‘Pulse' is an ER drama with a maelstrom of emotions and entanglements

Los Angeles Times

03-04-2025

If the imminent end of Max's 'The Pitt' has left you wondering what you'll do for a drama set in an emergency room, Netflix, taking your temperature, has scheduled its own ER drama 'Pulse.'
Premiering Thursday, it covers some of the same traumatic territory, but it's more of a soap opera, a moderately diverting mix of bubbling relationship froth and coolly handled medical emergencies — the professional business entangled with the (very) personal, its pretty young cast never looking quite as tired as they say they are or ought to be.
Created by Zoe Robyn ('Hawaii Five-0'), the series' showrunner alongside Carlton 'Lost' Cuse, it's set in what we will be reminded is Miami's 'only Level 1 trauma center,' 'the best surgical program in Florida' and 'the best Level 1 trauma center in the state.' Given the location, and the workplace, it's nearly inevitable that a hurricane would be headed their way, as indeed it is, occupying the opening three episodes (out of 10).
At the center of the emotional maelstrom within the meteorological maelstrom is Dr. Danielle 'Danny' Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), a third-year resident. You know she's the central character because she's the one who gets all the flashbacks, rendered in the customary sepia tones, each introduced by a sort of heartbeat motif on the soundtrack. Like her friend Dr. Sam Elijah (Jessie T. Usher), she hopes to become chief resident when chief resident and rich kid with an obnoxious mother Dr. Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell) moves up a notch, but they promise to be cool with each other whoever it is. (No other candidates need apply.)
Complicating this matter is the fact — under wraps, then not — that Danny has reported Xander to HR for sexual harassment, a situation so vaguely, slowly developed, and so contradicted by Xander and what we see in flashbacks, that viewers are within their rights to reserve an opinion. Meanwhile, Xander, though suspended pending an investigation, is brought back to help out during the storm, with Danny appointed interim chief resident by boss and unit founder Dr. Natalie Cruz (Justina Machado), the Miranda Bailey of the piece, much to everyone's confused surprise.
To be sure, Xander and Danny's plotline is not the only one snaking through the series, and it's not even the most interesting — or most fun — as much as it's pushed into the foreground; their unsettled personal business becomes tiring after awhile, diminishing whatever chemistry the actors bring to the screen. (This is not Meredith-McDreamy-level heat.)
Surgical resident Dr. Tom Cole (Jack Bannon), the most ostentatiously good-looking among the series' universally good-looking men, is involved with Cass Himmelstein (Jessica Rothe) — a head nurse and a person who knows what's going on, above and below her station — which does not stop him from flirting with, or flirting back at, EMT worker Nia Washington (Ash Santos).
Danny has issues with her younger sister, second-year resident Dr. Harper Simms (Jessy Yates), who has issues with Danny over Danny's issues with their father. (So many problematic and absent fathers in television drama nowadays.) Serious surgical intern Sophie Chan (Chelsea Muirhead) is initially annoyed by her chirpy shadow, fancy new medical student Camila Perez (Daniela Nieves), but there will be plenty of time for better understanding. Dr. Cruz is worried about her daughter, to not say too much on that subject. Above them all is Nestor Carbonell's wise senior surgeon Dr. Ruben Soriano, the hospital Yoda.
It's not always a good idea to peek behind the curtain, to see how the sausage is made, in the popular formulation.
Even in a hospital, most of our real-world encounters with medical staff will be fleeting, as a doctor or nurse comes into the room with good, bad or no news, and then disappears back down the hall into what, if we are to trust television, is a gossipy dysfunctional family, rife with sexual tension, passive-aggressive volleying, seething resentments, jockeying for power and competitive doctoring — it's a trope of hospital shows (and for all I know, of hospitals) that nothing is juicier than the chance to perform surgery. But if the arguments that take place over an open abdomen on shows like this are at all realistic, a patient should be doubly glad to be unconscious when it happens.
But ultimately they're people who care, and sometimes care too much, and care about one another. 'I'm a doctor, I protect people,' says Harper, not just talking about the patients. 'That's what I'm supposed to do.' Danny spends a lot of time worrying — whether she's good enough, whether she's perceived as good enough.
There's a good deal of mutual analysis happening among these folks. But when a hurricane hits, or a bus goes off a bridge, or a nightclub catches on fire, and the stretchers stream in, everyone gets busy, tossing off medical terminology ('the Pringle maneuver' was new to me) with casual aplomb, and a refreshing lack of explanation, as they set to work on hearts and heartstrings.