Pulse review: Netflix’s trashy soap opera takes staggeringly poor stance on sexual harassment in the workplace

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A still from Netflix’s Pulse.

In Pulse, Fitzgerald’s character, a third-year resident named Danny Simms, accuses her boss Xander Philips of sexual harassment. They were in a secret relationship, but they chose not to disclose it to HR. Danny eventually discovered that she was in the running for a promotion, and that Xander would have a say in the matter. This doesn’t sit well with her, but she is advised to ignore her moral dilemmas. We aren’t immediately told what compelled Danny to make her complaint; instead, the show inserts melodramatic flashbacks that reveal, over the course of 10 episodes, what really happened between her and Xander. Her allegations rock the Miami hospital that they work at, creating a divide between the staff. Some have reasons to doubt her, while others rise up in her support. The side you take says more about you, honestly.

But a hurricane compels everybody to batten down the hatches and brace themselves for a barrage of patients. Overwhelmed and outgunned, it is decided by the hospital’s management that Xander, who had been suspended pending an investigation, must return to help out. The first episode ends with Danny and her harasser being forced to work together as the hospital is locked down. This could’ve made for an intriguing premise, had Pulse even the faintest clue about how to handle it. Instead, it chooses to play this standoff for — wait for it — sexual tension. Three episodes in, Danny is looking Xander directly in the eye while changing out of her scrubs, quietly telling him that she’s glad he’s around. A few episodes later, she has withdrawn her complaint against him.

Why let a sexual harassment scandal get in the way of a good romance, the show seems to ask for the greater chunk of its debut season; or, at least, why let it get in the way of a smooth shift at the ER? In typical soap opera fashion, Pulse also injects its characters with the most basic backstories; Danny and her best friend Elijah, for instance, are up for the same promotion. This causes friction between them. A philandering young resident named Cole is unable to commit to either his on-again-off-again girlfriend or which direction he wants his promising career to go in. He also openly voices his support for Xander amid the harassment scandal, drawing a line between himself and Elijah, who backs Danny.

It’s probably a coincidence that Pulse debuted while Max is airing the far superior medical drama The Pitt; starring Noah Wyle, the show is able to straddle the fine line between the formulaic philosophies of network television and the relative freedoms afforded by streaming. It does a far better job at this than Pulse, which mostly resembles something that wouldn’t be deemed worthy of real estate on Prime Video; it has more of an Amazon MiniTV vibe. Often, it seems like the characters forget what happened in the previous scene. Danny could be having an argument with her sister, Harper, in one scene, and she could behave as if it never even happened in the very next moment. The writers could argue that surgeons are required to keep their personal issues out of the OT, but that would just be an excuse for Pulse not flowing organically from one scene to another. Again, The Pitt does a far better job at this.

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A still from Netflix’s Pulse.

But Pulse isn’t aiming for naturalism. It exists in a heightened reality, not too far removed from Grey’s Anatomy or ER. In fact, it tips its hat to the glory days of medical dramas in one scene, when a young intern makes a reference to Grey’s. She’s told that real life isn’t like a television series. That’s a bit rich, isn’t it? We are, after all, talking about a show in which a senior doctor discovers that the injured girl on the gurney in front of her is her only daughter; the kind of show in which doctors magically forget basic skills because the script requires them to be humiliated; the kind of show in which something as delicate as a workplace romance is treated with all the subtlety of a Mills and Boon novel.

Pulse is a Frankenstein’s Monster, a ghastly facsimile of older (and more efficient) medical dramas. It wants to be taken seriously as a post-#MeToo artefact, but it also wants to please audiences that wouldn’t even care about such cultural movements. It wants to be a romantic drama, a white-knuckle thriller; even a workplace comedy in some scenes. It succeeds as none. Pulse is problematic, poorly made, and painfully dull. Forget having a heart, it barely has a brain.

Pulse
Creator – Zoe Bryant
Cast – Willa Fitzgerald, Colin Woodell, Jack Bannon, Jessie T Usher, Justina Machado, Daniela Nieves, Jessie Yates
Rating – 1/5