Please, allow me this brief indulgence to step away from talking about Jack Black toys and Game Pass games to talk about my actual current addiction, Max’s “The Pitt,” and a weirdly calming hour of television that involved a mass trauma response that I’m still thinking about this morning.
If you’ve been following me on Bluesky (and if not, why aren’t you?), then you know I’ve been in the midst of a relentless love/hate affair with “The Pitt,” the popular (and yet legally embattled) medical drama from the creators of “ER.” We were very much an “ER” family when I was growing up. I revisited the first nine seasons recently and was very surprised to discover it still holds up as some of the best television I’ve ever watched, though I still checked out once Anthony Edwards’ Dr. Mark Greene died as I couldn’t bring myself to care about the new cast. I should give it another shot soon, but I don’t know if I need to since “The Pitt” scratches that itch in a big way.
The following contains spoilers for “The Pitt,” now streaming on Max. It also contains discussion of medical procedures, mass shooting events, and trauma response.
Falling into The Pitt
“The Pitt” follows a crew of perpetually harried ER staff led by the perpetually stressed Dr. “Robby” Robinavitch, played by “ER” alum Noah Wyle, as he manages both a chaotic hospital and a roving band of medical students just starting their internships. The premise of the show: each episode depicts an hour in roughly real-time of one grueling 15-hour shift in the Pittsburg Trauma Medical Hospital’s emergency department — the titular Pitt. In this instance, the chief source of tension comes from Robby himself, who has picked up a shift on the fifth anniversary of the death of his mentor, Dr. Adamson. Adamson’s death occurred during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic and appears to have come about because Robby had to make a tough call.
To briefly expound upon why it’s great, the show is everything I loved about early “ER.” Within the scope of “The Pitt,” the patients are not the focus and are just there to propel the plot forward. The real drama lies in the doctors and their responses to what they’re being faced with. The real excitement lies in the visceral and, by all accounts, technically accurate depiction of emergency medicine.
“The Pitt” pulls no punches in that regard and uses the freedom afforded by Max’s lack of censorship to great effect. Episode one depicts a degloving injury, to which every doctor-turned-YouTuber I’ve watched has responded with some variation of “Oh god! Yeah, that’s what that looks like.”
The show has continued to depict more and more gruesome and technically impressive medical procedures. Floating faces, severed digits, and lots of tubes going down throats. To top it off, episode 11 depicted childbirth with the kind of detail and attention that is usually reserved for educational videos.
This brings me to what I wanted to discuss in this piece: episode 12, rather plainly titled “6:00 PM.” The seeds for this episode were laid all the way back in the first episode, when a woman revealed she had made herself sick to get help for her teenage son, David. She found a list of girls he wants to “hurt,” and is afraid of what he’s going to do but doesn’t know where to turn for help. Convinced he’s just seeing a kid who is grieving his recently deceased father, Robby attempts to talk to him, but David bolts from the hospital. This leads to a recurring season-long narrative where Robby is bouncing between David’s mother, who is worried about how her son will react if he learns what she’s done, and resident Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif), whose own experiences lead her to pressure Robby about whether he’s placing David’s wellbeing above that of the girls on the list.
Episode 11 ends with the reveal that there’s been a mass shooting at a music festival in town (where, coincidentally, the son of Robby’s ex-girlfriend, Jake, is, thanks to tickets he got from Robby). And so we arrive at the 6 PM hour, as Robby, down two residents and on the cusp of losing his charge nurse, has to prepare for what sounds like an overwhelming number of victims.
Which is why I was so damn shocked by just how calm Episode 12 felt.
The Calm During the Storm
As “6:00 PM” starts, we’re not given any further time to adjust to the previous week’s cliffhanger about the shooting. Robby is already in the thick of handing out responsibilities in a brisk, energetic opening sequence that sees new and unfamiliar faces rallying. We’ve spent the past several weeks watching these characters butt heads and damn near come to blows. Wards refuse to give up beds, ORs are perpetually full, and a hospital admin keeps wandering down to pester doctors about satisfaction scores, even as nurses are being punched out by patients furious over wait times.
So it was honestly wild to see none of that matter in a true demonstration of how people come together in a crisis. Multiple ORs are suddenly open. Patients we’ve seen waiting on rooms for days are found a space elsewhere while the entire ER lobby is transformed into a huge medical bay. Even that pesky administrator is down here, conceding to Robby’s expertise and demanding he get whatever he needs.
