No More Fireworks - The Pitt s02e03

Towards the middle of this week’s episode of The Pitt, something felt… off. Things were too easy. There was enough time for Dr. Robby to sit with the woman who had survived the Tree of Life shooting. Cassie’s discussions with her erratic patient had a lackadaisical quality to them. Even the campus security officer who tased the erratic student that bridged the last episode with this one got to sit around in the middle of the central hub and no one made any comments about him needing to be elsewhere. The backlog of patients stuck in the waiting room remains constant, but it all seemed… handled.

By the end of the episode, it’s clear why that’s the case, and the imminent influx of patients sets up an ominous next few hours.

In the meantime, though, The Pitt took this calm-before-the-storm episode to explore the various different kinds of couple and a meditation on a very real Pittsburgh tragedy. Without the high octane punch this show can so regularly have, it would be easy to dismiss this as a lesser installment, but the air needs to come out of the balloon at some point, and considering what’s coming next… it’s hard to be mad.

Whole lotta couple time

If there’s a major recurring theme to this episode, it’s in the various permutations of couples and how they function. Santos is working on a potential abuse case involving a girl, her father, and his girlfriend. Cassie meets the ex-wife/emergency contact of the man with the mass in his brain. The surviving victims of the car crash are a husband/wife pair. And there’s even a moment of flirtation between Dr. Al and Robby where she retorts “I’m looking for cooperation, not commitment,” adding to the sense that these two are the functional mom & dad of the Trauma Center this season.

Kylie, her dad, and his girlfriend

Kylie’s father (Benny) comes in as the model of a concerned dad, though because we spend so much time in Santos’s perspective (and because we know to take abuse allgations very seriously) it’s hard to not distrust him before we’ve even heard anything about him. Given what we know about Santos from last season and her tenacity when it comes to abuse cases, it’s no surprise she’s quick to judgment, though it’s easy to ignore this season’s social worker (Dylan) and his statements that he doesn’t think Kylie is a victim of abuse. He doesn’t see what we (or Santos) have seen.

This can be hard to do, but a threaded motif of this show is a quickness to dismiss professionals’ diagnostics in the wake of medical prognosis. There is no reason we shouldn’t trust Dylan, or at least listen to what he has to say. He’s taking it very seriously (it’s his job) but his ability to perceive these situations is one he’s honed to a far sharper nuance than Santos. If he says he’s not getting an abuse vibe from all this, that counts for something. Santos, though lacks the wisdom of decades in the practice. While it’s right for her to say something and for her and Dylan to pull Benny aside when he’s arrived to speak privately about sensitive topics, it’s a massive mistake to have the intern be the one to drop the big bombshell about the bruising. She’s still young and lacks the finnese of Dylan and his expertise. It immediately leads to a screaming match and also probably sets the tone for Benny’s interactions with his girlfriend for the rest of the episode (and probably the next).

Children can get hurt. They’re crazy little beings who are fragile and also regularly (yet unwittingly) put themselves in hazardous situations because they don’t know better. What’s going on with Kylie isn’t abuse (or at least, the evidence for it is increasingly thin), but that doesn’t mean they’re not right to check. It’s just…. maybe Santos should have taken a back seat here.

Not that that’s ever been Santos’s MO…

And… the second he shows up Benny is the picture of a seriously concerned father whose daughter’s brief hospitalization has distressed him. But it’s wild how much my brain was quick to be like “just because he’s showing care and love doesn’t mean he can’t be an absolute shit bag” and even though the show was showing him as deeply sympathetic I always returned to that speculative state. It sucks that we’re at a place where the world’s shittiness means that once the topic of abuse comes up, it colors every possible moment of empathy and compassion. Maybe some day we can get to a place where the spectre of abuse isn’t a poison pill/scarlet letter. Unfortunately, that’s going to take a long time.

What’s more interesting is trying to figure out what’s going on at home. Kylie’s dad’s girlfriend didn’t have to mention the roughhousing/wrestling, but she did. And it seems like he was quick to jump down her throat as trying to undermine his parenting. Eventually she leaves after a screaming match, and it feels like whatever’s going on at home might be splash damage that’s affecting Kylie’s shyness. Who knows.

An ex-wife learns about her ex-husband’s possible brain tumor

There are a number of heart-breaking storylines in this episode, but Cassie’s working with erratic patient Michael Williams might be the stealth saddest. His emergency contact is his ex-wife and she spends her time this episode trying to reconcile the idea that his strange behavior in the twilight of their marriage was possibly a byproduct of this mass in his brain rather than him… just becoming a dick.

It’s possible they wouldn’t have worked out, but the idea falling apart for reasons having nothing to do with them (and probably a little bit from him not going to the hospital) is something she’s going to have to live with. It’s also time she can’t get back. Life moved on; so did she. But… they were married. Should she have stuck with him to help him through this? At least a little bit? That last beat where she asks to remain his emergency contact reflects that guilt and lingering sense of responsibility and what she feels she owes.

This hasn’t come up a lot (and honestly it might not), but it reminds me of Dr. Robby’s relationship with Jake and in the twilight of last season. Even though Robby’s relationship with his girlfriend fizzled before we met him, social lives have a tail, and the more intertwined they are the harder and longer it is to disentangle. It’s possible they patched things up after the Pittfest shooting, but that sort of system shock is the thing that can rip relationships apart if it’s traumatic enough.

