Just two seasons into its run, “The Pitt” is already playing with audience expectations.
The real-time medical drama debuted to acclaim when it began an old-fashioned, week-by-week rollout in January of last year. But both Season 1 and the hype around it, culminating in a slew of Emmys, kicked into overdrive with a climactic event just past its halfway point: a mass shooting at a local music festival, sending the emergency department of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center into a maelstrom of emotion and stress.
Season 2 of “The Pitt” concluded on Thursday with no such defining crisis. Instead, creator R. Scott Gemmill and the writers teased the viewers with a steady drip of (comparatively) minor stressors. A threatened cyberattack prompted the hospital’s IT department to preemptively shut down the computer network, forcing doctors and nurses to switch to an analog system of keeping and sharing records on the fly. The same hackers took out the emergency room of a nearby hospital, adding to an influx of patients already heightened by the July 4 holiday. A waterslide collapse covered on the local news seemed to portend a Pitt Fest-like crush of grievous, urgent injuries. A nurse was publicly and violently abducted by ICE agents.
But these obstacles, while significant, also proved to be something of a bait-and-switch. Without the burden of having to establish itself or introduce its main characters, “The Pitt” used Season 2 to emphasize the long-term, internal effects of a career in emergency medicine on protagonists we’ve already come to deeply care for. The individual nature of these conflicts meant the season lacked the catharsis of an entire team coming together to face the unimaginable with bravery and grace. That’s also, of course, the point. If “The Pitt” sprang from a desire to depict the heroism and empathy of healthcare workers on the front lines, the show has used the resulting goodwill to illustrate those qualities’ long-term toll. And the long term is exactly where great television can thrive.
Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) is the literal poster child for “The Pitt,” and therefore the tone-setter for this initially subtle shift. On the eve of a planned three-month sabbatical, the attending physician is notably on edge, snapping at senior resident Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) when he realizes she’s having a panic attack and upbraiding EMTs who failed to detect a female patient’s cardiac distress in front of the entire ER, among other outbursts. Over the course of his shift, Robby’s peers gradually realize his irritability — combined with his outsize concern for what’s to become of “my” ED in his supposedly temporary absence — is a sign of something much more concerning than mere burnout.
These worries were confirmed in the last pair of episodes. “I don’t know that I want to be here anymore,” Robby confessed to his motorcycle mentor Duke (Jeff Kober) — “here,” he swiftly clarified, meaning this mortal coil. In the finale, Robby confirmed to his night shift counterpart Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) that his suicidal feelings were a direct result of his work. “Nothing will ever matter more than what I’ve done in this hospital, but it’s killing me,” Robby lets on through audible tears. “I’ve seen so many people die that I feel like it’s leaching something from my soul.”
Robby’s struggles may be extreme in their degree, but as underscored by medical student Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) running down a list of her older colleagues and their various issues, he’s not alone in having them. Second-year resident Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) has a history of self-harm and even pockets a scalpel during her shift. Charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) remains so traumatized by her physical assault in Season 1 she keeps an unprescribed sedative on hand at all times. Dr. Mohan is overwhelmed by career and family stress to the point of being physically paralyzed by anxiety. Just one day working in this environment reduces even an experienced physician like Robby’s soon-to-be substitute Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), who’s facing a flare-up of her chronic neurological disorder that Robby threatens to report to administration, to tears in the parking lot.
Were this season of “The Pitt” structured like its predecessor, this pent-up agita might get an outlet. The PittFest mass casualty event served multiple purposes: it reflected the show’s interest in the ER as a lens for exploring topical social issues, and radically heightened the stakes of a story that had to break through the noise of a fragmented media landscape in order to establish itself. But the shooting also gave a beleaguered staff still reeling from the pandemic an occasion to rise to, and the audience a chance to experience some vicarious triumph.
Denying such a complex-yet-real form of satisfaction in Season 2 drives home that there are no quick fixes for these characters’ trauma, nor are its sources always so acute. The standard ER shift is 12 hours long, while a season of “The Pitt” — in defiance of the streaming norm — runs for 15. In Season 1, it was PittFest that kept the team on for those extra hours, overlapping with the now-fan favorites on the night shift. This time, it’s a task as mundane as catching up on charts that keeps the younger doctors chained to a desk until their eyes droop. If Season 1 portrayed a milestone every participant will remember for the rest of their lives, as evidenced by the memorial plaque now enshrined on the wall, Season 2 is just one difficult, draining day among many for most of the characters.
There’s also a confidence in letting the characters’ inner lives take the lead. Having successfully secured its place in the conversation, “The Pitt” can now trust that we’re interested in, say, the sobriety of a post-rehab Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) or Dr. Mel King’s (Taylor Dearden) caretaking relationship with her sister Becca (Tal Anderson) for their own sake. “The Pitt” has a remarkably deep bench of characters it’s managed to flesh out between and through the many micro-crises they confront every hour. Season 2 has the momentum to do so without the jump-start of an adrenaline infusion.
The structure of “The Pitt,” with its hard temporal limits, is the kind of constraint that inspires creativity. Unlike many workplace shows, “The Pitt” can’t really cultivate a classic will-they/won’t-they, apart from dangling some red meat like having Mohan treat a shirtless Abbot for an on-the-job injury. Nor can it show exactly what Robby decides to do after he clocks out, be it seeking the help his friends practically beg him to or ignoring their advice. (I would guess the star, executive producer, writer and director won’t kill himself off, but I can’t say that for sure!) And we only know the parts of everyone’s personal lives they choose to share, leaving questions like the exact state of Langdon’s marriage dangling open.
It’s in this context that Robby’s final monologue, delivered to an infant abandoned at the start of the shift, lands with such power. “Everything’s gonna be just fine,” he whispers. “You’ve got so many wonderful things to see, and so many people to love ahead of you.” He repeats the last part for emphasis. You don’t need an advanced degree to pick up that Robby’s also speaking to himself. But because the scene is the last we’ll see of Robby for nearly a year, and because an hour-by-hour time lapse doesn’t lend itself to conventionally action-packed finales, the direct statement still feels restrained. After so much noise and chaos, and teaching us to brace for even more, “The Pitt” knows the power of a dark, quiet room.
variety.com
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