HBO Max’s award-winning medical drama returns for a second season of chaos. Happy 4th of July!
The first hour of Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle)’s second “no good, very bad” fifteen hour shift begins quietly at 7:00 A.M. on Independence Day. It’s been ten months since the events of the first season; today is Robby’s last day before a three month sabbatical to Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump (worth the visit BTW) and Langdon’s (Patrick Ball) first day back since he was sent off to rehab for drug addiction.
That’s one of several lingering plot lines carrying over from last year*. S01 pointedly addressed staffing shortages, PTSD from the pandemic, inner-city hospitals, and mass shootings, but by the end of this first episode, it’s not entirely clear what this season’s major emergency or issues will be.
With that said, though, there are no shortages of several intriguing cases for our Pittsburgh doctors to deal with:
- Mel (Taylor Dearden) has been named in a malpractice lawsuit, though Santos (Isa Briones) – in typical form – reassures her that this inevitably happens to all doctors are some point in their career.
- Santos has her hands full with 9 year old Kylie (Annabelle Toomey) whose injuries may be consistent with physical abuse from her father (the reveal of her blood-red urine test is gasp-inducing).
- Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) – now ankle monitor-free – is contending with a belligerent businessman who takes a fall and has memory loss by the end of the hour.
- Langdon helps alcoholic Louie (returning guest star Ernest Harden Jr) so the doctor can apologize for stealing his meds (presumably the apology step of Narcotics Anonymous), but Louie has greater issues thanks to his hard belly, which has been tapped three times in the last six months. That’s not good.
- Finally, the episode cliffhanger is the discovery of an abandoned baby, which elicits a seemingly personal reaction from the new attending physician, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi’s (Sepideh Moafi) when she reads the attached note. What does it say? It’s a mystery!
*I’m still not ready to forgive the show for not renewing Tracy Ifeachor’s contact, who played Dr. Collins in S01
Neither Javadi (Shabana Azeez) or Whittaker (Gerran Howell) get much of note to do. The latter is saddled with showing new medical students like James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) the ropes while Javadi dodges messages from her domineering surgeon mother Dr. Shamsi (Deepti Gupta). There’s more potential in Victoria’s story, though most of that is coming from her mother, who feels that Javadi is too impressionable (I laughed when Dr. Shamsi calls Robby “pressionable” because she holds him responsible).
We’ve long known Javadi to be something of a medical prodigy and that her mother believes her time in the ER is derailing her promising career. Still, this feels a little too similar to the character’s S01 arc.
One of the most obvious (but potentially promising) sources of conflict is the chilly relationship that immediately develops between the two attending physicians. Robby is clearly very eager to go on vacation, but he’s undeniably possessive of The Pitt and extremely resistant to making (what he deems to be unnecessary) changes. This conflicts with why Dr. Al-Hashimi has been brought in.
In this first hour, her new rules and structures, which are designed to improve efficiencies and patient satisfaction (example: the patient passport), are more trouble than they’re worth, though this is clearly only because no one has the time or will to change.
At the same time, however, it’s clear that Dr. Al-Hashimi doesn’t fully understand how this ER works. She’ll undoubtedly get a crash course over the next fourteen hours.
It’s also obvious that the pair will have to learn how to cooperate and trust each other, so hopefully the creative team has a few strategies for keeping this well-trodden narrative arc fresh and interesting. Or, alternatively, perhaps it will be resolved quickly?
In the meantime, The Pitt is still more than capable of delivering some wince-inducing gore, from bike-skinned limbs to the first major medical moment of the season: Robby’s “lung flipping” technique. I’m not going to lie; I really didn’t need to see that rib stretcher so early in the season!
Other Observations:
- Shocking no one: charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) is back on the job. There was no way Dana’s decision to walk away last season would stick; in no small part because LaNasa gave one of the show’s most celebrated performances (she recently won a well-deserved Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy). In any case, she’s my favourite, so I was delighted to see her.
- Dana is mentoring a new nurse in Emma (Laetitia Hollard) who seems eager, but very green. The pair has one of the more amusing storylines when they’re tasked with hosing down Troy (Charles Baker), a very smelly unhoused man (it’s played for comedy, but this is obviously a very serious issue, so hopefully we’ll unpack this in future episodes).
- Dana and Emma also briefly discuss STAMP, a protocol for evaluating how dangerous patients are, as well as the emergency safe word (Hula Hoop). This is clear foreshadowing!
- There’s a brief moment with a deaf woman in the waiting area and I’m already invested. It’s commonplace to cut out the sound when highlighting the experience of deaf characters, but it’s also always effective.
- In case you need to know: leaving a baby under 28 days old falls under the Safe Haven clause, but after 28 days, it’s child abandonment.
- Robby spends the episode dodging Langdon, but when they finally interact, the attending resident cuts the senior resident down with a curt: “We can cover you, we’ve been doing it for months.” Ouch!
Next time: It’s going to be all about that abandoned baby, right?
The Pitt airs new episodes every Thursday on HBO Max
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