‘New Amsterdam’: Max Fights for Luna, While Iggy Makes a Tough Decision (RECAP)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for New Amsterdam Season 3 Episode 13 “Fight Time.”]

Drs. Max Goodwin (Ryan Eggold) and Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) are fighting in the penultimate episode of New Amsterdam Season 3. The former for custody of his daughter, Luna, and the latter when he gets an unwanted visitor while he’s at home, sick.

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Bookending the episode are scenes of Max with his late wife Georgia’s parents, Gwen (Becky Ann Baker) and Calvin (Bill Irwin), regarding custody of his daughter, Luna. The voice recordings he makes for her prove he’s unfit, Gwen claims as they meet with their lawyers. After all, he just exposed himself to toxic chemicals with no thought of the fact that he risked making his daughter an orphan.

“I think about her every moment of every day, about protecting her, but no one will be safe until everyone is,” Max protests.

Calvin then goes for the low blow: “Georgia died in your care, knowing she never came first. She was our daughter. We’re not letting that happen to our granddaughter.” Poor Max is left wondering, “maybe you’re right. Maybe she is better off with you.”

However, that changes after one of his rooftop chats with Dr. Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) after she finds him watching a video of Luna. “You fight for her,” Helen tells Max, who’s feeling like maybe he fights too much. (His attempt to get vaccines to those he felt needed them more resulted in them expiring and no one getting one.)

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“When have you ever not wanted all of us to aim higher, to fight? It’s all a fight. Luna, Mina, vaccines, this hospital, us,” Helen continues. “If you don’t have to fight for it, it’s because it’s not worth it.”

With that in mind, Max heads to see Georgia’s parents. “Everything that you said this morning is true. I’m not a perfect father and I never will be,” he acknowledges. “But I am a good father and I will be better tomorrow and the day after that, and you know who loved that part of me more than anyone? It was your daughter. I get the pain of losing her, I really do, but she would never want Luna to be without her dad. If you want to go to court, we can, but you’ll lose, and when that happens, I will walk out of that courtroom and you will never see Luna again. And I don’t want that — for Luna, for you, for Georgia. Because she knew so clearly what you clearly don’t, and that is that I will never stop fighting for my daughter. I will fight for her until the day I die. Now I’m here to take her home.”

Meanwhile, Iggy’s home sick and groggy, so when someone offers him a glass of water, he assumes it’s his husband, Martin (Mike Doyle). He’s wrong — it’s his former patient, Chance (Luke Slattery), who has been getting too close to his family and knows about the restraining order against him. Iggy tries to get him to leave, but Chance refuses to.

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“You’re going to help me,” he insists. “I need you to help me. I’m not better. You promised I’d get better, but you lied. My father lied, too. He said he wouldn’t hurt me, but he did. And when I cried, he called me weak and damaged goods and no one in the house would help me, which is why I did what I did.” But Iggy thought his family died in a fire he set by accident. Uh-oh.

“My whole family knew what he was doing, but they still let it happen, so I shouldn’t feel guilty for what I did, but —” Chance says. Iggy tells him he gets it “because I killed someone, too.” Wait, what?!

Iggy then tells Chance that in his father’s eyes, his younger brother, Toby, was “the golden boy,” the one who “could do no wrong.” When Iggy had enough of the way Toby made fun of him, he busted him for drinking on prom night, the doctor tells Chance. Rather than stick around to get punished by their parents, Toby left and crashed into a truck. His date survived, Toby did not.

That’s when Martin returns to check on Iggy. He could go for some soup, lentil, from the place on 9th and 11th, Iggy tells his husband. Why didn’t he tell him he was there, Chance asks after Martin leaves. “How could that have helped?” Iggy asks. “I want to help you.”

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He then tells Chance he’ll get the restraining order revoked and continue his treatment. But after Chance walks out, the police arrive to pick him up, and Martin runs in to hug his husband.  When did he know? Martin knows Iggy hates lentil soup and the street numbers were a signal (9-1-1). But how did Iggy keep Chance calm? “I told him about my brother,” he says. How he died in Iraq, Martin asks.

“I gave Chance everything, every part of me. I just wanted him to get better, but it was never enough, so I made up a story,” Iggy confesses. “I lied and it worked. I don’t know what that says about me. I don’t know what that says about me as a human being or as a therapist. I don’t know.”

“It says you finally put yourself first,” Martin tells him. “And that’s a good thing.” But how might that affect Iggy as a therapist, especially considering just how much his work came home with him?

New Amsterdam, Tuesdays, 10/9c, NBC