What's up, Mel... ancholia? - The Pitt s02e01

Ahhhh that’s the good stuff.

In a world where attention has become a precious resource that corporations seek to extract from us, there is an ongoing struggle in media to best capture audience attention. Netflix, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram… all of these services emphasize the idea of keeping eyeballs past the first five seconds (and sometimes less). It’s led to a system where grabbing attention is far more important than holding it.

Compare that to the new season of The Pitt, which opens with no less than three gorgeous establishing shots of Pittsburgh. Based on last season, there’s no reason to think we’ll spend much (or any) time outside the immediate vicinity of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, and yet those three shots felt like a wonderful, glorious arrival for one of television’s best shows. The Pitt is back. Is there anything more lovely?

After the explosive fireworks and insane trial by fire at the climax of last season, it should feel like a letdown that this season’s premiere is an extremely slow, table-setting episode. It’s all about bringing in/back the characters who will play a role in the next 15 episodes/hours. It’s not an infinite amount of intrigue, but more than anything “7:00 AM” does exactly what any television series should want. Back in this world again, we’re one hour into the 15 hours over the next 15 weeks we get to live in this nightmare zone.

I couldn’t be more excited.

Going on Sabbatical

Almost immediately, the show establishes that the day this season takes place is Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wylie) final day before a long-awaited three-month sabbatical. It feels like he hasn’t taken any time off after his total breakdown last we saw him, but it’s a terrible choice to keep highlighting this as his “last day.” When I told my partner this premise this season, the response that came was “one last heist.” Bad omens.

That creates a bunch of interesting dynamics immediately. The most obvious of them is the arrival of an interrim attending physician named Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi). She’s someone with a totally different management style, but more on her in a second.

As for Robby, there are all sorts of small hints that he’s still tender even though we’re coming back ten months later. He is still prioritizing the soul of the institution rather than its clothes. He is quick to scoff at Baran’s imminent moves to swing the hospital in the more PR direction hospital administrator Gloria Underwood (Michael Hyatt) wants, but the most telling moment is when he pauses at the large display plaque on the wall commemorating last season’s climactic hours as the trauma center. It’s a nice effort, but its installation is a gesture after which the hospital can move on. Robby (and those around him) are not so lucky. They’ll have to carry that weight (and the weight of every other day) with them forever.

New attending

Baran as the new complication is already fabulous. She has tremendous charisma and is already instituting her changes even though Robby hasn’t gotten out the door yet. It’s possible that the season is setting up some big clash between the two, but it’s more likely this is a friction that will persist until they both learn the virtues of each other’s styles. She’ll have her hero moment. It’s inevitable.

As to what makes her different? When we meet her she’s running some of the med students through a “mock code” to test their capabilities. It has a solution. They don’t figure it out. The fake patient dies. In building this scenario, Baran has tasked them with a situation where the priority is not a patient’s stabilization & survival, but rather their ability to find the specific solution that will solve her esoteric puzzle. With the previous season under our belts, we know that solving an intricate problem is not nearly as important as saving a life. Pray she doesn’t have to figure that out the hard way.

Already there are hints that she might be in over her head. Baran comes from the VA, which doesn’t have an active trauma center like The Pitt (where it is nonstop), so when the big central trauma surgery happens and the EMTs wheel in the stab would that provides the big medical peril of the episode, she feels a little out of place. She trips over Robby and has to check herself when he takes the lead. But there’s also a light fear in her eyes at the prospect of such high stakes medical action happening in a live environment. As Robby calmly describes the massive blood loss using terms like “put a kink in the hose” and “we’ve stopped the leak, let’s fill up the tank”, it comes with the ease of a seasoned veteran who can illustrate these complex situations with simple metaphors.

When they’ve finally managed to stabilize the patient, Baran quips at him “unconventional, but a decent outcome”. Hell of a comment considering everything worked just like he suspected it would. It was certainly perilous and not a guarantee, but there was no point where it felt like Robby wasn’t in control of the situation.

Most interestingly, the episode ends with her, as she reacts to a note we don’t see and stares down at the abandoned baby feeling… something. It’s a bit of intrigue, but it doesn’t… work. Not yet anyway. We barely know Baran, and it’s far less than the end of season one’s premiere, with its flashback to Dr. Robby in the midst of the COVID criss. That one might have felt like a bit of shock value, but by the end of the season it paid off by providing texture to showcase his headspace as the lead of this particular ensemble. This is probably something like that, but it’s hard to judge anything further this early.

It’s the only misstep in the episode, but we’ll check in at the end of the season to see if it pays off. Knowing this show, it’s almost certain it will.

Hanging out with friends again

It doesn’t take long to lose track of Dr. Robby as he moves to the day’s work. There are so many other characters to check in with and the show bounces around to each one with its usual lightfooted grace. Mel has a deposition today and the stress of that is eating up a lot of her brain space. Dennis has really grown up since we last saw him, moving from the punching bag last season to the one chaperoning newbies and teaching them esoteric protocols. Victoria’s mother is still breathing down her neck. And Trinity is as ambitious and opinionated as ever.

Mostly, seeing these characters again is slipping into a warm bath. The joy comes from the breezy introduction of any new dynamics that have come up.

The new characters are also good, and it’s hardly surprising that recent graduate Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard) lands in Dana’s lap as an fresh nurse to mentor. It can feel redundant to learn again about The Pitt and how it works, and yet the show itself is so fascinating with all of its intricacies and specificity that it’s hard to mind. Can’t wait to see what fresh hell this season puts her through.

