Pulse Review
Director: Carlton Cuse
Date Created: 2025-04-03 20:22
2.5
Pulse Review: This Netflix medical drama is created by Zoey Robyn and directed by Carlton Cuse. The series features a strong cast, including Willa Fitzgerald, Colin Woodell, Justina Machado, Jack Bannon, Jessie T. Usher and others. Over ten episodes, the show narrates the experiences of Dr. Danny Sims, a third-year medical resident who finds himself thrust into a new role when his superior, Dr. Xander Phillips, is suspended. As a hurricane approaches Miami, the duo must collaborate in a hospital teeming with anxiety, emergencies and personal problems. In addition to saving lives, they also grapple with their complicated romance.
Pulse Review
Medical dramas have been a fixture of television for decades, with classic series like ER, House MD, Good Doctor and Grey’s Anatomy raising the stakes. When I began watching Netflix Pulse, I wanted something new, which could make this medical drama a true feast. Instead, I felt I had watched this story many times before. The show follows a similar beat to a lot of other medical dramas, there’s hospital tension, workplace politics, personal strife, and romantic drama. It doesn’t take long to realise that this show emits most of the same virtual vapours as its ilk.
From the start, you can even guess what happens next. There are power struggles among the doctors, forbidden relationships, and touching scenes with patients. Certain scenes are intriguing, but the majority are redundant. If you’ve seen other medical dramas, nothing here will be surprising.
The Pulse series could have distinguished itself by being set in Miami, with a focus on bilingual storytelling. The show does contain some Spanish dialogue, which it uses to ground its environment, but it doesn’t take full advantage of this unique factor. The series does briefly evoke issues like medical bankruptcy but never delves deep enough to offer a meaningful statement. In a country where healthcare is a salient point of contention, the show had the potential to prod at this powerfully, yet it instead settles for far more melodrama.
The characters in Pulse are a big weakness for this series. With an ensemble cast so large, you’d expect some standout personalities. Unfortunately, more than a few of them seem unlikable, arrogant or downright annoying. The central conflict is over who will become the next chief resident, a plotline that lingers long past its expiration date. The duel for power between Danny and Phillips quickly grows frustrating instead of compelling, making it difficult to hope for either of them to win.
The Netflix series Pulse is overly concerned with personal drama and not focused enough on the actual medical cases. Relationships between doctors can, of course, add drama to a show, but here the personal problems feel imposed. The characters seem to spend most of their time fighting, gossiping and making poor life choices and very little involved in medicine.
I think one of the biggest reasons I had a hard time with Pulse is that most of its characters are difficult to like. Dr. Danny Sims, the protagonist, does not make many choices that we’re meant to root for; instead, he frequently acts selfishly or carelessly. Neither, by the way, does Dr. Xander Phillips. Most of the supporting characters are either annoying or forgettable.
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The series tries to humanise the doctors by showing them coping with personal struggles, although these moments often feel contrived. Other characters are self-absorbed for nearly the entirety of an episode, only to be bombarded by a patient’s death and end up feeling an extreme amount of compassion in an effort to get the audience to feel sympathy at their plight. These emotional beats don’t feel organic; they feel manipulative and phony.
Pulse does have some redeeming qualities despite its flaws. The design of the hospital setting is solid, and the shoot does a competent job of replicating the craziness of the ER. In more active moments — particularly in scenes where the crew scrambles to save lives — the camera work puts viewers right in the thick of things in a way that conveys urgency.
Justina Machado gives one of the best performances of the show, imbued with soul and subtlety. But the rest of the cast is varying levels of decent to forgettable. Some of the performances are serviceable, but none is memorable.
And the biggest mistake of this series is its length. Buried in ten full-hour episodes, the show is stretched thin. Too many scenes could have been trimmed, while entire subplots could have been cut. The pacing lags, at times, and makes it hard to stay invested in the narrative.
Summing Up
Pulse is one of those shows that just mirrors a bunch of stuff we’ve seen over without having anything fresh to throw down. While bested by the newness of its premise and bolstered by reasonably robust production values and a talented cast, the show ultimately falls into the trap of merely being another medical drama in a crowded genre. The characters are all but impossible to identify with, the storylines feel preordained, and the sum total is exhausting rather than involving.
Pulse 2025 is now streaming on Netflix.
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