- Maybe this will change over the coming weeks (Wyle's said the third of the season not screened for critics is "an entirely different show", which I'm not sure I'm hyped abt) but it feels like I've had an easier time than most watching the show as something which, despite its pacing, isn't necessarily calling its shots dramatically. Shows like BREAKING BAD have made good TV synonymous with friendliness to a certain meta-narrative critical approach: Swiss-watch tight, no wasted movement, rewarding viewers for "paying attention" (ie, gratifying ppl who scout plot arcs before they complete, or thrilling them with a juke).
I'm not sure THE PITT is doing that. I am probably wrong in my assumption! But I'm getting a lot more out of it when I scale back my expectations of the show's level of contrivance.
When you flirt with a "verite" style, you necessarily list toward "immersion", which is to say, a half-forgetting that everything you see is pre-written and plotted in advance. You start to impose a valence of reality onto the fiction, and as you do so you acclimate your audience, by degrees, to the story developing the way that real life develops: with catharsis and kismet happening rarely, if at all. The more you move away from glitz in style, the more you can get away with in terms of fucking with audience expectation in plot and character, and the less your (smaller but more refined) audience can cry foul when things don't unfold as they expect they might.
Last week I compared THE PITT to HOMICIDE LIFE ON THE STREET, and so far I still think there's a real sympathy between them in temperament: both focus on high-stress work that is alternately crushing and absurd, but more importantly, it's work that *never ends* even when a given case does (in part). That produces a grounding effect on narrative: a restlessness, a lack of satisfaction in going from one plot to the next. It is less about pacing, and more about a flinty long view of the stakes in any given situation. For every solved case or saved patient, there's a cold case or a lost patient.
It's a mode of storytelling which lacks the implied promise common to novels, which is that *this* particular story, out of all potential stories, is being conveyed because it is the capital E Essential excerpt from the gestalt lives of the characters, the story that will bring about monumental change, one they'll remember as well as we do (if they're in a position to do so by the end of it). There's a depth to every quiet beat at the end of an arc on THE PITT or HOMICIDE precisely /because/ while that arc is over in one sense, in another greater sense nothing has ended -- for all the criticality of their work, for however much they care, every character knows that their role in the lives of the people they serve is brief and transient. They know that for their own well-being if nothing else they will, in one way or another, abandon people in immense pain, knowing that there remain needs beyond address; they will be unable even to continue bearing witness. We've seen this happen many times already!
It's rare that you can wake up in the morning and truly say "this is a day that will loom in my mind", rarer still to end one truly satisfied with the differences you've made, and when you face mortality and loss every day, it puts you in a deeply existential place. As Garcia alluded to last week, we are halfway into one day's worth of work in this season. We are meant to understand that everything we see, even with the milestone of students hitting the floor for the first time, will likely be, in the medium- or long-term, a grain of sand in an hourglass. Faces and names will be forgotten, which is all the more dismaying for the few faces and names that are *remembered*.
(The scene with King and Langdon hit for my family -- despite what felt like inappropriate undertones from the latter -- because my mom's a nurse, and her best friend in med school dropped out of medicine early in his career because, working in the ED as spring turned to summer, he was there to see a seasonal surge in drowned children.)
All of this is to say that the commitment to (certain aspects of) realism -- and a close, unshowy style of editing -- can frustrate people who expect precision, economy, and resolution in their storytelling. But it's the precise lack of commitment to those things that allow the existential quality of the work to manifest. Again, I am probably wrong, but I'm hoping that, for example, the Santos / Langdon arc ends tenuously, perhaps painfully, but without the monumental consequences that we might expect from another show. THE PITT might notably overload its shift hourage with a delirious (but more engaging) number of critical cases, but it ought to stay balanced on that "it's one day of many" wire.
