Diksha Sundriyal
Netflix’s ‘Pulse’ is a heart-pounding medical drama that flourishes on the tension amongst the resident staff of Maguire Medical Center while they have to work under the immense pressure of one crisis after another. The focus is on Danny Simms, whose life takes a turn when she files a sexual harassment complaint against Xander Phillips, her superior and mentor with whom she has a complicated relationship. We also follow the challenges faced by her friends and colleagues as the patients move in and out of the emergency station, giving them a new outlook personally as well as professionally. The hospital becomes a character unto itself, which drives the plot as much as the drama between the doctors.
Maguire Medical Center is a Fictional Hospital
‘Pulse’ is a fictional story with all its characters and their situations completely made up. This also includes Maguire Medical Center, which is a completely fictitious creation to serve the plot of the TV show. The imaginary hospital in the show is located in Miami, and the reason behind choosing the city was to capture its colorful and vibrant energy. The show’s creator and co-showrunner, Zoe Robyn, told Netflix Tudum that they were attracted by the “intangible quality that Miami has — a sense of body heat and people being together,” and this convinced them to set the story in The Magic City.
Another reason that Miami was chosen to be the location for the TV show was the diversity it would automatically imbue into the story. The multicultural nature of the city allows for focusing on characters from different backgrounds, giving a diversified edge to the palette. We see it in the mix of characters that appear in the show. Due to Spanish being a major language in the city, alongside English, the characters, even the non-Hispanic ones, are seen speaking the language, which exhibits their connection to the city and its culture.
Interestingly, while the entirety of the show takes place in Miami, not all of it was filmed there. The crew of ‘Pulse’ used several locations across the city to film several scenes of the ten-episode season, like the Jackson Memorial Hospital’s helipad to film the rooftop scenes. Another major location employed for filming was Albuquerque, New Mexico. Despite the stark difference and distance between the two cities, the crew of the Netflix series spent a major portion of time in ABQ, transforming parts of it to look like New Mexico. Their task was made easier by the fact that a lot of the filming took place in interior locations, especially the scenes inside the hospital. For the scenes featuring the exterior and rooftop shots of the hospital, real places in Florida were used to create the illusion of the fictional hospital.
Read More: Is Netflix’s Pulse a True Story?
