Content warning: This article contains mentions of death, drug addiction, and sexual abuse.
I don’t usually watch medical dramas. I’m much more inclined towards genre TV, and my yearly watchlists usually include a plethora of superhero, fantasy, and sci-fi series. Sometimes, though, a show comes along and surprises me. That’s where The Pitt comes in.
It’s rare that a show lives up to its hype, but after two seasons and thirty episodes, I can safely say that The Pitt is absolutely deserving of all the accolades it has received. It is a compelling and confronting insight into what healthcare workers go through on a day-to-day basis. It’s intense, very well-acted, and has a degree of realism rarely seen in medical dramas.
That does not mean it’s perfect. I whole-heartedly agree with our Managing Editor’s recent piece on the show’s treatment of women of color. The abrupt and unceremonious ending of Samira Mohan’s story left a bad taste in my mouth, and some questionable comments by showrunner R. Scott Gemmill and star Noah Wyle did not help matters.
That said, I still think that it was a fantastic season of television. The passing of Louie Cloverfield, the depiction of ICE, the long-awaited confrontation between Santos and Langdon are just a few of the many high points of season two. One of the reasons I was so devastated by Mohan’s story ending so abruptly was that for all its flaws, she got some truly great material. Orlando Diaz’s case was a heartbreaking look at the reality of American healthcare, the Cohens gave her the chance to show her skills with the elderly, and that’s not even diving into Supriya Ganesh’s incredible performance.
Moreover, I am a firm believer in acknowledging both a show’s failures and successes. The Pitt is the result of the tireless work of hundreds of people, and that should not be overshadowed by a few poor creative decisions. So, with that in mind, I’m going to dive into what makes this show so special.
There are a lot of things that The Pitt does extremely well. The acting, sets, sound design, and prosthetics are all incredible. The writing is equally stellar, capturing so many issues facing healthcare workers that I couldn’t possibly name them all. The show can be incredibly intense, so much so that on completing a rewatch of 1×13, I had to get up and take a moment to calm myself down.
Now, I don’t have the qualifications to speak to the show’s medical accuracy, but the general consensus I’ve seen online is that The Pitt nails it. Furthermore, both my parents have had long careers in healthcare, and they agree that the show mostly gets it right. My Mum has pointed out a few procedural mistakes, and my Dad noted that in real life, a lot more time is spent charting. To be fair, season two went to extensive (and hilarious) ends to correct this.
But what makes this all click together is the show’s secret weapon: its characters.
While the show has promoted itself on the premise of being the most accurate medical drama of all time, The Pitt at its core is a character study. Sure, Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby takes centre stage, but each member of the main cast is a compelling character in their own right. They’re not just they’re to prop Robby up, but fully realised individuals with strengths, weaknesses, hopes, fears, and motivations.
It doesn’t stop there. The supporting cast may not be as fleshed out as the main, but they’re far from bland. Dr. Abott is one of the most popular characters amongst fans, and he’s only appeared in eleven of the show’s thirty episodes. Moreover, they’re certainly not irrelevant to the story. Staff members and the patients themselves end up providing a host of medical and personal challenges for the main characters.
This calibre of character work is incredible, especially for how large the cast is. While the medical sequences are tense in their own right, the characters add an emotional weight that makes for some truly incredible storytelling. And that starts with…
Part 1: Characterisation
I don’t rewatch a lot of shows, but The Pitt is an exception. It’s one of those shows where a rewatch enhances the experience because you pick up on small details that you miss or overlook on your first viewing. Take the lingering shot of Langdon while Santos is questioning Dana about a faulty vial of medication. At first glance, it might seem like an unimportant detail, but on a rewatch? It’s one of the clues that Langdon is stealing medication from the hospital.
The Pitt is full of these little details; Whitaker stealing a sandwich, Mel’s reaction to autism being used as a pejorative, and Santos’ aggression towards a patient suspected of grooming his daughter all take on a new light upon the reveals of them being homeless, having an autistic sister, and a past with sexual abuse respectively. For all of the attention to detail the show takes with medicine, it takes just as much with its characters.
Between the shows breakneck pace, large cast, and complex medical sequences, this level of character work seems a tall order. However, The Pitt gets around by packing these details into scenes in really clever and efficient ways. Take the scene in episode one where Collins and Langdon put the degloved foot of Minu back into place while Javadi, Whitaker, and Santos watch. Even though the medical procedure is the centre of the story here, the way each character behaves tell the audience a lot.
- Collins is a professional, focusing on educating the newbies.
- Langdon is a bit more laid-back, telling a joke.
- Javadi is a bit inexperienced, passing out from such a gory procedure.
- Whitaker is empathic and checks up on her.
- Santos is sarcastic, rolling her eyes and commenting, “Med student down.”
In less than sixty seconds, the show manages to establish character traits of half the main cast. This is some truly incredible character writing, and is no accident on the behalf of the show. In this interview, show creator R. Scott Gemmill and writer Joe Sachs confirmed that they came up with the characters and their arcs first, then wrote medical scenarios that would reveal something about them. For example, the degloved foot was written around this question;
“Hey Joe, what’s a case that would make a third-year medical student faint in the trauma room?”
