Episode 6 of Five Days At Memorial begins with Dr Horace in the hot-seat, ominously declaring that decisions were made after those 5 days that never should have been made. This spine-chilling opening paves way for the dissonance and tone-deaf response from George Bush to the situation happening in New Orleans. A series of montaged news footage is stitched together over his speech - beautifully edited I may add - before whisking us off to Atlanta, 13 days after Katrina. Butcher is called over to Baton Rouge to see the Attorney General. He wants to look into what happened in Memorial Hospital. With 45 dead patients inside, it's flashed up as a red flag and the authorities are intent on investigating this further. And joining him for this is Virginia Rider who works in the fraud department. This week's episode changes tact slightly and instead of the pressure cooker situation inside the hospital, we're now looking at things from the outside, looking in. Most of the earlier nail-biting tense has now gone and instead, we're onto the investigative side of things. There's nothing wrong with that of course, we've seen recently shows like Dopesick manage this really well, but we'll have to wait and see if that keeps up. As for Five Days at Memorial, the attention is predominantly focused on whether or not Anna Pou actually murdered these patients by injecting them. It's a tough question, and officially wades into murky morally grey waters, which this show has handled pretty well so far. It's clear that things are going to heat up going forward and I'd imagine we'll be gearing up for a proverbial storm when this whole ordeal comes to a head. Will Anna be found guilty of all this? How will the other doctors and nurses react? Receiving the run-around from those in charge of Memorial, along with news from LifeCare about morphine being injected, the pair realize they need to get hold of these LifeCare records - and Anna to get to the bottom of this. With Memorial not opening any time soon, Anna falls on her feet and is offered another position at a hospital in Tennessee. She doesn't even think about it, wanting to jump straight back into work again. She gladly accepts. Will this investigation derail that though? In stark contrast, Susan is tasked with phoning the victims alongside Helen and several other nurses, They all go by a script to give this awful news. Speaking of script, we cut to Anna Pou giving an interview on TV about the patients and their deaths, which feels like a big script.
2 Reviews
John Ridley put the screws to Anna Pou in this episode
michiganave_p2 September 2022
Warning: Spoilers
I was relieved there wasn't a continuation of the patient suffering to open up E106, as instead they took the investigation approach of reliving the scenes and introduce new evidence when the state investigators kicked off the investigation at Memorial.
You see a completely disorganized Tennant healthcare trying to dodge any kind of responsibility, including laying off most of their staff and retaining just a few employees to do the dirty work of giving vague death notifications to the 45 families.
Tennant didn't look good in this episode either, which is deserved as I feel they require the majority of the blame (as they paid dearly via civil litigation later), Really the only critique of the episode I have is the fact the timelines are somewhat unknown, even though Vera Farminga stated in the episode recap it was a year later in time despite the photography shows images from 1-2 months maximum after the hurricane.
Only problem is the Pou investigation started a few months after the hurricane, and eventually charged nine months later, so everything seems to be a year or less in reality.
Moving on, I think for the next episodes, you'll need to watch these two entities closely:
Dr. Pou
Ultimately, I did not expect Ridley and Fink to go this hard on Anna Pou at the end of the episode, clearly having the other staff say they saw murder take place at the hospital, but then again, this is probably what led to Dr. Pou being charged criminally in the first place which will be in the next episode.
You really see in the episode where Dr. Pou starts to cover her rear end, which is going to be a theme all the way up to present day, where it seems she goes from caregiver to careless, let alone unchecked by Tennant management, and starts to make decisions in a vacuum on a floor where she should not be practicing medicine on (Lifecare).
I was sort of surprised the corporate entities of Tennant and LifeCare didn't try to scapegoat Dr. Pou, which they tried to do via Fink's writings, but you can tell in this episode there was mass disagreement among the hospital staff in the meaning of "make the patients comfortable". Still, the doctor - healthcare provider relationship wasn't covered all that much here, which was a little disappointing. It's like Tennant laid everyone off from the hospital, then didn't even bother to give them legal representation.
You can also see why Dr. Pou had to settle a few civil suits for negligence in the end, and began her crusade with the State of Louisiana to push for legislation where acts like these are legal in the state, or basically solidifying the fact she is constantly covering her rear end, as Vera's character clearly stated in this episode about no one losing their license. She wasn't pushing for more disaster preparedness regulation, or holding Tennant her former employer accountable, but instead protecting herself and other medical staff.
This is sort of why I don't buy her "enduring care" narrative for the patients, because in the end, she's been working ever since Katrina pushing for laws that protect her, and not patients or their rights. It's been CYA'ing all the way.
Last, after watching this episode, remember Dr. Pou is currently a licensed MD practicing medicine in Louisiana despite all these facts and testimony presented.
State of Louisiana
It is important to remember that not only are Louisiana State prosecutors are looking into the staff on whether or not a homicide, but the state sort of created a mess here they cannot get out of either.
