A deadly hurricane bears down on a Miami emergency room in new Netflix medical drama Pulse
It’s hardly a secret that the medical drama has been a television staple for decades. Daytime soap General Hospital has aired on ABC for over 60 years, ER won a Peabody Award during its 15-season-long run and Grey’s Anatomy continues to be a long-running modern classic. Even some sillier iterations of the hospital series such as Emergency! and Scrubs are still in daily syndication. Traditional broadcast networks have produced so many medical drama hits over the decades that it only makes sense for streamers to get in on the tried-and-true TV formula.
Netflix’s first English-language medical drama, Pulse, is set in the fictional Maguire Medical Center, focusing on third-year medical resident Dr. Danielle “Danny” Simms, portrayed by The Fall of the House of Usher actress Willa Fitzgerald, as she navigates a sudden promotion to chief resident in the hospital’s emergency department.
Celebrations are in order for Danny’s new set of responsibilities. However, the situation is complicated on arrival as she is replacing a very well-liked Dr. Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell, The Flight Attendant) after his unexpected suspension. It would be one thing if Danny simply had big shoes to fill as senior resident, but beyond the workplace drama, she and Phillips have been trying to keep their rocky romantic relationship together under the radar.
“We always endeavoured to make Danny and Phillips’ relationship a real, authentic look at a workplace romance,” series co-creator Zoe Robyn said in an interview with Tudum. “We really wanted to play in the grey area of that situation. Pulse shows the edges and pitfalls of their relationship — but also all the joyous moments of working a high-pressure job like this.”
Storms are brewing in the emergency room itself, but it’s nothing compared to the hurricane making its way to Miami, causing accidents and injuries that flood the department while the literal floods outside force the hospital to go into lockdown.
Things happen incredibly quickly in emergency medicine, and as the city weathers a natural disaster, Maguire needs all hands on deck, despite its recent staff shakeups. Phillips stays on during the emergency while Danny tries to settle into her new role, leaving the other resident doctors to speculate why Phillips was suspended in the first place.
Portraying the rest of the resident doctors in Pulse are Jack Bannon (Endeavour) as second-year surgical resident Tom Cole; Jessie T. Usher (The Boys) as third-year emergency medicine resident Sam Elijah; Chelsea Muirhead (Warrior) as surgical intern Sophie Chen; Daniela Nieves (Vampire Academy) as third-year medical student Camila Perez; and Jessy Yates (Me) as second-year emergency medicine resident Harper.
Justina Machado (One Day at a Time) stars as Dr. Natalie Cruz, chair of surgery and emergency medicine at Maguire. Néstor Carbonell (The Morning Show) is Dr. Ruben Soriano, a senior surgeon dedicated to excellence — both in his work and from his residents.
And, an emergency medicine department is nothing without its nursing staff. Starring as ER nurses Gabriel Moreno and Cass Himmelstein are Santiago Segura (Walker: Independence) and Jessica Rothe (Happy Death Day), while Arturo Del Puerto (For All Mankind) is charge nurse Luis Dominguez.
Directors Sarah Boyd (Upload), Kate Dennis (Run), SJ Main Munoz (Manifest) and Wendey Stanzler (Five Days at Memorial) each directed two episodes of Pulse, with co-showrunner and executive producer Carlton Cuse (Lost) directing the penultimate and finale episodes of the debut season.
“We just wanted the show to be fun and entertaining — something that you could really enjoy after you come home from a long day,” Cuse told Tudum. “We really want the audience to fall in love with the characters as much as we love the characters.”
After crafting complicated, human characters as the healers of Maguire, Robyn wanted Pulse to stir up “hope and optimism” in viewers of the series, sharing, “You don’t really want to be in the hospital. But if you were in the hospital, this is the one you would want to be in.” Robyn continued, “You want to be in the care of these people.”
Pulse premieres Thursday, April 3 on Netflix