The episode sets up so much potential for drama. Charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa), still sporting a black eye from getting punched two episodes ago, is running point, but it’s hard to forget that she was getting ready to quit not 20 minutes earlier in the show’s continuity. The night shift attending, Dr. Shen (Ken Kirby), is introduced here, but he seems so incredibly flippant; he’s just sipping on a coffee while he reminds Robby he was only a resident the year prior and almost dismissive of attempts to quiz him over protocol. An all-hands message has been sent out, but the one doctor you know Robby can rely on isn’t answering after he let her go home (and eagle-eyed fans surely figured out that the one doctor he can’t trust — whose pill-popping habits Robby discovered a few episodes earlier — will show up).
When it’s time to roll, there’s no warning. There’s no long headway. No prolonged moment of doctors standing in a dark alley waiting (like “ER” did!). The first ambulances roll in, the first patients show up, and…it just happens. For the next 30 or so minutes, you’re in the thick of what one doctor referred to as “no frills, combat medicine.” Slap bracelets determine where a patient goes, be it surgery, observation, or their “morgue” (a converted pediatrics lounge). The lobby of the ER is now a massive medical wing, and doctors are furiously bouncing from gurney to gurney, shouting procedures and working magic.
There’s still chaos. Supplies immediately begin dwindling, resulting in some honestly worrying improvisation, and more and more gruesome injuries are rolling in. And yes, that one pill-popping doctor does show up, but Robby seems wise enough to concede that now is not the time to fight that battle. As this all goes on, we keep being reminded that nobody can find Jake. To add insult to injury, nobody can find the believed shooter, David, either — but they have pinged his cell phone to the festival.
Technical showchaos
What I’ve honestly loved the most about “The Pitt” so far has been the technical display of medical procedures and incidents juxtaposed with the stories surrounding the doctors themselves. It’s what made “ER” so appealing back in the day, and it’s something that is mastered here.
That seemingly flippant Dr. Shen? Turns out he’s got this shit on lock. He’s moving with such skill and confidence that he outpaces Robby and still has time for a joke. Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), last seen in the first episode seemingly debating jumping off the hospital roof before leaving for the day, rebuffs Robby’s need for a helping hand (“I got two hands!” he almost jovially shouts as he prepares to insert multiple chest tubes). He’s clearly upset on more than one occasion, especially when grimly declaring a patient “didn’t make it” while directing them to their “morgue,” but then it’s right back into the fray.
The other doctors come into their own, too. The notoriously slow Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) demonstrates she has some real ability under fire. Medical student wunderkind Dr. Javadi (Shabana Azeez) breaks out of her shell to not only push back against the chief surgeon (who is also her mother because why not) in one of the episode’s few instances of friction, but the tone of the moment quickly shifts back when Javadi brilliantly improvises a chest tube out of what amounts to spare parts.
In fact, it’s Robby who seems most out of place here, in a refreshing change of pace. He’s bouncing from patient to patient, as he has for most of the series, offering advice and performing incredibly complex procedures with a deft hand and uncanny knowledge. But in most cases, where Robby goes, he seems less and less needed. It’s not a sad moment, but a surefire sign that Robby is just that damn good at his job. He’s trained most of the people in this building at some point or another, and they’re all on top of it.
That’s also why, yet again, I found myself screaming, “oh COME ON,” as the show ended on yet another cliffhanger. At 40 minutes, “6:00 PM” is the shortest episode to date. Even by that metric, it flew by. I found myself slipping into the rhythm and pacing of the show itself. Every victim that rolled into the ambulance bay was just another necessity. Every time Robby looked at his phone to see no response from Jake was another brief respite before diving back in.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. The hate part of my love/hate relationship is tied to those cliffhangers. I swear, every episode has ended with me wishing they had dropped every episode at once. I don’t often immediately rewatch a show, but there’s probably a binge rewatch of this in my near-to-immediate future.
Look, every episode of this show has stuck with me to date, but only enough for me to shoot out a tweet. I always figured if I wrote anything about “The Pitt,” it would be a season recap after the end. That I felt the need to write this stream of consciousness about the episode should tell you how much it’s stayed with me this time. If you’ve been on the fence about “The Pitt” or you’ve got an “ER” sized hole in your heart, you’re honestly missing out on this one — though I wouldn’t blame you if you waited a few more weeks to just binge the whole thing. Damn, those cliffhangers are brutal.
“The Pitt” is available to stream now on Max, with new episodes releasing every Thursday.
Great write-up! This episode also had me enthralled at the competence on display the entire time.