The Pitt Season 2 Episode 1 Review: The Hilum Flip
The prodigal TV show returns as The Pitt season 2 settles in for a very chaotic Fourth of July.
This article contains spoilers for The Pitt season 2 episode 1.
“A miracle what a little soap, water, and human decency can do sometimes,” says Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center ER charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) near the end of The Pitt season 2 premiere.
The “miracle” she’s referring to is the freshly clean condition of Mr. Digby (Charles Baker). Previously an unhoused man caked in grime and smelling so foul that his fellow ER waiting room visitors stage a mutiny at the front desk to get him away, Mr. Digby is now happily scrubbing away at his filth in an outdoor shower as Dana and rookie nurse Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard) help spray him down.
Of course, The Pitt itself is a bit of a miracle. As a longtime television partisan, it’s hard for me (and many of my TV-phile peers) to talk about HBO Max’s timely medical drama without drifting into outright evangelism. The R. Scott Gemmill-created series shot out of a pop cultural canon early last year, with its humble hospital setting and weekly episodic release model reminding old heads of what television once was and teaching young nephews what it could be again. The premise is as simple as they come. The fine doctors, nurses, administrators, and custodians of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center clock in save some lives, lose some others, and then go home at the end of their real-time shift.
Unless one’s brain has fully transitioned over into binge mode, there’s nothing truly revelatory about The Pitt. In fact, its star, creator, and format are all so similar to previous medical drama ER that the estate of that show’s creator, Michael Crichton, is involved in a lawsuit against Warner Bros. TV. But despite that similarity (or because of it in some distances), The Pitt is good… like really, really, really good. Mostly because it still believes in the miracle that is episodic television.
Like season 1 before it, The Pitt season 2 premiere “7:00 A.M.” picks up at the title hour as our hero Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) rides his motorcycle through one of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania’s many scenic bridges. He arrives to a busy waiting room that visually seeds 15 hours worth of storytelling to come. It’s the Fourth of July and a hell of a lot of folks already seem to be injured or infirm even before the fireworks start to go off. One sign on a wall promises that aggressive behavior will not be tolerated, a reminder of the aggressive behavior we already witnessed in season 1. Another plaque commemorates the brave healthcare workers of Pittsburgh for their service during the Covid-19 pandemic. Robby glances at it and moves on into the fray. After all, the “rush” will be starting soon as local nursing homes perform their morning bed checks.
Mechanically, The Pitt remains a very impressive beast. The show’s attention to detail extends not only to its mastery of medical jargon and procedures (frequently claimed to be among the most accurate in TV history) but also in its narrative structure. Dr. Robby and friends have gone through many Very Busy Days since the audience last witnessed a Very Busy Day in September of the show’s timeline. It’s up to the this episode to communicate why this incoming Very Busy Day is both more of the same but distinct enough to watch. “7:00 A.M.” swiftly accomplishes that by establishing that this is Dr. Robby’s last shift at the ER before heading off on sabbatical to some sweat lodge in Alberta.
The Pitt understands precisely that correct amount of context clues to introduce to indicate that its characters are really going through it without belaboring the point. Dr. Robby talks about his pending sabbatical. Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) opines over an incoming legal deposition as a result of a procedure in season 1. Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) announces that she really needs to get laid. Sometimes these character moments arrive with great pomp and circumstance, like when a newly-clean Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) is greeted as a prodigal son returned by Dana while a skeptical Robby insists on him sticking with waiting room triage duties. Others are more subtle, like the reveal that Dr. Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz) and Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) are dating when the former complains about Santos’ roommate Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) using her toothbrush.
While we all care about the lives of the Pitt’s employees, it’s watching them save lives in a professional, competent, and humane manner that remains the show’s true appeal. And those lives come through the double doors of the ER in abundance, setting up many compelling season-long stories to come. There’s 79-year-old nursing home occupant Mr. Bostick, whose “do-not-resuscitate” orders provide a quick and brutal lesson on the limits of healthcare to Whitaker’s new med students James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) and Joy Kwon (Irene Choi). There’s Mr. Williams (Derek Cecil), whose simple wrist injury from a fall slowly morphs into a horror movie as he begins to display signs of memory loss.
And then there’s Mr. John Doe, whose body becomes nothing less than a thrilling action setpiece. Despite taking place entirely within the walls of one Earthbound building, The Pitt frequently presents some of the best “action” on television, and it’s realistically gory in a way that its network/streaming peers like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us can only dream of. Brought in with a stab wound from a kitchen knife, the anonymous dishwasher’s chest cavity is cracked open by our heroes as they quickly get to work massaging his heart.
John Doe’s bloody procedure is everything great about The Pitt writ large. The characters’ various personalities are all there: Dr. Garcia refers to Dr. Robby by the pet name “Rabbit Bitch,” Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) reacts to each ping from her un-silenced phone as if they’re jabs from John Doe’s kitchen knife, Dr. Robby noticeably bristles at new attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi’s (Sepideh Moafi) reluctance to let the newbies learn. Yet all those neuroses take a back seat as the professionals operate with ruthless efficiency to save a man’s life. By the time Dr. Robby suggests twisting off half a lung like a garden hose to stem the bleeding, the watcher feels like they themselves are capable of pulling off a perfect hilum flip.
Even without a mass casualty event like last season’s PittFest massacre (or whatever disaster is surely to come later this year), “7:00 A.M.” is relentlessly kinetic all the way through. And through it all, the only character who receives a short shrift is aforementioned new attending Dr. Al-Hashimi. Given the show’s track record, there’s no doubt that Al-Hashimi will become a fully lived-in human being in her own right. For now, however, she’s a simple Dr. Robby foil and the series’ unlucky selection to serve as the requisite “the times are-a-changing” algorithm enthusiast. Her getting lost in thought staring at a baby abandoned in the hospital bathroom adds some resonance to her recently-divorced, single mother backstory. But it’s also an unusually weak cliffhanger for a show that intends to draw in viewers weekly.
And yet, I will be tuning in again next week. As will you, and everyone else invested in Real Television. This show remains the kind of TV miracle that only a little soap, water, human decency, and deftly-executed hilum flips can provide.
New episodes of The Pitt season 2 premiere Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO Max.