Making Medicine: Television Review of The Pitt
★★★★
By Geoff Carter
Illustration by Michael DiMilo
I—and many of my boomer friends—grew up watching TV medical dramas. They were everywhere. Medical Center, St. Elsewhere, Dr. Kildare, Ben Casey, Marcus Welby, M.C., M*A*S*H*, and dozens of others kept popping up like weeds on network television. Most were dramas, but some, like M*A*S*H* and Scrubs delved into comedy while another series, Grey’s Anatomy, experimented with musical comedy as well. Quincy M.E., Diagnosis Murder, and Crossing Jordan pushed medicine into the courtroom while the series China Beach and Combat Zone took doctors into war zones. And on and on. The variations seem endless, and yet audiences have never tired of watching doctors and nurses heroically cure the sick, many times at the expense of their own health and well-being.
While the recent success of HBO’s The Pitt seems to align with America’s past and present (Chicago Med) fascination with medical drama, this particular series is achieving unparallelled popularity and critical acclaim, which begs the question of why this particular series, among all other past and previous medical programs, is receiving so much more positive attention?
Created by R. Scott Gemmill and produced by Noah Wylie and John Wells, one of the original producers of the nineties series E.R., which also starred Wylie as Dr. John Carter, The Pitt strives to portray modern problems faced by contemporary health care workers. Issues like COVID, the spread of health misinformation, homeless care, immigration policy, insurance deficiencies, and worker burnout are addressed in the course of one day in the ED (emergency department).
The show is broken into fifteen hour-long episodes, each depicting a real hour in the workday of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center—the Pitt. Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wylie) is the attending physician. Since the Pitt is a teaching hospital, he oversses a large group of a varied group medical students and residents as well as being the senior doctor on staff.
The residents are Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) and Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor), both senior residents; Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) is a third-year resident; Dr. Mel King (Taylor Deardon) is a second-year resident, and Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones), an intern. They are young people—kids mostly—who are engaged in high-stress and high-stakes on-the-job-training. Some have families, some have anger issues, some have been in trouble with the law, and some have problems at home. There’s something for everybody here.
The staff not only has to manage life-and-death situations, but they also have to navigate through their own aspirations and expectations as doctors. These characters—as happens in so many other medical dramas—could have been portrayed as little more than cardboard cut-outs, but thanks to the brilliant writing in The Pitt, they are deeply complex and believable characters.
This group of future physicians is herded and managed by the unflappable and no-nonsense charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), whose gravelly voice and drill-sergeant mentality is tempered by her patience and compassion with the residents. Her coolness and composure anchor the chaos of this emergency room—and there is non-stop action—which is a main attraction for viewers.
The waiting room is always full, waiting times are horrendous, there are rarely hospital beds available for patients upstairs, and patients who need off-site care with psychological, financial aid, or social services cannot always be helped immediately. There is an acute staffing shortage. People are overworked and underpaid.
While other medical dramas, specifically those set in emergency rooms, attempted to make the mayhem and injuries of an urban emergency room as realistic is possible, The Pitt has reached a new level in anatomically correct realism. Broken bones, car crashes, amputations, and shootings are presented with a degree of detail that is difficult to watch but even more difficult to turn away from. Sometimes the unorthodox emergency procedures used to save lives are fascinating and even a little shocking, but Dr. Robby’s constant examination of his residents concerning their diagnostic skills sets a tone of discipline and order within the noise and chaos.
Apart from depicting the chaos and stress of treating blunt trauma, as well as the latest in medical technique, The Pitt manages to demonstrate compassion and empathy toward their patients and their families. In one scene, the staff stops what they’re doing and stands in respect as a recently deceased patient—and organ donor—is wheeled out of the emergency department. In another episode, when a long-time recurring patient who happens to be homeless passes away suddenly, Dana and the nurses clean him up so he can be properly visited by the staff and residents before going to the morgue. Families of seriously injured or dying patients are always treated with respect.
The Pitt also explores a number of current issues affecting the practice of medicine in each episode. Everything from vehement anti-vaxxers refusing treatment for a seriously ill offspring to a father of a family frightened to death of astronomical medical bills to an ICE agent bringing in a prisoner for treatment and disrupting the entire department to assaults on medical staff to any number of patients trusting “Dr. Google” and their own judgement more than that of medical professionals is depicted as real-life patient/doctor problems. When a terminally ill cancer patient no longer wants treatment, Dr. Robby’s solution is not only merciful but elegantly rational.
One of the advantages of following a streaming series is extended arc of character development. The changes a character goes through—or doesn’t—allows the viewer to garner a greater insight into what makes that person tick. The best series like Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and Slow Horses are masterful at this, but The Pitt—so far, at least—has proved to be among the best at managing and developing its diverse stable of characters.
The Pitt is not only a fun and exciting watch (a great binge), but it is a thoughtful and insightful examination of the American medical profession—with all its warts intact—as well as an unflinching look at ourselves as people. Our humanity—or lack of it—is on full display in this series, as is the dedication and sacrifice of our medical professionals at every level. The courage and selflessness of these medical workers is a paragon that could–and should–be followed by us as a people.
This show is wonderfully acted and directed. The real-time premise in its structure only adds to the urgency and immediacy of the life-and-death struggles of the emergency department. On our HBO Max (or whatever it is these days) channel, reruns of ER air immediately after episodes of The Pitt. It is both instructive—and a little bit amusing—to see what state-of-the-art nineties television actually looked like—not as primitive as one might think—and to see a very young Noah Wylie surface in a former incarnation. And, in production values and quality, as well as in the medical arts, we have made great progress.
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