Five Days At Memorial: Limited Series
Based on: 2013 book of the same name by journalist Sheri Fink
Developed, written, and directed by Executive Producers John Ridley & Carlton Cuse
This series presents a dramatization of an incredibly sensitive, horrific, and controversial real life event. In such a context, I think the most important things an adaption (or representation) can do is present impartiality.
Five Days at Memorial excels at that.
So many documentaries or fictionalizations slant one way or try to present a message to the viewer about who's right and why they're right. Memorial avoids that very well. In the case of disaster events and response, placing blame or emphasizing bias in decisions is easy. But the show does a great job at making Dr. Pou very sympathetic-- and the case against her very strong, as well.
Memorial is about a New Orleans hospital and the horrific conditions it endured during and in the many days after Hurricane Katrina. The hospital was essentially abandoned by most governmental authorities and, with the flooding, lost power and all of its resources. The nurses and doctors were left to care for patients in horrifically deteriorating conditions as they waited for evacuation to become available.
Toward the end, under threat of forced evacuation with minimal resources and an overwhelming number of patients, decisions were made to euthanize immobile patients to reduce the number of patients requiring evacuation and better utilize available resources. Based on what the show depicted, the alternative would have been to abandon over a dozen patients at the hospital to slowly die of starvation and heat exhaustion. In that sense, I sympathize with Dr. Pou and her coworker's decision. However, I realize that no one (outside of those actually present) can really know what happened, and I simply don't feel fit to render any real judgement on their actions.
The show used the first five of its eight-episode series to depict the five days personnel spent at the hospital before the full-scale evacuation took place. The last three episodes were dedicated to the aftermath; the year-and-some after Katrina in which authorities investigated Dr. Pou and her response to the allegations. I found this to be a very effective method of providing the most possible sympathetic view of Dr. Pou and show in the best detail all the plights at the hospital. Then, by shifting most focus to the investigators in the last three episodes, we got to see the full harm of her actions and really appreciate the case against her.
Even the final scene of the series is impressively nuanced. Dr. Pou gives a compelling speech on her account of the events before a banquet audience of coworkers. Moments later, as she sits on her own, she's joined by another doctor who was at the hospital with her. He privately points out two or three crucial flaws in her recollection and then walks away, leaving her looking perplexed and anguished. The camera zooms out and credits roll.
I also want to take a moment to praise the cast. Farmiga was expectedly fantastic and the entire rest of the cast did a great job portraying the despair, anguish, and dedication every medical staff had throughout the experience. I feel like I was really educated and tremendously entertained by the entire series. The first three episodes dropped on Apple+ at once and I binged them all upon their midnight premiere--very unusual for me. Then I spent the next day texting my friends about the events, including one friend of mine who had been nearby during Katrina to get his thoughts.
I wish this wasn't a one-off depiction of a real life event because I want a season 2! Ha!
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