The Santos thing made no sense to me. At no point through this season of TV has she come off as someone who would give someone else credit for an idea she had. That whole interaction read to me as the show trying to giver her a save the cat moment out but much later than they should have because they realized they have made her way too unsympathetic. This was the first episode that I felt the seams of a TV show to me
If Santos had made more sense as a character up to now, the turn in this episode might have worked. "Senior resident rides new doc too hard, attending has to step in" seems like a perfectly plausible plot beat in this kind of show and Robby's setting Langdon straight was a good scene. But Santos has been such a cipher it's impossible to know how we're supposed to read the interaction.
I thought this was the bumpiest episode of the season so far, honestly.
The show has walked a tightrope well to this pount, in terms of tying events to social issues affecting the ED,* both because they've been brought directly to bear on the maladies depicted and because they've made good use of the diegetic pop quizzes put to interns and juniors without making them too contrived.** But this episode I really felt the writer's hand in the Hot Button Issue department.
The bum notes:
1) The waiting room fighter introduced spouting conspiracies. Such people obviously exist, but the execution here feels thin. For one thing, the real actual tension around PPE in 2025 is that (as disability advocates are constantly saying) the anti-maskers prevailed... and the danger that this woman actually presents to people in context is glided over, just as it often is irl. Langdon gets to shame her, but if nothing else is clear in tyool 2025, calling people hypocrisy is of very little value when you still allow the shameless action.
They flog this show as not-a-soap, but a point like this one shows a certain tendency to comfort fantasy (and ties to what's perhaps a necessary compromise for the TV medium, as irl most every clinical staffer would be masked in every patient interaction). I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people were down on THE PITT just for presenting COVID as a past haunting rather than (or rather in addition to) something still seen in EDs.
More than anything it feels obvious on a craft level. Having a character entering a scene screaming what their whole deal is, is bad writing. Virtually every other patient with one or two scenes, even the ugly cases, are allowed a little bit of depth or just normalcy, from under which character is revealed. That's not really the case here, and so the final dunk feels hollow, self-satisfied.
2) if we're going to incorporate COVID PTSD in emergency departments,*** the appearance of irresponsible MAGA chuds presents its own can of worms. I worked with clinicians in EDs and ICUs during COVID, and dangerously belligerent visitors and even patients were a significant (and openly recognized) problem. What I'm saying is, there's a certain specificity that I think you ought to bring to this specific issue, if you're going to raise this specter. Even if your intent is to demonstrate the battle-hardened professional poise of veteran ED staff. Maybe it's routine by now, but there has to be a sense of history to it imo.
3) It felt both very convenient for Langdon to be in place for a monologue over the waiting room PA, and the monologue itself felt over-seasoned to me.
* The abbrev. they use here and also irl, internally to hospitals; in the UK they call it A&E (for "ambulance and emergency", iirc)
** It's been pointed out that even med students wouldn't be grilled in this fashion irl in most places, but it's not outside the realm of possibility, and it works here on a dramatic level of conveying tension (or easing of said) between characters as much as it does clueing in audiences.
*** I've read and heard people say that the COVID-related stuff is heavy-handed or doesn't belong on the show, and having been on the ground at that time, that take utterly baffles me. I wasn't even a provider at the time (I train up and assist docs on clinical engineering machines -- haven't had hands on a LUCAS yet, but they have gadgets galore), and I remember 2020 more in my body than my mind's eye; just being in the ICU hallways put its mark on you. That the flashbacks and reactions from Robby read as melodramatic to people says more about them then it does the show, imo.
During nursing school, I worked in the ED (Emergency Dept, aka, "ER") of a major US east-coast teaching hospital. Also, my late husband was a professor of Emergency Medicine at same teaching hospital and my father was chief of Emergency Services for an urban hospital. My mother was as RN. So I kind of grew up around this.
The Pitt strikes me as very real in so many ways, but "off" in other, important ways. I understand that some things are "off" because slavish adherence to accuracy can interfere w/narrative.
