The pandemic didn’t just confine bodies; it subjected human consciousness to the harshest test of the century. When, in March 2020, normality evaporated abruptly, the planet was forced to confront its own fragility in the face of a collapse that spared neither breath nor certainty. COVID-19 reshaped the daily lives of eight billion people into a kind of domestic dystopia, where entertainment became a form of emotional survival and death was reduced to data in real-time graphs. In this brutal context, the long-overdue reckoning for centuries of environmental degradation became impossible to ignore — the consequence of a destructive, long-standing cohabitation between humans and the planet, now collecting its debt with exponential interest.
As if that weren’t enough, the pandemic also exposed the chasm between the need for action and the ability of governments to respond. In this corrosive brew, fear ceased to be merely a biological response and became structural: paranoia running through the veins of everyday life. Within this atmosphere, doctors and healthcare workers were elevated in the public imagination to near-mythical status — tireless martyrs in a war without borders. “Pulse”, the series created by Zoe Robyn, strips away the varnish of this idealization with cold precision and brutal honesty. Across ten intense episodes, the show plunges into the inner workings of Maguire Medical Center, a trauma unit where ambition and exhaustion are constant bedfellows.
As the series progresses, “Pulse” charts the ethical and emotional minefield these professionals must navigate. It refuses to portray doctors as spotless heroes and instead repositions them as vulnerable individuals, often powerless in the face of life — or their own unraveling. The ER becomes a stage of urgency where scientific precision collides with dilemmas far beyond any manual. Rather than providing answers, Zoe Robyn sharpens the right questions: what remains of one’s calling when body and mind falter? Where is the line between care and self-destruction? And what happens when another’s pain lays bare wounds no scalpel can reach?
The first episode throws the viewer headfirst into a crisis: a bus crash delivers a football team to the hospital — along with the coach responsible for the disaster. The narrative quickly crystallizes around Danielle Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), a skilled and controlling trauma surgeon who becomes the emotional and operational center of the ER. Her volatile dynamic with colleague Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell), whom she has accused of harassment yet must work alongside, generates unrelenting tension. These unresolved, discomforting clashes give the show its dramatic weight, denying the audience the comfort of moral clarity.
There is blood, shouting, and resuscitations — as one expects from medical dramas — but there is also something far more corrosive: a meticulous deconstruction of the illusion of control. The characters do not command their fates, nor can they regulate their emotions. “Pulse” insists that there is no universal antidote to suffering — not even for those trained to navigate it. Over the course of the season, doctors cease to be mere guardians of life and become narrators of their own undoing. The script doesn’t beg for empathy; it demands lucidity. And the attentive viewer will realize that the hardest wounds to treat often don’t involve broken bones.
The final episode, “Kennedy”, delivers the season’s most jarring twist — not because of any shock factor, but in how Robyn guides the viewer toward a space where tragedy no longer feels like exception, but inevitability. This is where “Pulse” reveals its most refined cruelty: there is no catharsis. No promise of healing. Only the certainty that living — and caring — means confronting losses that defy reason. If the series offers any lesson, it is this: medicine may delay death, but it will never exempt anyone from facing it. Not even those in white coats.
Series: Pulse
Creator: Zoe Robyn
Year: 2025
Genre: Drama
Rating: 8/10