then was apparently uninterested in how this affair between boss and subordinate might affect her career if and when the truth came out. If that’s not a soapy storyline designed to appeal to “Grey’s Anatomy” viewers, I don’t know what is.
It’s a problem, however, that Danny and Xander have no chemistry. As written, the roles lack the kind of magnetism that would justify putting these two at the show’s center. Their drama — seen in multiple flashbacks, as well as the tension that exists in the present day — is deeply uninteresting.
A quick note about flashbacks. Though always a tool used by screenwriters, they’ve become so pervasive in television that I would be happy to never see a flashback again because rarely do they complicate what we already know about the characters. Quit it already!
What “Pulse” does have going for it is an ensemble that’s just compelling enough to compensate for the Danny-Xander dead zones. Justina Machado and Néstor Carbonell play department heads, and as the two established actors here, they give the show a confidence it’s otherwise lacking.
Like “The Pitt,” the show is primarily filled with new faces. Danny’s younger sister (Jessy Yates) is a doctor in the ER too, which makes for occasionally absorbing moments as the siblings navigate a shared professional setting. She’s a wheelchair user (as is Yates in real life) and it’s a breath of fresh air; rarely are disabled characters featured prominently on TV. Her disability isn’t her primary story but the show doesn’t shy away from the microaggressions she occasionally weathers from patients either.
There’s also the cocky senior resident played by Jack Bannon, the talented junior resident he constantly berates played by Chelsea Muirhead, and the wide-eyed, immaculately put together medical student played by Daniela Nieves. Danny’s best friend is another resident played by Jessie T. Usher and he is the awkward outlier of the cast, stuck doing nothing because the show has no idea what to do with him. And in a role that deserves more screen time, the ER’s no-nonsense charge nurse who keeps all the plates spinning is played by Arturo Del Puerto.
The cases are appropriately unusual. An EMT is impaled. A woman has a baby on the ER’s bathroom floor. They do procedures they’re explicitly advised not to, but it all works out in the end. Sorry if I rolled my eyes.
The Miami setting means many of the characters are bilingual in English and Spanish. That feels right. The persistent and cloying underscoring does not; the music exists to gin up emotions that aren’t earned. There’s a weird, unexplained detail where the doctors sometimes wear white lab coats over their scrubs, then take them off to do procedures, and then put them back on. Is this a thing that really happens in ERs? I have no idea, but it looks ridiculous. Ditch the lab coats already! I suspect Xander — and Woodell’s performance — are meant to be McDreamy-esque rather than repellent. The latter wins out, but even that isn’t enough to liven up the show
Especially in the season’s first half, “Pulse” feels bland despite the chaos that’s unfolding. Never have I seen a show try this hard to generate drama and fail so spectacularly. No one mentions money or medical insurance — not the doctors or the patients — until Episode 8, and even then it’s treated as a footnote. The show’s not just dull. It’s visually dull. If “The Pitt” is caffeinated competence porn, “Pulse” is a carbonated drink gone flat.
But when it remembers that it’s supposed to emulate the kind of weekly medical dramas that still keep old school TV afloat — and quits with the incessant flashbacks — it’s downright watchable.
“Pulse” — 2 stars (out of 4)
Where to watch: Netflix
Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.