First, some narrative "instincts":
1) I get the distinct feeling re Dr. McKay (the MD in recovery, with the ankle monitor) that the child she continually references as her "everything" is dead, and I think he may have died in a DUI crash w/McKay at the wheel. Most first-time DUI offenders don't stay out of prison, keep their medical licenses AND YET have to wear a bracelet unless something ELSE happened. Also, the dramatic arc with her story requires a plot twist. Just a thought. Not judging her. She's paying the price and can't face the fact. That's my gut.
2) I don't see Dr. Langdon as the med thief. I don't know who it is, but I know I'm not going to like the reveal.
3) I don't think the Covid PTSD is overplayed, dramatically or as an IRL depiction. Although EM personnel have a huge capacity for compartmentalizing.
Some things that are on point, that might be apparent to "outsiders":
1) My EM chief father and EM MD husband both died young. EM personnel don't take care of themselves. It usually makes them better at their jobs. A lot of the staff have trauma/medical tragedies in their own or family backgrounds. It's why they chose EM, and it can make them better at their jobs. It can also hurt them. Plan to see all of that happen.
2) The teaching is wonderful to watch.
3) A lot of pts are psych pts who need more long-term, consistent tx. The Pitt ED is accurately depicted as a dumping ground bc society refuses to or cannot provide l-t care for its most vulnerable. Many ED staff are jaded, pissed at psych pts. They (staff and pts) deserve kindness.
Some "off" things:
1) There are strict protocols to how nearly everything runs, especially for: Codes, strokes, STEMIs.
2) Triage is much more organized, esp wrt chest pain: e.g., the MAGA idiot waiting for 4h. If they're doing a second troponin on a pt, he should already be in a bed on a monitor, no matter how much of an asshole he is. Falls w/stricken head in an elderly pt. Syncope/altered mental status (AMS) in elderly. A farmer who comes in only bc his wife "made him." (This is an evergreen.)
2) Nurses run that shit: Nurses triage. Nurses meet pts. Nurses do IVs, administer drugs. (MDs order drugs.) If something isn't recorded in a chart, it didn't happen. The Pitt's nurses, esp until Ep 7, seemed like an afterthought.
3) I've seen CPR go on for hours. Young pts get the benefit of the doubt and, as long as blood is oxygenated and circulating (manually), it's hard to call it.
4) Sadly, actual ED staff spend WAY too much time trying to suss out if a pt is "drug-seeking." The Pitt is blessedly willing to believe pts and provide pain relief. The opioid epidemic was not about ED docs giving emergent pain relief. I hope The Pitt represents a new approach to pain treatment.
Agree with pretty much all your points. Santos' storyline still feels uneven. Loved the touch of having Whitaker join the street team too, would be cool if a 2nd season would give some throwback to that, though that's probably not very realistic given the show's format and way of storytelling.
McKay's motivations I found hard to get a real hold of. I feel we've seen her as being very empathetic but also pretty harsh towards people who she doesn't sympathize with (also had a pretty distinct feeling like you she was the one that called the cops). Also, had a few times this episode where I feel my lack of medical knowledge made it hard to sort of surmise what was or wasn't a measured response? The Langdong outburst towards Santos was uncomfortable, however she's shown really questionable judgement so Langdon berating her may just the beginning of the end of her very short learning stay at the ER (and possible her even being legally liable?). As with Collins calling out McKay for bias, I'm not sure if we're exactly supposed to know which one of the persons are in the right or wrong at this point.
Other than that pretty much enjoy the balance between background stories and the medical stuff. I feel we're at a point where we might've gotten a bit more insight into Robby's backstory with his previous supervisor (seems like they shelved that plotline in the middle section of the season) but also thought the Mateo/Victoria interaction was fun and well done and developed. I'm just HOPING that they're not going too hard into weird surreal drama territory given there's still a lot of unresolved storylines that feel like they need to be wrapped up.