The car crash couple

Mark and Nancy survive a car crash, though for Mark this results in the discovery of a rare disorder that can leave him paralyzed from potassium deficiency.

Shows like The Pitt thrive on revelations like this. Where the infinite complexities of the human body mean seemingly simple problems reveal developments that each add up to a full understanding of any given situation. Mark’s paralysis isn’t exactly related to the crash (though the shock of it probably caused it) but it means they have to be careful with diagnosis and care lest something bad happen by acting too quickly. It’s why Dr. Al’s assessment in the premiere feels foolhardy. It was her looking for a specific solution rather than encouraging trainees to listen and learn and work through the endless possibilities.

And then there’s Nancy, who is the picture of a supportive wife, staying on her feet just long enough to ensure Mark’s wellbeing before collapsing due to undiagnosed internal bleeding. Again, people only know what they can see or discern. If there are patients hiding things, it’s hard to pull that information out of them.

Mark & Nancy’s reconciliation is beautiful, though, and the video he makes to send to her is so touching and speaks to them reversing the slow decay Nancy mentioned.

Dr. Robby and his helmet

Not wearing his helmet in the premiere felt like a major oversight on the part of production. Oh cool. Noah Wylie is taking his “I won an Emmy” star energy and showboating seriously unsafe motorcycle practices.

Nope. Show knew what it was doing.

It’s shocking how fast Dr. Robby bounces from the motorcycle fatality. Joy calls out that they’re not taking a minute, but it’s almost like Robby wants no part of it. Which is… unsurprising, really. He absolutely lies about wearing a helmet. It’s a throwaway line, but it increases the dramatic irony of the situation. We know Robby is riding with his dome exposed and he’s talking about how his sabbatical is going to involve him going to Canada on a motorcycle trip. This is extremely dangerous, and without early, explicit insight into his mental state, we’re less privy to him than we were at this point last season. There, the spectre of his mentor’s death blanketed the season in a fog of loss, death, and despair.

This season’s is less clear, though the helmet is going to play a role in whatever we’re going to learn. Has to.

Today’s shift is going all too easy

It’s remarkable how fast the day shift is moving through all its various patients. The taser victim? Sedated, barbs out, and gone by the ten minute mark. The motorcycle guy? Nothing we can do; he’s dead. Mark? Handled in the space of an hour. Nancy? Immediately diagnosed after her fall and sent up to the OR within minutes of collapsing.

After last season, I’m so used to lingering cases and heavy storylines that will cover multiple episodes. This time last season, the fentanyl overdose kid was already gone. And the children who had to say goodbye to their father were prolonging what Dr. Robby knew was already a lost case.

So when word of the Code Black comes in, it’s like… yeah. This is all too easy. They’re about to get an influx of patients as a nearby hospital diverts them the Pitt’s way.

Also? In the U.S. a Code Black is a high danger emergency status for hospitals. A quick search doesn’t reveal what it means in Pennsylvania, but in other states this can mean like… a bomb threat. And who knows if that’s going to ripple to the trauma center in ways that’s more than just patients.

Something to look forward to, I guess.

Stray Observations…

• The security guard feels like a real douchebag considering there’s seemingly nothing wrong with the tasing victim. Odds that might play out next hour?
• Louie calls Pittsburgh the fireworks capital of the world. Great.
• Not much Langdon this week, but being privy to the Hansen family who pool their meds is a great way to emphasize the character and a moral clarity on his struggle with addiction. Given that there’s more patients getting diverted though, the hospital will need a lot more of him soon.
• I mentioned the woman who survived the Tree of Life shooting briefly, but taking time to speak about the lingering aftermath of shooting victims emphasizes that just because a shooter’s end doesn’t mean that’s all of the story. This woman had a flashback because she heard firecrackers and that sent her into a tizzy. The immediate, direct victims and casualties of the physicality of gun violence is something to hold onto. That psychological scarring can last longer, and it’s also worth our remembering and attention.
• There’s no great hazing for Emma this week and that’s a bummer. Nice for her to get a break, but less good for my laughing at one of this season’s early runners.
• Michael Nouri guest stars as Mr. Montrose. While he’s a character actor who’s been around for ages, I never realized he looks like a cross between Alfred Molina and Richard Kind.
• Great to see a moment of Dr. Al’s bedside manner. After two episodes where she’s been a bit stiff and technical, her capacity to empathize with Nancy and walk her through her husband’s low potassium situation was excellent. Can’t wait to see more of this.
• Dana kicking Ogilvie out of her chair was so good.
• Looking ahead, it sounds like Kylie’s mom will be here by 11, so either in the back half of the next episode or early in the one after that. So it looks like we’ve still more to come. There’s also the indication that Papa Hansen is going to be here for the next four hours, which means another four episodes of staring at these truly tacky Hansen Family t-shirts.
• Gross-out moment of the week: Gotta be the uncovering the head wound that exposes the motocyclist’s brain. Between that and 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, it’s been a big few weeks for people who love seeing realistic looking gray matter.

Next time…

Whole lotta patients incoming means the betting wall is back. God yes. Love the betting wall.