Five Days at Memorial: A Lethal Shelter From The Storm
By Liam Lacey
Rating: B
The new eight-part Apple TV+ series Five Days at Memorial focuses on one grisly episode in the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, when 45 corpses were found in the evacuated New Orleans Memorial Medical Centre in the days after the storm.
Testimony from health care workers and evidence from autopsies indicated that some patients at the hospital had been given lethal injections. Subsequently, a well-regarded doctor, Anna Pou, and two nurses were charged with second-degree murder. A grand jury, in a decision consistent with widespread public sentiments, did not indict them.
While well-publicized at the time, the episode may have been largely forgotten until it was the subject of a 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning article by Sheri Fink in New York Times magazine, later expanded into a 2013 book.
Fink chronicled how some health care workers, marooned with critically ill patients, without power or running water in 100-plus degree heat, made some appalling decisions. Fink saw the failure at the hospital as a microcosm of the large failure of the response to Katrina, of “compromised physical infrastructure, compromised operating systems and compromised individuals.”
Producer Ryan Murphy originally intended to adapt Fink’s book as part of his American Crime Story series, but the rights eventually came to the high-power duo of John Ridley — Academy Award–winning writer of 12 Years a Slave and creator of the ABC anthology series American Crime — and Carlton Cuse (ABC series Lost).
Though it has some strong points, including a strong cast and first-rate production values, the series fails to live up to its potential. It’s hobbled by generic tropes (“I don’t have a very good feeling about any of this,” someone warns) and a lopsided structure that softens its impact.
Episodes one to five are essentially a prolonged disaster movie, following the five days of the storm. After the initial storm has done its damage and moved on, the real ordeal begins with the breaking of the levee. The hospital’s ground floor is flooded, knocking out power and running water.
The exhausted staff struggle to move patients down seven flights of stairs in the dark, pumping oxygen into lungs by hand, and desperately trying to track down anyone from the private company that owns the long-term facility for help. Archival news reel footage and CG recreations of the storm and flooding remind us of the chaos outside.
Vera Farmiga stars Dr. Pou, a devout Christian and dedicated cancer surgeon, working voluntarily at the hospital during the disaster, and with a missionary aim for the “care and comfort” of patients. The rest of the cast, playing real-life characters, include veteran Broadway star Cherry Jones as beleaguered hospital administrator and Robert Pine as a senior doctor on staff.
Dr. Bryant King (Cornelius Smith Jr.) — the only Black doctor in the hospital and keenly aware of racial disparities in patient care — has a role that grows important as the series progresses and shifts from external disaster to psychological horror. King starts hearing disturbing mutterings about “helping” patients who can’t be evacuated. He defies an order to “suspend care” to patients to save resources.
Representing the patients are Emmett Everett (Damon Standifer), a 380-pound paraplegic who is fully alert and afraid of being abandoned, and Angela McManus (Raven Dauda) a young woman desperate to stay with her ailing mother.
The second part of the series (episodes six to eight), which takes place in the months after Katrina, is almost a stand-alone story, a buddy movie between good ol’ boy prosecutor, Butch Shafer (Michael Gaston) and his gung-ho special agent, Virginia Rider (Molly Hager) who bond in a father-daughter way while interviewing witnesses, reconstructing events, and challenging Louisiana’s entrenched medical-legal establishment.
In the aftermath of the investigation, when the well-connected and articulate Dr. Pou defends herself less than candidly, sympathy for her erodes but the series has already spent a great deal of time focusing on the mitigating circumstances of her actions. I assume that most doctors, even in dire circumstances, wouldn’t opt for homicide.
Five Days at Memorial. Developed by John Ridley and Carlton Cuse. Starring Vera Farmiga, Cherry Jones, Cornelius Smith Jr., Robert Pine, and Damon Standifer. The first three episodes now available; one new episode available each week until Sept. 16.