Other thoughts:
- Maybe this will change over the coming weeks (Wyle's said the third of the season not screened for critics is "an entirely different show", which I'm not sure I'm hyped abt) but it feels like I've had an easier time than most watching the show as something which, despite its pacing, isn't necessarily calling its shots dramatically. Shows like BREAKING BAD have made good TV synonymous with friendliness to a certain meta-narrative critical approach: Swiss-watch tight, no wasted movement, rewarding viewers for "paying attention" (ie, gratifying ppl who scout plot arcs before they complete, or thrilling them with a juke).
I'm not sure THE PITT is doing that. I am probably wrong in my assumption! But I'm getting a lot more out of it when I scale back my expectations of the show's level of contrivance.
When you flirt with a "verite" style, you necessarily list toward "immersion", which is to say, a half-forgetting that everything you see is pre-written and plotted in advance. You start to impose a valence of reality onto the fiction, and as you do so you acclimate your audience, by degrees, to the story developing the way that real life develops: with catharsis and kismet happening rarely, if at all. The more you move away from glitz in style, the more you can get away with in terms of fucking with audience expectation in plot and character, and the less your (smaller but more refined) audience can cry foul when things don't unfold as they expect they might.
Last week I compared THE PITT to HOMICIDE LIFE ON THE STREET, and so far I still think there's a real sympathy between them in temperament: both focus on high-stress work that is alternately crushing and absurd, but more importantly, it's work that *never ends* even when a given case does (in part). That produces a grounding effect on narrative: a restlessness, a lack of satisfaction in going from one plot to the next. It is less about pacing, and more about a flinty long view of the stakes in any given situation. For every solved case or saved patient, there's a cold case or a lost patient.
It's a mode of storytelling which lacks the implied promise common to novels, which is that *this* particular story, out of all potential stories, is being conveyed because it is the capital E Essential excerpt from the gestalt lives of the characters, the story that will bring about monumental change, one they'll remember as well as we do (if they're in a position to do so by the end of it). There's a depth to every quiet beat at the end of an arc on THE PITT or HOMICIDE precisely /because/ while that arc is over in one sense, in another greater sense nothing has ended -- for all the criticality of their work, for however much they care, every character knows that their role in the lives of the people they serve is brief and transient. They know that for their own well-being if nothing else they will, in one way or another, abandon people in immense pain, knowing that there remain needs beyond address; they will be unable even to continue bearing witness. We've seen this happen many times already!
It's rare that you can wake up in the morning and truly say "this is a day that will loom in my mind", rarer still to end one truly satisfied with the differences you've made, and when you face mortality and loss every day, it puts you in a deeply existential place. As Garcia alluded to last week, we are halfway into one day's worth of work in this season. We are meant to understand that everything we see, even with the milestone of students hitting the floor for the first time, will likely be, in the medium- or long-term, a grain of sand in an hourglass. Faces and names will be forgotten, which is all the more dismaying for the few faces and names that are *remembered*.
(The scene with King and Langdon hit for my family -- despite what felt like inappropriate undertones from the latter -- because my mom's a nurse, and her best friend in med school dropped out of medicine early in his career because, working in the ED as spring turned to summer, he was there to see a seasonal surge in drowned children.)
All of this is to say that the commitment to (certain aspects of) realism -- and a close, unshowy style of editing -- can frustrate people who expect precision, economy, and resolution in their storytelling. But it's the precise lack of commitment to those things that allow the existential quality of the work to manifest. Again, I am probably wrong, but I'm hoping that, for example, the Santos / Langdon arc ends tenuously, perhaps painfully, but without the monumental consequences that we might expect from another show. THE PITT might notably overload its shift hourage with a delirious (but more engaging) number of critical cases, but it ought to stay balanced on that "it's one day of many" wire.
