The Case For: AppleTV+’s Brilliant ‘Five Days at Memorial’

It happens every year.

There’s always one great show that gets largely (if not completely) overlooked by awards groups despite critical acclaim and unquestioned respect from its peers. Last year, it was Pachinko, which scored an Emmy nomination for Main Title Design and, well, absolutely nothing else. You could also namecheck David Simon’s brilliant Baltimore policier We Own This City (Hell, you could say that about nearly every David Simon show, but let me not digress).

My great fear ahead of the Emmy nomination announcements on July 12 is that this year’s Pachinko will be Apple’s extraordinary limited series Five Days at Memorial. In fact, I think it might be a near carbon copy of Pachinko’s fate down to nothing more than Five Days’ stunning main credits sequence (hauntingly embellished by the song ‘Wade in the Water’ sung by Joanna Jones) scoring a nomination.

If I’m right (and I certainly hope that I’m not) the best limited series of this television cycle will go unnoticed in all the major categories. The reasons for high level, genuine prestige shows getting overlooked can often be mysterious, but in the case of Five Days, I’m left in a state of incredulity.

It’s not just the fact of how well the true-life tale of a hospital and the attached long term care facility in New Orleans managed its way through an impossible set of circumstances during the Hurricane Katrina disaster is told, it’s also that it was so well set up for consideration by its major award winning creators Carlton Cuse and John Ridley. Both of those names are synonymous with quality productions. Cuse won an Emmy for Lost and has scored eight other nominations. Ridley is the owner of an Oscar for his brilliant screenplay adaptation of 12 Years a Slave, and has three Emmy nominations of his own for American Crime.

The story of Memorial Hospital is certainly compelling. Left to their own devices for five days without electricity, running low on food and water, in a sweltering heat wave with the entire main floor flooded, the caregivers and those in their care waited desperately for help, and none came. During a forced evacuation, the staff was put in the horrifying position of leaving behind those who were not ambulatory to fend for themselves, or to provide them with a comparatively gentle departure. The moral dilemma is breathtaking in its scope. What is worse? To let nature take its course, which in the absence of rescue, means those left behind will die of dehydration in their own flop sweat and feces, or to take matters into your own hands as physicians and try to bring those sure to die to a peaceful end, even though it takes away their agency? It’s an awful set of circumstances, played to perfection by one of the finest ensembles you will ever see.

At the head of the show’s cast sits the formidable Vera Farmiga (herself an Oscar nominee and two-time Emmy nominee) as Dr. Anna Pou. Farmiga gives one of the most complex performances of the season as a deeply religious physician who believes that relieving pain equals doing no harm, even if that decision is legally perilous.

As great as Farmiga is (and boy is she ever), the supporting cast is every bit her equal. Cherry Jones as the hospital’s top administrator is reliably excellent. Julie Ann Emery, as a long term care nurse who must leave behind a patient (the wonderful Damon Sandifer) who she has a strong personal connection to, gives what should be a career-making performance. The same could be said of Michael Gaston as a Department of Justice prosecutor who investigates the forty-five deaths at the hospital in the aftermath of the disaster. His relationship with his partner (the fantastic Molly Hager) is so terrific that you practically want to spin their two characters off into their own series–if this were fiction. Veteran actors Robert Pine and W. Earl Brown are exceptional as doctors on opposite sides of the philosophical conflict, and Cornelius Smith Jr.’s anger as a young doctor who fails to put a stop to Pou’s actions is so palpable it all but singes the screen.

More than anything though, what I admire most about Five Days at Memorial, well beyond the fabulous writing, directing, production, and acting is that it’s bold enough not to pick sides. The show powerfully and elegantly presents the facts of the dilemma and lets you, the viewer, decide for yourself what the best course of action would be. The question Five Days asks is in a situation where there are no good choices is “what is the best worst option?”

No other show I’ve seen in recent memory treated its audience more like adults. Five Days is outstanding in every single respect. In the way it presents this miserable moment in our recent history where every possible systemic failure is laid bare: from the corporation that owns the hospital having no evacuation plan, to the city, state, and federal government being equally incompetent both before and after the disaster. And make no mistake, while Hurricane Katrina was a national disaster, what happened at Memorial was a man-made disaster.

Taken directly from Sheri Fink’s book of the same name, Five Days is a story of failure. One that absolutely and appropriately breaks your heart without ever sinking into cheap sentiment. The series is told essentially in two halves: the hospital and the investigation. The caregivers fail because they were not put into a position to succeed. The justice system fails because politics and optics become more important than the truth. 

I can’t possibly imagine a better rendering of this subject matter, yet here we are on the cusp of the Emmys, and the show couldn’t have less buzz. A fact that I find incredibly dispiriting for a series that earns the “prestige” distinction by tackling history, humanity and exposing the gaps in our society that leaves the most vulnerable among us to dangle. And maybe that’s why we are where we are. Maybe for some Five Days is just too hard to start, to finish, or to reward even if they did. But we mustn’t look away from that which hurts and scars us. If we do, we run the risk of history repeating itself. 

There are shows that are well done, great even, but few can claim to be genuinely important. Five Days at Memorial can stake that claim. What a shame it would be if it does not get recognized. I am asking the Television Academy not to look away, not to dismiss this magnificent show, but to reward it properly in all major categories. In some small way, the Academy would honor not only the show, but the heart of the truth, and remind us that facts matter, that lives matter, that this show matters. 

Do not look away, Academy. 

Wade in the water.