The Pitt Series-Premiere Recap: So Happy to Be Here
Not even ten minutes into our first hour spent in the middle of the busiest Pittsburgh emergency department you’ve ever seen, our skilled, kindhearted, definitely-suffering-from-PTSD-that-he-is-in-total-denial-about leader Dr. Michael Robinavitch (Dr. Robby, or Robby for short) does in fact utter the phrase, “Welcome to the Pitt.” While dropping the series title in dialogue is typically an occasion to roll one’s eyes, reader, I must admit I did not roll my eyes one little bit. Actually, I may have done a tiny, baby fist pump. Argh, please don’t stop reading, I know that is terribly uncool, and yet it could not be helped. It could not be helped because nine minutes into this medical drama–meets–24 season, I had already bought into the entire thing, fully, completely, and, I fear, irrevocably? I am in, baby.
Sure, this pilot episode could use, like, 10 percent more exposition (a sentence I never thought I’d write in one million years), but on the whole, simply dropping us into the chaos and asking us to keep up because lives are on the line works to The Pitt’s advantage. The unrelenting pace as we weave in and out of patient rooms mimics what The Pitt is trying to show us our characters go through during a shift in an overcrowded, underfunded city trauma center. It’s quite effective! The sheer amount of multitasking Dr. Robby has to do both hurts my brain and immediately makes me root for the guy. And while there’s a lot for us to keep track of as we meet a gaggle of doctors and nurses as well as a bunch of patients, it never feels unwieldy. With people like R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells and Noah Wyle at the helm, we are in good, experienced hands after all, hands forged in the fires of ER. The two series are obviously going to be compared to each other — and there is that Crichton Estate lawsuit out there — but the “every episode is one hour in one 15-hour shift” framework does immediately make The Pitt feel like a different beast.
Dr. Robby isn’t John Carter. And I say that as a person who grew up on ER and was in love with John Carter for a period of time in her youth and so would love to see a continuation of his story. This is not that. Sure, the two men would get along, commiserating over the woes of running a busy emergency department, but there’s enough of a distinction. For one, John Carter would never wear those slutty little glasses Robby whips out, okay? He couldn’t pull them off, and you and I both know it. So what is Robby’s deal? We meet the chief of the emergency department walking into his 15-hour shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital on the morning of what we learn is the fourth anniversary of the death of his mentor, Dr. Adamson, at the height of the COVID pandemic. He’s never worked on this anniversary before, and several people are concerned about whether he should. He insists that he’s fine, that it’s just another day, but by the end of hour one, he clearly suffers a PTSD-induced episode — he’s sweating, ears are ringing, and he hallucinates that he’s back in that nightmarish pandemic just as Adamson’s vitals are crashing — so maybe those concerns are warranted. Keep your eyes on our guy, okay?
Up until that point, however, Robby does seem pretty in control as he gathers his troops for the day. We meet Robby’s two senior residents: There’s Dr. Heather Collins, who is newly, secretly pregnant, and based on her quick convo with charge nurse Dana — who rules, by the way — it sounds like she’s struggled with infertility and miscarriages in the past. Collins’s counterpart is Dr. Frank Langdon, who gives off some real asshole vibes, but he’s good at his job and seems to have a friendship with Robby that goes beyond work. We also meet Dr. Cassie McKay, who is mostly working triage today; she’s a 42-year-old second-year resident who got a late start in her career. There’s also third-year resident Dr. Samira Mohan, who has earned the nickname Slo-Mo because she spends so much time with her patients it takes her forever to move on to the next. You might be thinking, Hey, that kind of sounds nice because patients are human beings, but you are dead wrong. On top of a wild patient load, Robby has blazers from upstairs all over his ass about cutting down insane wait times and increasing patient satisfaction scores. Of course, the blazers don’t want to hear Robby’s rants about needing more nurses and paying those nurses a living wage, so they stay and provide enough support to get more patients out of the ER and admitted to the hospital, but what does he know, he’s only been in the thick of it for decades. Regardless, Robby is already on Dr. Mohan to speed things up, and it’s only 7 a.m.!