The Santos thing made no sense to me. At no point through this season of TV has she come off as someone who would give someone else credit for an idea she had. That whole interaction read to me as the show trying to giver her a save the cat moment out but much later than they should have because they realized they have made her way too unsympathetic. This was the first episode that I felt the seams of a TV show to me
If Santos had made more sense as a character up to now, the turn in this episode might have worked. "Senior resident rides new doc too hard, attending has to step in" seems like a perfectly plausible plot beat in this kind of show and Robby's setting Langdon straight was a good scene. But Santos has been such a cipher it's impossible to know how we're supposed to read the interaction.
I thought this was the bumpiest episode of the season so far, honestly.
The show has walked a tightrope well to this pount, in terms of tying events to social issues affecting the ED,* both because they've been brought directly to bear on the maladies depicted and because they've made good use of the diegetic pop quizzes put to interns and juniors without making them too contrived.** But this episode I really felt the writer's hand in the Hot Button Issue department.
The bum notes:
1) The waiting room fighter introduced spouting conspiracies. Such people obviously exist, but the execution here feels thin. For one thing, the real actual tension around PPE in 2025 is that (as disability advocates are constantly saying) the anti-maskers prevailed... and the danger that this woman actually presents to people in context is glided over, just as it often is irl. Langdon gets to shame her, but if nothing else is clear in tyool 2025, calling people hypocrisy is of very little value when you still allow the shameless action.
They flog this show as not-a-soap, but a point like this one shows a certain tendency to comfort fantasy (and ties to what's perhaps a necessary compromise for the TV medium, as irl most every clinical staffer would be masked in every patient interaction). I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people were down on THE PITT just for presenting COVID as a past haunting rather than (or rather in addition to) something still seen in EDs.
More than anything it feels obvious on a craft level. Having a character entering a scene screaming what their whole deal is, is bad writing. Virtually every other patient with one or two scenes, even the ugly cases, are allowed a little bit of depth or just normalcy, from under which character is revealed. That's not really the case here, and so the final dunk feels hollow, self-satisfied.
2) if we're going to incorporate COVID PTSD in emergency departments,*** the appearance of irresponsible MAGA chuds presents its own can of worms. I worked with clinicians in EDs and ICUs during COVID, and dangerously belligerent visitors and even patients were a significant (and openly recognized) problem. What I'm saying is, there's a certain specificity that I think you ought to bring to this specific issue, if you're going to raise this specter. Even if your intent is to demonstrate the battle-hardened professional poise of veteran ED staff. Maybe it's routine by now, but there has to be a sense of history to it imo.
3) It felt both very convenient for Langdon to be in place for a monologue over the waiting room PA, and the monologue itself felt over-seasoned to me.
* The abbrev. they use here and also irl, internally to hospitals; in the UK they call it A&E (for "ambulance and emergency", iirc)
** It's been pointed out that even med students wouldn't be grilled in this fashion irl in most places, but it's not outside the realm of possibility, and it works here on a dramatic level of conveying tension (or easing of said) between characters as much as it does clueing in audiences.
*** I've read and heard people say that the COVID-related stuff is heavy-handed or doesn't belong on the show, and having been on the ground at that time, that take utterly baffles me. I wasn't even a provider at the time (I train up and assist docs on clinical engineering machines -- haven't had hands on a LUCAS yet, but they have gadgets galore), and I remember 2020 more in my body than my mind's eye; just being in the ICU hallways put its mark on you. That the flashbacks and reactions from Robby read as melodramatic to people says more about them then it does the show, imo.
During nursing school, I worked in the ED (Emergency Dept, aka, "ER") of a major US east-coast teaching hospital. Also, my late husband was a professor of Emergency Medicine at same teaching hospital and my father was chief of Emergency Services for an urban hospital. My mother was as RN. So I kind of grew up around this.
The Pitt strikes me as very real in so many ways, but "off" in other, important ways. I understand that some things are "off" because slavish adherence to accuracy can interfere w/narrative.