This character-first approach is incredibly apparent when you look at the rest of the season; Whitaker bonds with the homeless Krakozhia, a birth leaves Collins emotional after her recent miscarriage, and Robby…well, pretty much every case he comes across reveals something about him, but it’s the loss of Leah that causes a full-on breakdown, and arguably one of the best scenes of the entire series. The reason the drama works, though, is because the writers take the time to make the audience care about the characters.
Let’s take Javadi. Going back to detailed characterisation, what made her so compelling for me is that her inexperience and youth was explored in really interesting ways that just make sense. She’s a child prodigy who went to college at the age of thirteen. She’s never been around people her own age, and has some social shortcomings, like dating. So, it tracks when she flounders while trying to ask out Mateo.
However, the writers don’t just frame inexperience and youth as a negative. They also show how it can be a strength. Being from a younger generation means she’s more knowledgeable in certain areas, which helps her pick up on a misgendering error in a trans patient’s file that McKay didn’t notice. Sure, she may not be as experienced as other doctors, but that also means she’s not as set in her ways as them. During the mass casualty event, she’s much more willing to improvise and think outside the box when they run low on equipment.
There’s plenty more I could say, but you get the idea. She has strengths and weaknesses that make sense in the context of her upbringing, and this more a well-rounded, compelling character. She’s smart, innovative, hard-working, but she’s also socially clueless, a little judgemental, and has a bit of an ego.
But what really impresses me is how little of that is explicitly stated on screen.
Part 2: Show, Don’t Tell
In an era where shows and movies are increasingly catering to second screen viewing, The Pitt is an anomaly. It’s managed a bizarre combination of being both incredibly didactic and a masterclass in show, don’t tell. When it comes to the medical portions of the show, the characters often do describe what they’re doing in great detail. Granted, this is a teaching hospital, so these kinds of explanations do make sense in context.
When it comes to character drama, The Pitt takes a very different approach. While medical procedures are discussed very literally, the show uses a combination of characters’ actions, dialogue, and body language to establish who they are. Monologues are few and far between, but the show is brimming with subtext. Even if things are explicitly stated, there’s more than enough evidence for the audience to work things out.
An obvious example is Javaid’s attraction to Mateo. While she never outright says that she’s into him, she’s so flustered in all their scenes that she doesn’t have to. A more subtle example comes in the second episode of season two, when she welcomes Langdon back from his time in rehab in the presence of Whitaker. When Langdon appears, he’s all smiles, but when he notices that Whitaker can’t even look him in the eye, his body language shifts. The smile vanishes, and he storms off with this line,
“Okay, I will be in exile on Triage Island with the rest of the drug addicts, if anyone needs me.”
In ten seconds, a lot of information has been conveyed through subtext. Langdon clearly has a massive chip on his shoulder about his public perception of being an addict, a nice follow-up to the way he asked Dana about what people were saying about him immediately after he was outed in season one. On Whitaker’s end, it’s obvious that he has very conflicting feelings about Langdon. Given that he’s spent the last ten months living with Santos, this checks out. It’s this reliance on subtext over spoon-feeding that ultimately sets The Pitt apart. Simply put, if you don’t pay attention, you miss out.
That said, The Pitt knows when to stick to its rules, and when to break them. While the show doesn’t rely on monologues, it doesn’t avoid them entirely. However, they are tailored to make sense in the context, such as with McKay and Sherry in 1×05. Much like Sherry, McKay has been homeless before, so understands her patient’s reluctance to open up. When she tells the latter about her addiction and legal troubles, it’s not for the audience’s sake, but to build trust so that she’ll let McKay help her. She even lampshades this; “I guess I’m oversharing because I want you to know, not everybody has it all figured out all the time.”
The most notable defiance of show don’t tell comes in the form of Mel. While the other characters avoid literal descriptions of themselves, Mel does so on numerous occasions. Some examples include, “my frustration manifests itself emotionally,” “sometimes I occasionally jump to the worst-case scenario,” and “on occasion, I have an emotional response to death.”
But this is where The Pitt is able to have its cake and eat it, too. Mel not adhering to the naturalistic, subtext-heavy dialogue of the other characters is the writer’s way of showing, not telling us that she’s neurodivergent. Dialogue aside, Mel displays several common traits of being neurodivergent; struggling with sarcasm and jokes, her ability to hyperfocus on a repetitive task, as well as employing various vocal and physical stims. While actress Taylor Dearden has confirmed Mel’s neurodivergence in interviews, it’s never addressed within the narrative because they don’t need to. The writers respect the audience enough to figure it out themselves.
This approach ultimately makes the show that much more engaging. The characters talk in ways that feel real, and when the audience is examining every interaction for subtext, they’re more likely to keep coming back each week. And it’s here where I want to point out another key factor of The Pitt’s realism – it’s pacing.
Part 3: Pacing
What distinguishes The Pitt from other medical dramas is its use of the real time format. While shows like Grey’s Anatomy will compress hours or even days into one episode, each season of The Pitt takes place over the courses of one fifteen-hour shift. Which, on paper, might seem like an odd choice.