It was LA State Health that told Memorial to reverse triage, or shift away the focus of saving the black band/L3 critical patients, and then it was LA State Police (not NOLA Police as the show made the mistake of showing) that made the strict evacuation call of stay or get left behind. Basically Louisiana made the decisions for Memorial/Tennant and forced them to go down this path. It's still disturbing to me no one other than the hospital staff actually helped the patients out of the building, as LASP were there more to bully people to leave at an artificial deadline or time.
Mix in the fact Butch Schafer/Michael Gaston took a minute of screentime stating he is biased towards doctors overmedicating patients (i.e. His late daughter), as any good defense attorney would be able to create doubt due to the clear bias here. Feels like this scene was added for a reason.
I'm also a little baffled as I was by Fink's book that for some reason LA Medicare and Medicaid fraud investigators are coving a potential homicide and not LA State Police or an independent state or county agency. These were potential homicides, not white collar financial fraud, so you would think you'd bring in the detectives. Feels like another misstep.
Either way, add these gaping errors made by the state, and you see why Dr. Pou and the staff had their criminal charges dropped and were able to walk with relatively small downstream consequences. This was a sloppy prosecution all around created by the state, and I'm just talking about the non-rescue portion of this story, despite the damning witness testimony of Pou's actions.
These next two episodes are going to be frustrating, no doubt, regardless of anyone's feelings about what Dr. Pou did.
You see a completely disorganized Tennant healthcare trying to dodge any kind of responsibility, including laying off most of their staff and retaining just a few employees to do the dirty work of giving vague death notifications to the 45 families.
Tennant didn't look good in this episode either, which is deserved as I feel they require the majority of the blame (as they paid dearly via civil litigation later), Really the only critique of the episode I have is the fact the timelines are somewhat unknown, even though Vera Farminga stated in the episode recap it was a year later in time despite the photography shows images from 1-2 months maximum after the hurricane.
Only problem is the Pou investigation started a few months after the hurricane, and eventually charged nine months later, so everything seems to be a year or less in reality.
Moving on, I think for the next episodes, you'll need to watch these two entities closely:
Dr. Pou
Ultimately, I did not expect Ridley and Fink to go this hard on Anna Pou at the end of the episode, clearly having the other staff say they saw murder take place at the hospital, but then again, this is probably what led to Dr. Pou being charged criminally in the first place which will be in the next episode.
You really see in the episode where Dr. Pou starts to cover her rear end, which is going to be a theme all the way up to present day, where it seems she goes from caregiver to careless, let alone unchecked by Tennant management, and starts to make decisions in a vacuum on a floor where she should not be practicing medicine on (Lifecare).
I was sort of surprised the corporate entities of Tennant and LifeCare didn't try to scapegoat Dr. Pou, which they tried to do via Fink's writings, but you can tell in this episode there was mass disagreement among the hospital staff in the meaning of "make the patients comfortable". Still, the doctor - healthcare provider relationship wasn't covered all that much here, which was a little disappointing. It's like Tennant laid everyone off from the hospital, then didn't even bother to give them legal representation.
You can also see why Dr. Pou had to settle a few civil suits for negligence in the end, and began her crusade with the State of Louisiana to push for legislation where acts like these are legal in the state, or basically solidifying the fact she is constantly covering her rear end, as Vera's character clearly stated in this episode about no one losing their license. She wasn't pushing for more disaster preparedness regulation, or holding Tennant her former employer accountable, but instead protecting herself and other medical staff.
This is sort of why I don't buy her "enduring care" narrative for the patients, because in the end, she's been working ever since Katrina pushing for laws that protect her, and not patients or their rights. It's been CYA'ing all the way.
Last, after watching this episode, remember Dr. Pou is currently a licensed MD practicing medicine in Louisiana despite all these facts and testimony presented.
State of Louisiana
It is important to remember that not only are Louisiana State prosecutors are looking into the staff on whether or not a homicide, but the state sort of created a mess here they cannot get out of either.
It was LA State Health that told Memorial to reverse triage, or shift away the focus of saving the black band/L3 critical patients, and then it was LA State Police (not NOLA Police as the show made the mistake of showing) that made the strict evacuation call of stay or get left behind. Basically Louisiana made the decisions for Memorial/Tennant and forced them to go down this path. It's still disturbing to me no one other than the hospital staff actually helped the patients out of the building, as LASP were there more to bully people to leave at an artificial deadline or time.
Mix in the fact Butch Schafer/Michael Gaston took a minute of screentime stating he is biased towards doctors overmedicating patients (i.e. His late daughter), as any good defense attorney would be able to create doubt due to the clear bias here. Feels like this scene was added for a reason.
I'm also a little baffled as I was by Fink's book that for some reason LA Medicare and Medicaid fraud investigators are coving a potential homicide and not LA State Police or an independent state or county agency. These were potential homicides, not white collar financial fraud, so you would think you'd bring in the detectives. Feels like another misstep.
Either way, add these gaping errors made by the state, and you see why Dr. Pou and the staff had their criminal charges dropped and were able to walk with relatively small downstream consequences. This was a sloppy prosecution all around created by the state, and I'm just talking about the non-rescue portion of this story, despite the damning witness testimony of Pou's actions.
These next two episodes are going to be frustrating, no doubt, regardless of anyone's feelings about what Dr. Pou did.
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
