By drax on Skatehive
New Amsterdam (S1x04) Airdate: 9 August 2007 Written by: Lisa Albert Directed by: Tim Hunter Running Time: 46 minutes The American Dream, that enduring national mythos which promises that anyone, through sheer grit and determination, can ascend the social ladder, has always been more fiction than fact. America, despite its foundational rhetoric, was constructed upon a bedrock of entrenched divisions—not merely those of sex, race, religion, or ethnicity, but perhaps most persistently, class. As the contemporary phenomenon of Hollywood “nepo babies” starkly reminds us, it has always been profoundly more advantageous to possess talent, determination, and the right set of parents than merely the former two. This uncomfortable truth was not some hidden scandal in the WASP-dominated world of 1960s America depicted in Mad Men; it was the accepted, often unspoken, machinery of social mobility. The series’ fourth episode, New Amsterdam, written by Lisa Gilbert and directed by Tim Hunter, tackle