Since I'm an old, I still consume most of my TV on, you know, A TV, and not on a phone or an iPad or any other screen, I'm not much of a streamer. So it was a happy coincidence that HBO decided to run a marathon of The Pitt about a week ago. What a great show. The elevator pitch would be 24 meets ER as we follow a group of emergency room doctors (ER) in real time (24) through a 12-hour shift (that extends out to 15 hours due to a mass shooting event). It is propulsive viewing and its binge-ability (for lack of a better term) is both a blessing and a curse.
The show pretty much draws you in from the get go when we meet Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle, another ER connection), the attending doctor of the emergency room at a Pittsburgh hospital, as he arrives for his shift, talks down Dr. Abbott, his opposite number (literally) off a ledge before digging into the day with his merry band of doctors and nurses. His senior residents Drs. Collins and Langdon, and more junior staff, including Drs. Mohan (aka Slo-Mo for her pace of treatment), McKay (a single mom embroiled in a custody dispute with her ex husband), King (an empathetic, but socially awkward (possibly on the spectrum?)) second year resident, Santos (a mouthy go getter who gets on everyone's nerves), Javadi (a 20-year-old prodigy whose mother is also a doctor in the hospital), and Whitaker (a wet behind the ears medical student from Nebraska). There is also the charge nurse, a no-nonsense but has a heart-of-gold type named Dana and the rest of the staff.
Over the course of the day, the drama comes fast and furious and all manner of societal ill slaps you in the face. Human sex trafficking victim? Check. Dad molesting his daughter? Check. Little girl drowns in backyard pool? Check. And that says nothing of the more routine gun shot wounds, heart attacks, and mentally ill patients the doctors treat. It is A LOT to absorb and watching it in binge mode can feel like sitting on a train watching the countryside go past. It's all a blur. You simply don't have time to really sit and think about the 19-year-old who dies from an accidental fentanyl overdose because your attention is immediately grabbed to the possibility Dr. Langdon is a drug addict who tampered with medication to hide his problem. Dr. Collins literally miscarries during the middle of her shift, splashes some water on her face, and heads right back out without missing a beat. Each episode covers roughly an hour of the shift but it is so packed with story telling it can be hard to keep up with all of it but the show is so absorbing, you want to immediately start the next episode.
The binge gives the show a kinetic feel that puts you in the doctors' shoes and a sense of how quickly they must move on because the rigors of the job demand it. Ironically, it is not until the late in the season episodes covering how victims of a mass shooting are treated that the show slows down. There is less time for the personal or dramatic because the sole job is saving lives. And it is to the show writers' credit that during that arc several new doctors (night shift) are introduced with a fully lived in feel that makes you want to get to know them even more.
The acting across the board is top notch. Wyle's Dr. Robby is at turns compassionate, hard assed, and sympathetic. He goes above and beyond to continue doing tests on the teenage overdose victim to placate his parents even though he knows the kid is brain dead but cuts to the chase when two adult children attempt to override their elderly father's living will requests. He is also dealing with trauma of his own - the show occurs on the fourth anniversary of his mentor's death during COVID, and Robby feels responsible for the man's death even though he was not to blame. When Dr. Robby briefly breaks down while the bodies start filling up the ER in the wake of the mass shooting, he feels like he has let down his team. It is to Dr. Abbott, who Robby had talked down at the beginning of the day and who came in to help treat patients to explain that losing it for a minute or two is natural and ok.
The supporting cast is also outstanding. Each character is so well drawn but also so well acted, it is like they have been playing these characters forever. The show traffics in BIG emotions, be it the waiting room fight between patients arguing over whether a child coughing for an hour should wear a mask to the aunt who brings her niece to the hospital for a medication abortion only to have the mother show up to stop it, the crushing experience (which happens more than once) of parents having to say goodbye to a child, or the fear of a new mother who fears her baby has been stillborn (this was a particularly graphic scene not for the faint of heart) and on and on. I literally gasped at the end of the ninth episode when Dana, taking a smoke break outside, is cold cocked out of nowhere by a disgruntled patient. But to me, it was the smaller moments that felt the most earned. Dr. King relating to an autistic patient with a sprained ankle by turning down the lights in the room and turning off devices that make noise in order to make him feel more comfortable. Whitaker, bouncing back from a couple of very tough experiences early on to show empathy toward Robby when he sees his boss crumpled in a corner reciting a Jewish prayer. Abbott, unwinding with his colleagues after the mass shooting event and taking off his prosthetic leg, saying so much without saying anything at all.
While there are a few nits one could pick like the overbearing administrator who shows up every few hours to complain to Robby about wait times and patient satisfaction, or the not-so-subtle riffs about how doctors and nurses are overworked and underpaid or the patient who was part of a civilian squad of people in the 1960s who helped create the modern 911 system, these are minor critiques in a 15 hour season that is some of the best TV I have seen in a long time. Honestly, my fear is that the show's success will lead the creators to try and top it in season 2. I hope instead they realize the show's strength is in its inter-personal relationships, its examination of how decision making is reached under pressure, and that these are people who are doing the best they can under impossible circumstances.
