Chez Chesler

I'm watching the new Fox show New Amsterdam, the one whose premise bears an entirely accidental resemblance to Pete Hamill's Forever, about an immortal guy living in Manhattan (hmm -- I wonder what kind of rent control he's got on his apartment!)

Besides the hundreds of girlfriends in the 400 years he's been alive, he's had so many identical dogs that he calls them by number.  (His current dog is "36".)

I don't know where the show is going.  Last night it seemed to go in a Quantum Leap direction -- theorizing that one can flashback within their own lifetime, John Anderson remembers a time with parallels to the present when he failed to set right what once went wrong, so he'll do the right thing now.  It's not clear how many interesting places he's been -- is it Zelig or Forrest Gump or Mr. Peabody and the Wayback Machine?  (Unlike Hamill's protagonist, he can leave Manhattan, and can even leave the five boroughs.)  Anyway, we learned that during the Civil War he was a medic in the Washington, DC area.

Which means we may well finally have a show that's about Abraham Lincoln's Doctor's Dog!

Labels: New Amsterdam, TV