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Soldier’s Heart delivers an outstanding performance by Orlando Jones as it jumps right in to powerful questions Americans have been asking for centuries.

First of all, I must say that I missed the original air-date for this episode because Fox has been airing New Amsterdam on so many different days.  Instead, I caught it online and had to watch it via their video streaming, which made the episode appear like an old Kung Fu movie, with lips not matching voice.  I still enjoyed the episode but I’m taking off a half point for poor website streaming.

This episode, directed by Bobby Roth and written by Eric Overmyer, dove right into the deep end, begging the question, “Do our traumatic memories cause us to forget or are traumas impossible to forget?” The answer laid the premise for one of the overlying themes of this show, “Can we move past our past and embrace our future?”

Roth transcended the political topic of war, by cutting back and forth between two war times, the current Iraqi war and the Civil War.  The show instead dealt with the way war changes those it touches.  In so doing, the director shaped the way we are beginning to see this show.  This is not just about a man trying to fall in love.  It is the story of a man changing into someone better, gaining closure over his own extended traumas in order to grow old.  Isn’t that what we all need to grow old gracefully: closure over our traumatic pasts?  In many ways, writer Eric Overmyer uses John Amsterdam as a metaphor for our country: trying to move past our traumatic history and into a more stable future.

Overmyer and Roth also blend the past and present seamlessly with the cuts back and forth. Nice touches like the perfect period dialect and the Civil War desk which hides the incriminating truth propels this episode into television greatness.  Does war always hide the truth or is truth hiding in war?

But I’m judging this show from the philosophical, literary mind.

For those of you who don’t like to dig deep, you could watch this show and enjoy it for other reasons.  Those who are more action minded will like the gruesome death scenes that start off each episode or the frequent foot chases and Amsterdam’s death wish that puts everyone around him in danger.  Those who only care about the love story will enjoy the chemistry between John Amsterdam and Sara Dillane as well as Amsterdam and Eva Marquez.  Okay, I should say between John Amsterdam and everyone he meets.  This is a flirt of the magnitude we haven’t seen on a television cop show in a long time.

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