Television Five Days at Memorial - Apple TV+

[Jwheel86]

 

Final episode is this week if you're looking for a show to question humanity. 

[CayceG]

This looks incredibly compelling. I just read a bunch of the wiki articles on this and only somewhat remember it when it happened. 

 

Were Pou and her nurses ever confirmed to have killed the patients intentionally? I know there's a lot of circumstantial evidence and no one was never convicted. But how does it look?

[TheLeon]

I’m at a point right now where I would be far more interested if this was completely fictional. Not sure I’m in the mood for something so bleak that’s based in reality. 

[Jwheel86]

1 hour ago, CayceG said:

Were Pou and her nurses ever confirmed to have killed the patients intentionally? I know there's a lot of circumstantial evidence and no one was never convicted. But how does it look?

 

Based on the show, it looks pretty bad, but also circumstance introduces a lot of gray in terms of if her actions were murder. Was murder committed? Absolutely, who's responsible ultimately is difficult to tell (staff vs the lack of a plan to evacuate)

[Moa]

I wasn't aware of this. The actual event seems incredibly interesting but I doubt a drama series can do the history justice (see the fantastic but wildly inaccurate show Chernobyl). I do think I know what I'll be reading next though.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

I haven’t heard of this. May finally get me to use my Apple sub outside of the occasional baseball game. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Watched the first episode just now. This is really good stuff. I'm nowhere near a hurricane zone, but I can feel that kind of palpable fear a hospital worker would have in that situation. Terror for the patients and yourself.

[Guest]

Watched this the last few days. What a horrific situation. Even after watching and reading quite a bit, I find myself completely undecided on the central question of the ethics of administering the drugs. I think the show did a particularly good job of forcing the difficulty of landing somewhere on it by juxtaposing the clearly suffering people like Mrs. McManus and the simply difficult case of Mr. Everett.

[Moa]

3 hours ago, sblfilms said:

Watched this the last few days. What a horrific situation. Even after watching and reading quite a bit, I find myself completely undecided on the central question of the ethics of administering the drugs. I think the show did a particularly good job of forcing the difficulty of landing somewhere on it by juxtaposing the clearly suffering people like Mrs. McManus and the simply difficult case of Mr. Everett.

 

I read the book and it seems crystal clear that what the staff at memorial did was both criminal and unethical but the people who should really be held accountable are those who made and reinforced the decision to de-prioritize evacuation of the critically ill (many of whom weren't even critically ill but just had a DNR status, which means next to nothing) more-so than the actual trigger men. The whole thing is a stain on the medical field and left me absolutely fuming. At several times while reading the book I thought about just putting it down because of how angry it made me.

 

I put the whole thing up there with the Milgram experiment, the Stanford Prison Experiment, and dare I say the Holocaust where previously normal people through diffusion of responsibility did horrible things because they were told that someone else had made the decision. There was no insurmountable obstacle to evacuating those patients but the decision was made early to de-prioritize their evacuation and everyone involved either failed to advocate for them or in some instances silenced those who tried. It was a terrible situation, but before things even began to get dire they had already started the process that led to murdering those patients.

[Guest]

6 minutes ago, Moa said:

 

I read the book and it seems crystal clear that what the staff at memorial did was both criminal and unethical but the people who should really be held accountable are those who made and reinforced the decision to de-prioritize evacuation of the critically ill (many of whom weren't even critically ill but just had a DNR status, which means next to nothing) more-so than the actual trigger men. The whole thing is a stain on the medical field and left me absolutely fuming. At several times while reading the book I thought about just putting it down because of how angry it made me.

I may need to give the book a read. Thanks for your thoughts 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

It’s an excellent book. I agree with @Moa. 
 

I actually read the book as I was watching the show, essentially. The show follows really closely. 

[TwinIon]

I haven’t done any outside reading, but I just finished the series. I agree that it’s very well made, but by the end of it I couldn’t help but feel that the show makes a clear case for homicide. Crimes committed under duress, under the worst possible circumstances, and with the intent to limit suffering, but crimes none the less.

 

 

 

For myself, the value in the show wasn’t in litigating the ethical issues surrounding the dead at Memorial, but in clarifying the horrors of Katrina. At the time I was in college and not really reading the news, but my recollection of Katrina was that of an escalating disaster. A hurricane that devastated an area, followed by an intensifying humanitarian crisis. So forgive my lacking nuance on the issue, but the timeline the show depicts really clarified why Katrina was such a disaster. The lag time between the end of the hurricane, the levies breaking, and the resulting flooding isn’t something I could have laid out.

 

I also think the show did an excellent job in depicting just how unprepared and understated the response was. My instinct while watching was to go into my own emergency response mode. Like watching idiots in a horror film, I wanted to yell “get out of the building”, but the show does a pretty good job of reminding the viewer that, especially at the onset, these people didn’t understand the gravity of their situation. They didn’t understand. They were not prepared. In the particular case of the hospital in the show, some of that was institutional, some of it was individual, but so much of was governmental.

 

If there’s any reason to doubt the way the response is depicted in the film, please let me know, but I feel like the show paints a very effective picture of why Katrina was as devastating as it was. It doesn’t get into the details of levies or anything, but the complete lack of response and planning feels like it fills in a few gaps for me.