About E.M. Effingham
Location: Missouri
Occupation: Author
Bio: E.M. Effingham/Sara Ann Denson authored "Christmas Turtles" which received five stars from the Midwest Book Review last year. Catch her Amazon Author Connect Blog: Confessions of an Author's First Year of Marketing.
Posts: 31
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Fox’s New Amsterdam wound through time to knock the audience off it’s feet.
Fox crowned a new King Hottie on Tuesday night with the airing of New Amsterdam. Actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays John Amsterdam, a four hundred year-old man granted immortality by a Native American woman he saved from attack. Now he must live in perpetuity until he meets his one true love. Only then can he grow old and die just like the rest of us.
Having a four-hundred-year old character to work with, the writers and set designers take us on a fling with time travel. Each episode will include flash backs from past centuries, showing us the toys and talents he’s picked up along the way, like old time photography, carpentry work, and Tango dancing. Yes, please.
I’m telling you, ladies, this four hundred year old contains the chivalry of the 1600’s refined by our good old 1970’s. He has the profound expression of a wise old sage, but with a body that knows its way around the YMCA. He can fence and build a desk, but he empathizes like a girlfriend. This guy raised the bar on the television qualifications of Hotness in just one episode. Of all the men on TV right now, only Dr. Oz comes close.
John Amsterdam is a detective with four hundred years of knowledge and relationships under his belt. When he says he knows which artist painted with a signature paint, you believe he’s correct because he’s had time to learn these things. With the set-up of his age, the breadth of his knowledge is more believable than the knowledge displayed by the prodigy detective of Law & Order: Criminal Intent..
The writers, cameramen, and director have built an intricate plot full of surprise connections and revelations. The pace of the show, the cuts back and forth, and the cinematic tricks out-do most major movies currently in theaters. The confrontation with the elderly artist from his past was a carefully crafted juxtaposition. You know she’s not crazy, but everyone else around her thinks she’s babbling nonsense.
The time-warp progression of New York from native village to monstrously impersonal steel brilliantly and symbolically describes the tragedy of our country without a word. Of course, I interpret this art from the Native American standpoint while others might have viewed the same scene as the triumph of Manifest Destiny and American ingenuity. Regardless, the freedom of interpretation is left to the viewer.
Even the musical score was worth complimenting. It added that suave feel of an Oscar winning movie. Excellently done.
New Amsterdam’s clever, multi-layered texture will be a joy to watch every week. I highly suggest you log on-line and watch the first episode before Thursday night’s new episode. My only criticism is that, if I were four hundred years old, I certainly wouldn’t spend all four hundred years in New York. Maybe he hasn’t though. Maybe John Amsterdam picked up his foreign languages living in other cities around the world, places like Copenhagen, Madrid, or the real Amsterdam, interesting places. I can’t wait to find out.
