The Pitt

TV loves a medical drama.

It allows for high stakes, for fresh stories to land unannounced, for key cast to perform in heroic roles, and for interior sets to be used endlessly.

Over the years I’ve partaken of many including Emergency!, Julia, Quincy ME, The Young Doctors, The Flying Doctors, All Saints, Grey’s Anatomy, Nip / Tuck, House, Nurse Jackie, Shortland Street and more.

The Pitt is the first one I have to watch almost entirely through my hands, an intense experience that very nearly had me in the foetal position on my couch. I know, I know…. that says more about me than the show, right?

Welcome to the Emergency Department of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. Emphasis on trauma.

It’s 7am when Dr. Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch (Noah Wyle) returns to the ED -that’s ED not ER geddit? It’s the anniversary of a colleague’s death during the pandemic and Robby is dealing with a lot of guilt. He won’t get much time to dwell on it though. It’s non-stop in the ED with a bursting waiting room, incoming emergencies and student doctors who are quite a handful.

In The Pitt, as it is nicknamed, everybody is waiting for an available bed. Processing and caring for patients to go upstairs is a constant juggling act. Despite his most noble of duties, Robby is hounded by hospital administrator Gloria (Michael Hyatt) who wants better results drawing upon less of the budget.

“Step up your game or you can step aside.” – Gloria

Thankfully Robby has charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) at the centre of it all, like a calming flight controller of incoming cases, even though I struggled to comprehend much of her ‘mumblecore’ dialogue.

Robby’s very diverse team is extensive, but you learn to go with the flow and not dwell on names, rank and backstories, which emerge over time.

They include the chiselled if cynical Dr. Langdon (Patrick Marron Ball), a gun at diagnosing cases and multitasking, Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) who sometimes challenges Robby’s best intentions, Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) who appreciates the people in her chaotic workplace and Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) a caring and instinctive single mother.

Joining are student doctors Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez), nicknamed “Crash” after a fainting spell, Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), nicknamed “Huckleberry” due to his farmboy roots, and intern Dr. King (Taylor Dearden), socially awkward but skilled where it matters most.

Then there are the patients. A lot of patients.

They arrive on stretchers, or from the overflowing waiting room, with all manner of wounds, bleeds, pain, mental trauma. There’s the woman whose foot was run over by a train, the elderly man whose children must make a life or death decision, the toddler whose state of unconsciousness is a mystery, the homeless man who collapsed, the man who was electrocuted, the mother whose teenage son is a high risk factor, the patient who ate something allergic, the athlete who is crashing… and that’s just the first two hours.

“As you can see, our house is always packed and our Dept is mostly clogged up with boarders, those are admitted patients waiting for a room upstairs, sometimes for days.” -Robby.

In the ED there’s no time for soapie workplace romance, no room for egos and no time to drop the ball. Hand-held cameras are used to swing from case to case, character to character, leaving the show as the sum of its parts.

For our doctors and nurses, black humour is sometimes the only thing that keeps them sane, but there will be stolen moments of silence to honour a person -briefly- should they not make it.

“Trust me we need to laugh, otherwise we’d never stop crying” – doctor.

Wyle is rock solid as the father-figure of this functionally dysfunctional TV family, and the show works hard to reflect their exemplary ability to focus in a sea of chaos. If it’s relentless for them, so too is it for viewers. Each episode of the 15 part series is one hour of hospital time. Not having seen them all, I fear little relief in terms of additional locations or personal storylines -but producer John Wells (ER, The West Wing, Shameless) is such a skilled storyteller he has the benefit of my doubts.

If only I can tear away the hands from my eyes to find out?

The Pitt screens Friday January 10 on Binge / 8:30pm on FOX One.