While it’s not really a genre, one of my favorite storylines is that of the honorable, even noble, failure. When a character so deeply believes in their mission and their purpose that they put their heart, mind, body, and soul into it only to reach an unsatisfactory or tragic conclusion.
In AppleTV+’s remarkable limited series (created by John Ridley and Carlton Cuse) about one New Orleans’ hospital’s plight after Hurricane Katrina caused extensive flooding, Five Days at Memorial, no two characters represent better examples of that honorable, heartbreaking failure than Julie Ann Emery and Michael Gaston.
As nurse Diane Robicheaux, who works in the hospital’s unaffiliated long term care facility LifeCare (Memorial essentially had a hospital within a hospital), Julie Ann is the face of the facility. Over the course of the show’s first half, it is her relationship with Emmett (a remarkable Damon Sandifer) an overweight partially paralyzed man that shows the human pain that exists when after a natural disaster, an entire hospital is left bereft of food, water, life-sustaining supplies, and power. To add insult and even more injury, the caregivers and the patients suffer further due to the incompetence of the hospital’s corporation, as well as the city, state, and federal governments that had no plan for evacuating those who were most vulnerable.
Five Days at Memorial may use Hurricane Katrina as the linchpin of its story, but what the series makes clear is that there were two disasters: one made by nature, and the other made by man.
Of course, to really feel the weight of a disaster, a human face needs to be out front and center. As we watch a very pregnant nurse Robicheaux attempt to manage her health and the health of others, we see the human cost of more than just running out of food, water, and supplies, in the eyes of Julie Ann Emery, we see the death of hope.
Never is this fact more in evidence than when Diane, due to being forced to evacuate, must tell Emmett goodbye with the knowledge that he will be left behind to suffer without care for who knows how long. You see her steel herself before beginning the conversation, and in what I can only describe as beautifully wrenching, it is Emmett who tries to comfort Diane. I’m not sure if Emmett’s generosity made things easier or harder for nurse Robicheaux, but I know that behind the eyes of Julie Ann Emery, we can see quiet waves of grief and guilt wash over her. It’s probably the most devastating scene I witnessed during this TV season. I cannot imagine that moment without Emery.
It’s to the show’s immeasurable credit that the two halves of the series are equally compelling. Midway through the show’s eight episodes, the story leaves the hospital and then becomes a procedural of sorts as the Department of Justice explores the possibility that members of Memorial’s staff (led by the great Vera Farmiga as Doctor Anna Pou) may have ended the lives of the most gravely ill in an attempt to reduce suffering.
It might have felt like a hard turn to go from the hospital disaster area to the methodical efforts of two DoJ investigators methodically making a case against Pou, but Five Days at Memorial had two aces up their sleeves: Michael Gaston and Molly Hager.
Just like with Emery and Sandifer, Gaston and Hager put real human faces on two investigators who are battling their own emotions while searching for the truth. It doesn’t hurt that Gaston as Butch Shafer, and Hager as Virginia Rider, have fabulous chemistry. There’s a universe where one could easily imagine a cascade of cliches in the presentation of an older investigator (Shafer) partnering with a much younger peer (Hager), but Five Days nicely avoids that trap through excellent writing, and the complete immersion into their roles that Gaston and Hager perform with aplomb.
When I saw Five Days at Memorial, I didn’t anticipate connecting this show with Atom Egoyan’s masterful film, The Sweet Hereafter (about a deadly school bus crash), but the parallels between Gaston’s Shafer and Ian Holm’s Sweet Hereafter attorney are notable.
Shafer takes on the Memorial case while still under the veil of grief of losing his daughter due to medical malpractice. Holm’s character was attempting to take up the cause of the families who lost children in the bus crash while dealing with a lost, drug-addicted daughter. Both men desperately want to fix something, to be right, to find purpose amidst their sorrows. The key difference in the two characters is that Shafer has his case fall to him, whereas Holm’s character is more of an opportunist.
Regardless, both Gaston and Holm are brilliant as men trying to recover something that will forever remain outside their grasp. Call it closure, solace, acceptance, whatever, these men will always carry a heavy irreparable burden.
And my, oh my, Michael Gaston is just so wonderful here. Gaston is one of the truly great “what have I seen him in before?” actors. You recognize his face, you may be able to think of a particular character, but not be certain in placing him.
I hope that after Five Days at Memorial Gaston gets more roles of this caliber. Gaston does everything here: masters a rural Louisiana accent, carries the bulk of the series back end, and humanizes a methodical man in ways that break your heart.
There is a moment when Butch comes home to his grieving wife and confesses that despite his best efforts, his case was undermined by politics, and the justice he believes in will not be metered out. He has failed. And as he crumples into her arms, it’s as if some final statement of sorrow is made about the horrors of Katrina and the awful, impossible choices that were made in its aftermath.
That is what both Julie Ann Emery as Diane Robicheaux and Michael Gaston as Butch Schafer had to carry: the weight of guilt, the crack of heartbreak, the crush of failure.
They were two sides of the same haunted coin. They were the soul of this extraordinary docudrama. They delivered two of the best performances of this or any other year.
I hope they are remembered by Emmy voters this season. But even if they aren’t, it doesn’t change their work or the experience of those who viewed it. Trophies and awards are lovely, but great work lasts forever.
Julie Ann and Michael’s work in Five Days at Memorial has no expiration date.