While there are exceptions, many medical dramas will wrap up a patient’s storyline within an episode and leave the season-long arcs to the main characters. This is a strength of the genre; it can cut out the mundane moments and focus on the exciting ones. This compression can lead to some truly great television, such as this scene from Scrubs.
This is where The Pitt takes a risk. In real life, there are things that just can’t be resolved within the hour, and the show reflects that. Some cases are done and dusted by the hour’s end, while others take multiple episodes to resolve. Sometimes, a resolution isn’t even provided, and it’s left to the audience to wonder what happened to the patient. At first glance this might seem like a poor creative choice, as having things wrapped up neatly within an hour is one of the strengths of the ‘monster/patient of the week’ format. However, by pending extra time with the patients, it allows for far deeper characterization and much greater payoffs.
No better example comes in the form of the Bradley family. Their storyline takes place over the course of seven episodes (8:00AM – 2:00PM) and is by far and away one of the most devastating of the show. When the audience is introduced to Nick Bradley and his parents John and Lily, it’s established very quickly that Nick is brain dead. The episode ends on the gut-wrenching note of Robby having to tell two parents that their eighteen-year-old son is gone.
During the next six episodes, the Bradleys work through the five stages of grief. They initially deny what’s happened, with John lashing out in anger at a classmate of Nick’s, while Lily bargains by asking for more, unnecessary tests. When Robby delivers the final, undeniable proof their son is gone, the couple sinks into a depression, before finally accepting that their son is gone.
Could this all have been done in one episode? Sure, but by taking its time, The Pitt built up the character drama to a far more powerful resolution. The Bradley’s decision to let Nick’s organs be harvested hits so much harder because the audience has been there through every step of the grieving process. Seven episodes of back and forth with Robby makes the payoff well and truly earned. When 2:00PM ends with the staff assembling for Nick’s honour walk, it hits like a freight train because the audience cares about the Bradleys. These aren’t just one-off characters that we’ll forget in a few episodes, these are people that we will remember.
As you can imagine, if the supporting cast are making this much of an impact, the series regulars must have some truly outstanding character arcs. And to be clear, they do. Even with the limits of the one day format, this granular approach allows small moments to feel gigantic. Javadi standing up to her mother and Whitaker reiterating Robby’s advice are small, but triumphant moments of growth for both of them.
But it’s not just the successes of the characters that drive the story forwards. Their failures are just as important.
Part 4: Flaws
“When you’re very good at something, you usually have a deficit that’s just as powerful.” – Shabana Azeez
Arguably, the show’s greatest strength is its refusal to depict the characters as perfect individuals. Without fail, every main character has a serious flaw that they have to work on throughout the story. The most obvious example is Robby. He is consistently shown to be a talented and empathetic doctor that looks out for both his patients and his subordinates.
He can also be a bit of jerk.
Robby is absolutely terrible at managing his emotional health. This manifests in some very unpleasant behavior. He plays favorites, can be incredibly impatient and snappy towards his colleagues, and often employs a “do as I say, not as I do,” approach. The latter trait is especially apparent in the way he treats women and especially women of color. The most despicable example is the way he acts towards Mohan, who he mocks and berates after she has a panic attack. None of these are qualities you’d expect in a series lead.
To be clear, I am not excusing his behavior, and neither is the narrative. Robby is repeatedly challenged by other characters on his behavior, particularly in season two. Shen doesn’t play along with a slightly racist joke, Al-Hashimi points out he’s treating her like a resident and not an equal, Dana reads him the riot act over his double standards, and pretty much everyone ridicules him for his lack of motorcycle safety.
It’s this duality that makes the characters so memorable. Flawless characters are boring, but flawed characters are interesting and relatable. Personally, I can’t relate to working in a stressful ED. However, I can relate to things such losing your temper, or struggling with boundaries, or unintentionally being insensitive the way Robby, Mel and Javadi respectively do.
Moreover, these characters flaws work so well because they make sense within the context of the character. Robby comes from a generation of men that doesn’t always have the same attitude towards mental health. So, it’s understandable why he struggles to reach out for help with his unresolved trauma over the death of his mentor Dr. Adamson. Likewise, Mel’s struggle to respect her sister Becca’s privacy make sense given that she’s been her caretaker for so long. As someone who comes from a similar economic background to Javadi, I completely understand her hesitation and insensitivity towards people lower on the socio-economic ladder.
As talented as these characters are, they all make mistakes. Not only does that make them relatable, it provides an opportunity to grow. Combined with the detailed characterization and the show’s pacing, this allows for some truly fantastic character arcs. The emotional payoff is so much more satisfying because the audience understands exactly how hard the character has had to work to earn it.
While all the characters grow to varying degrees across the show, there is one that I feel embodies everything I’ve just mentioned incredibly well. Admittedly, I’m a bit biased in that she’s my favourite character, but given the…divisive response she’s received by the audience, I feel it’s appropriate to take this time to celebrate her journey.
And that character is none other than one Dr. Trinity Santos.
To be continued in Part 2.
Images courtesy of HBO Max
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