First, some narrative "instincts":
1) I get the distinct feeling re Dr. McKay (the MD in recovery, with the ankle monitor) that the child she continually references as her "everything" is dead, and I think he may have died in a DUI crash w/McKay at the wheel. Most first-time DUI offenders don't stay out of prison, keep their medical licenses AND YET have to wear a bracelet unless something ELSE happened. Also, the dramatic arc with her story requires a plot twist. Just a thought. Not judging her. She's paying the price and can't face the fact. That's my gut.
2) I don't see Dr. Langdon as the med thief. I don't know who it is, but I know I'm not going to like the reveal.
3) I don't think the Covid PTSD is overplayed, dramatically or as an IRL depiction. Although EM personnel have a huge capacity for compartmentalizing.
Some things that are on point, that might be apparent to "outsiders":
1) My EM chief father and EM MD husband both died young. EM personnel don't take care of themselves. It usually makes them better at their jobs. A lot of the staff have trauma/medical tragedies in their own or family backgrounds. It's why they chose EM, and it can make them better at their jobs. It can also hurt them. Plan to see all of that happen.
2) The teaching is wonderful to watch.
3) A lot of pts are psych pts who need more long-term, consistent tx. The Pitt ED is accurately depicted as a dumping ground bc society refuses to or cannot provide l-t care for its most vulnerable. Many ED staff are jaded, pissed at psych pts. They (staff and pts) deserve kindness.
Some "off" things:
1) There are strict protocols to how nearly everything runs, especially for: Codes, strokes, STEMIs.
2) Triage is much more organized, esp wrt chest pain: e.g., the MAGA idiot waiting for 4h. If they're doing a second troponin on a pt, he should already be in a bed on a monitor, no matter how much of an asshole he is. Falls w/stricken head in an elderly pt. Syncope/altered mental status (AMS) in elderly. A farmer who comes in only bc his wife "made him." (This is an evergreen.)
2) Nurses run that shit: Nurses triage. Nurses meet pts. Nurses do IVs, administer drugs. (MDs order drugs.) If something isn't recorded in a chart, it didn't happen. The Pitt's nurses, esp until Ep 7, seemed like an afterthought.
3) I've seen CPR go on for hours. Young pts get the benefit of the doubt and, as long as blood is oxygenated and circulating (manually), it's hard to call it.
4) Sadly, actual ED staff spend WAY too much time trying to suss out if a pt is "drug-seeking." The Pitt is blessedly willing to believe pts and provide pain relief. The opioid epidemic was not about ED docs giving emergent pain relief. I hope The Pitt represents a new approach to pain treatment.
That's my brain dump. Love this show!
Agree with pretty much all your points. Santos' storyline still feels uneven. Loved the touch of having Whitaker join the street team too, would be cool if a 2nd season would give some throwback to that, though that's probably not very realistic given the show's format and way of storytelling.
McKay's motivations I found hard to get a real hold of. I feel we've seen her as being very empathetic but also pretty harsh towards people who she doesn't sympathize with (also had a pretty distinct feeling like you she was the one that called the cops). Also, had a few times this episode where I feel my lack of medical knowledge made it hard to sort of surmise what was or wasn't a measured response? The Langdong outburst towards Santos was uncomfortable, however she's shown really questionable judgement so Langdon berating her may just the beginning of the end of her very short learning stay at the ER (and possible her even being legally liable?). As with Collins calling out McKay for bias, I'm not sure if we're exactly supposed to know which one of the persons are in the right or wrong at this point.
Other than that pretty much enjoy the balance between background stories and the medical stuff. I feel we're at a point where we might've gotten a bit more insight into Robby's backstory with his previous supervisor (seems like they shelved that plotline in the middle section of the season) but also thought the Mateo/Victoria interaction was fun and well done and developed. I'm just HOPING that they're not going too hard into weird surreal drama territory given there's still a lot of unresolved storylines that feel like they need to be wrapped up.