There are newbies who arrive for their very first shift, too. Meet Dr. Melissa King, a second-year resident who just got off a rotation at the VA. She is awkward but in an endearing way. There’s intern Trinity Santos, who is so cocky you just know she is masking some deep emotional wounds. I’m sorry, but anyone who is coming up with mean nicknames for her colleagues in hour one of meeting them has hidden pain. Fourth-year medical student Dennis Whitaker is well meaning but timid and hails from a farm in Nebraska, and thus earns the moniker “Huckleberry” from Trinity. He’s not to be outdone by “Crash,” or Victoria Javadi, a third-year medical student and 20-year-old prodigy whose mother is a hotshot surgeon at this very hospital — she faints while working on her first patient. It’s not, like, a great moment for her. The new guys will definitely have to lean on some of the nurses we meet, including the aforementioned charge nurse Dana, who rules all; Princess, who knows six languages; her best bud Perla; and a very cute Mateo, whom Victoria has an instant crush on. Oh, and don’t forget social worker Kiara, who has to carry so much emotional baggage around it is unreal, and it isn’t just from the patients, if you know what I’m saying. And what I’m saying is this: Doctors have problems, too, just you wait!
Now that you’ve met the gang, should we head to rounds and get to know some patients? Because of the show’s format, it’s clear that some patients will be in and out in an episode and some will stick around much longer, so you need to pay attention to everybody. And that’s a tall order, because holy hell, this place is so crowded there are just patients hanging out in the hallways. But emergencies could crop up at any second, and we have to be vigilant. We are doctors, after all — er, we are people who watch doctors on television, after all!!
The first major emergency that rolls in is an accident on the subway: Sam Wallace jumped onto the tracks to save a woman who we learn was pushed onto the tracks; he slipped while getting out and suffered a major head wound. They patch him up but have to wait and see if he wakes up. The woman he saved doesn’t speak English, and it takes a while for Collins to figure out she’s Nepali so that they can get an interpreter. Her ankle has not only been dislocated but degloved, which means every layer of skin has been ripped off, just leaving the muscles and tendons and whatever other gross shit makes up our disgusting bodies just hanging out there for all to see. You want to know how you know this medical drama isn’t on broadcast TV? We watch them push this woman’s degloved ankle back into place in all its gory glory. It’s no wonder Javadi drops.
Triathlete Otis Williams comes to see Dr. McKay after suffering shortness of breath while running, and he goes into cardiac arrest. He continues going into cardiac arrest again and again until Robby realizes the guy’s potassium levels must be sky-high from all the exercise, which in turn is sending him into renal failure and short-circuiting his heart. He does not wait for labs to confirm this and instead proceeds with treatment, and while dangerous, it ends up being the correct thing to do, saving Otis’s life. This tells us several things: (1) Robby is a confident, skilled doctor who isn’t afraid to buck protocol in order to treat his patients; (2) Dr. Collins, who chides him repeatedly, is a stickler for protocol; and (3) the way these two look at each other during this whole tense moment means they definitely fucked.
Finally, an uncontrollably puking Theresa is brought in by her 18-year-old son, David. McKay calls Robby in for backup because there is something unnerving going on between the two and she can’t quite get a handle on it. Once Robby has Theresa alone, she confesses that she induced vomiting in order to get David to bring her to the hospital — she found one of his notebooks with a kill list of female classmates. She swears he’s a good boy, just troubled, and he’s grieving his father, who died from COVID. She doesn’t want to get the police involved, but she does want to get her son some help. Unfortunately, David is legally an adult, so she can’t just have him committed based on that list. It’s a delicate situation; Robby knows that if they push David too hard, he could bolt, and who knows what he is really capable of. That is exactly what happens when Robby grabs Kiara to try and have a chat with the kid. David gets suspicious and angry, and he takes off. Robby tries to chase him down the street, but the kid is gone, and he has another trauma coming in.
Discharge Papers
• Robby starts his day by checking in with fellow attending Dr. Jack Abbott, just getting off his shift and passing the reins over. If the shift we’re about to start goes anything like the one that seems to have just put Jack through the wringer — the guy looks haunted! — then we are in for it.
• Doug Driscoll, a man who previously had chest pain and is impatiently skulking around the waiting room, is on my watch list. He is a dick, but also, Robby made a point to remind his staff to make sure no one dies while sitting in the waiting room, so you just know someone is going to die sitting in the waiting room.
• I’m also worried about Whitaker’s patient, Mr. Milton, who seemingly has gallstones and should be fine, but it’s almost too easy of a case for the med student. They’re ordering an EKG just to be sure it’s not a heart attack masked as gallstone pain, and something tells me that test might come into play in a big way.
• The “morning arrival of the living dead” — the time in the morning when a bunch of assisted-living facilities and nursing homes send in elderly patients after finding them dead or almost dead during morning bed check — is bleak, baby.
• Mel and Langdon pair up to work on a case with a lethargic 4-year-old named Tyler, who they discover has accidentally eaten his dad’s stash of weed gummies. The two doctors couldn’t be more opposite, which means they make for a great team.
• “If the Kraken wakes up, God help you all.” That sounds ominous!!
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