The central question of any story

So… “why today?” Season one answered that with an ending that was a dramatic, harrowing, baptism of fire for the entire ensemble. It’s silly to think the show would run it back and do a mass shooting again (as they’ve already done it and it would mess with the “reality” the show established; they get to pull something like that once), but there are questions about why this season will again overrun those extra three hours beyond the day shift’s usual clock-out at 12. The promotional trailers have teased a massive network outage coming, and losing the computer system complicates a system built on technology. Robby shouting “we’re going analog!” has been a major push in the marketing this season. My guess is we’re maybe six episodes away from that happening. That’s not where we’re going to end up.

There’s something else happening here that isn’t Dr. Robby’s last day before a long-needed break or the deposition Mel is going to sit through at some point. This is also Dr. Langdon’s return after time away getting his shit back together/getting clean.

I was speaking to a friend a few weeks ago about the first season, and while he liked the show a lot, he said that The Pitt’s lack of resolution with certain aspects were a bit agitating. The Langdon question mark was a huge part of that, as the audience didn’t get to see what happened after Robby expelled him from The Pitt for stealing meds from patients. This, however, was outside the scope of the show, and in just one episode we’ve already started to see the light sketching of what that has entailed. He’s been in rehab. He’s been away so long he has a new locker. And it’s clear this is the first time he’s been around Trinity since she ratted him out.

If anything, Langdon is a great example of why The Pitt is so satisfying week after week. He’s certainly present in this episode, but it’s not like establishing his current status quo shortchanges anyone else. To the contrary, they accomplish it so economically that it leaves room for everyone in this sizable cast to have a moment re-establishing them. That, and there’s still time for Langdon’s contrition to Louie. It’s a powerful moment, and fits in with the Narcotics Anonymous program Robby demanded Langdon enter as part of his opioid addiction. He is on the road to recovery, but there’s still a long way to go. The one person who matters most to him (Robby) is not letting him in, relegating him to triage and keeping their intimacy to the bare minimum. It’s going to take a lot for that reconciliation to happen, and I’m not holding my breath that it will happen in this season. They’ll figure something out, but… there’s a lot more day to go.

14 hours left…

The remaining feeling of the episode, though, is that… this is just television. That’s a simple statement, but in a world where television is so event-driven, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the medium has shifted to fill the void left by creator-driven films. It’s mostly stopped playing to its strengths.

The Pitt is is a wonderful television show that feels just so calming to live in. It is incredibly graphic and not for the squeamish, and even though I know there will be some serious pain in the coming episodes (we’re already dealing with child peril), just being back in these hallways, in these bedrooms, in the trauma center… it all just feels like walking into the Sunnydale High School library or the Greendale College study room or the Cheers bar or Monica’s apartment. Whether it’s Trinity and Victoria gossipping about Baran, or Robby walking in past all the characters we’re going to spend this episode (or the rest of the season) learning about, this does what television does best. It’s a feeling that television so rarely gives nowadays. The hang out. The spending of time. The slow roll of a story that’s not in any rush because it’s a long-form medium. The plot can feature a surgery where blood spills all over the floor and the doctors gingerly flip a lung 180º to stem the tide. That’s just another hour in what will be many more to come.

It shouldn’t feel revolutionary, but there’s so much value to a show like this, one that executes a great premise at this level. It’s so technical, but the characters eternally, always shine through without feeling ridiculous or precocious. It’s what’s gonna keep audiences coming back for years, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the season has in store.

God it’s good to be back.

Stray thoughts

• Yo Doctor Robby what the hell are you doing riding that motorcycle without a helmet. And then for the show to call it out later with the kid who got in the bike accident?
• Speaking of, Mel being so clueless she misses the moment about caffeine but perks up at the sound of boba? She’s the best.
• The woman who cleans up the blood in the trauma room is a nice little moment. It helps to build the show beyond just the doctors, also giving security guards and receptionists and the like small little moments. They’re very small, but that attention to detail adds these flairs of texture that add to The Pitt’s real, lived-in location just as much as the insane effects/prosthetics work. That only comes from hiring good actors who know there’s no part too small and that every line comes from a living, breathing character.
• Speaking of the medical effects, that big surgery where they flip the lung was gnarly as hell. I’ve slowly been working my way through ER in the months since I finally watched this show, but The Pitt’s ability to show this level of medical detail on an HBO budget with HBO’s premium cable standards really does result in some of the craziest shit I’ve ever seen. It’s almost hypnotic at times.
• The deaf patient in the waiting room is probably something they’re setting up to pay off later, but if it isn’t, it allows the show to play with the space in interesting ways. If it had just been a scene of the woman screaming about the baby left in the bathroom, it would have felt like… a scene we’ve seen a hundred times. Creating that sense of intrigue and alienation shows that the show is not content to present things as we have seen them before. They’re thinking about how best to show information.
• The moment where medical student Joy says “this guy is dead anyway” before the big surgery captures Dr. Robby’s attention in an interesting way. It’s terribly brief, but I’m curious to see if this pays off somehow, especially considering this character is new and Dr. Robby’s fight against fatalism is… part of his ongoing struggle.
• A dozen weed cookies a day is so many weed cookies. My word.

Until next week! Can’t wait to see what happens next.