It’s impossible to talk about the new and breathlessly paced medical drama The Pitt without bringing up one of the subgenre’s most looming legend, ER. The Pitt is the brainchild or R. Scott Gemmill, a renowned producer and show-runner who won several Emmy awards for working on that venerable medical drama. The Pitt is produced and the pilot is directed by John Wells, the former executive producer and show-runner of ER. It even stars Noah Wyle, one of ER’s most tenured cast members. It’s virtually impossible to watch The Pitt without thinking about what came before it, but instead of coming across as a pale imitation of everyone’s past glories, this new series explodes with renewed relevancy, emotion, suspense, and purpose. The Pitt is the best television medical drama in decades, and it’s not even close.
The concept of The Pitt actually owes more to the spy thriller 24 than it does to its predecessors. It’s fifteen episodes capture the day shift at a ludicrously busy trauma and teaching hospital located in Pittsburgh. It starts when Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavich (Wyle), the chief attending physician at the hospital’s emergency department, clocks in at 7 in the morning, and it’s off to the races from there. In addition to having to deal with understandably frustrated patients clogging up the waiting room, an administration that refuses to hire extra help but demands higher “patient happiness” metrics, and having to contend with the oil and water chemistry of many of his staffers, it’s also an historically dark day for Robby that stirs up a lot of traumatic memories.
Robby tries to keep the perpetually delayed and overworked train on the tracks, as do his co-workers. Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) has an obviously hot/cold relationship to Robby, and despite her professionalism and grace under pressure, she’s about to have just as emotionally trying of a day as her superior. Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) is trying to juggle his patients, the duties he has towards the interns placed under his wing, and a home life that’s never fully glimpsed but sounds chaotic. Charge Nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) is the beating heart of the ER and makes sure things go as smoothly as they can. Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) has a kindly disposition that cracks under stress, something one can see from a device she mysteriously wears on her body.
This says nothing about the quartet of interns who have their own problems to work through. Javad (Shabana Azeez) is a prodigy trying to avoid the critical gaze of her renowned mother, who works in the same building. Whitaker (Gerran Howell) is a farm boy from Nebraska who’s the first in his family to ever go to college, let alone medical school, and he’s being put through the darkly comedic meat grinder today. Dr. King (Taylor Dearden) is a kind soul who’s trying to find her bedside manner, while learning how to deal with the tougher moments of working in a hospital. Dr. Santos (Isa Briones) is a highly intelligent, but overly eager, relentlessly sarcastic, and hopelessly cocky, constantly clashing with Langdon, who doesn’t see her as a team player.
The Pitt is impeccably cast, offering a scenario with no bad roles to actors who give their all in service of some tough material. To put oneself in such a heightened headspace across such a lengthy series requires a performer to possess a tremendous amount of poise, balance, and intestinal fortitude. As an ensemble – between the doctors, interns, patients, and various other staff members – The Pitt is an impressive achievement. Every performer brings something unique and compelling to their performances, so much so that I wish I had the time, energy, and space to talk about every one of them. That’s how great the cast is across the board. If Wyle – the most experienced at this sort of thing and a multiple time Emmy nominee for his previous stint as a doctor – is the grizzled veteran captain of the team, he has an all star squad backing him up. The setting is fully realized, vibrant, and alive with the best and worst of humanity on full display, but it’s the cast’s ability to work within this space that make The Pitt such a marvel. It’s the best assembled cast of a series or film in quite some time.
And there’s a lot more to The Pitt in terms of characters and how they interact with one another, and all of it comes at the viewer very fast. Partway into the show, one of the doctors remarks that an attending in an emergency room will often be shifted or called away to another task every three to five minutes, and while The Pitt sometimes strains credibility with the “real time” aspect of its premise, the pace is lightning quick. It’s a show that throws the viewer into the deep end and asks them to keep up. It lures one in with the promise of something familiar before quickly making it known that they are in for something a lot grittier and anxiety inducing; a situation that realistically gives way to emotional whiplash and pit of the stomach punches. This is only heightened by the fact that – as a cable show – there’s a lot more that can be shown and discussed than on network television.
The Pitt has a plethora of cases the doctors have to deal with across the course of the day. The spectre of Fentanyl looms large, as do the scars of poverty and barriers to care for those who need it most. Mental illness and cries for help are heeded the best they can be, even when staff members vehemently disagree about how such matters should be handled in a medical setting rather than in a psychological or social context. Seemingly innocuous ailments and accidents will prove to be a lot more serious than previously expected. Doctors, nurses, patients, and bureaucrats will butt heads over any number of topics, and even the slightest unforeseen circumstance can throw the entire day off. It wouldn’t be much of a medical drama if there weren’t cases to “solve” or maladies to diagnose, but The Pitt presents these conventions within the context of a show where all the characters’ plates are full and their psyches have gone far past the point of burnout.
While there’s plenty of of high drama and some convenient twists and turns implemented to keep things intriguing and moving along, The Pitt remains a resolutely unglamorous and often quite bleak look at the state of hospitals today, especially in an age where metrics often count for more than the actual quality of care. By strapping the viewer into their seat and escorting them around the halls of the almost windowless emergency, triage, and waiting areas as if they were a pinball stuck in perpetual motion, The Pitt becomes a vital piece of work that speaks to the degree of resolve frontline workers have to possess just to make it into work every day. Their job is one where thanks is frequently given amid a lot of other conflicting feelings, but even fleeting moments of joy and success are unable to be savoured, as they come at the expense of another fire that’s burning out of control nearby. There is no winning. Breaks are futile. And the toll of human anguish and suffering is inescapable.
And while there are plenty of moments where The Pitt touches upon hot button issues of the moment (masking, sexism, abortion, unconscious biases), there’s little time to stop and make a speech. There’s no preaching to be found in The Pitt outside of an overwhelming feeling that hospital staff are pushed to their absolute limits on a daily basis before going home and doing it all again the next day. The purpose of The Pitt is to place viewers in a stifling environment by design and to watch as everyone is forced to swim, sink, and rise again because of the job’s life and death nature. It’s intense, emotional, and the absolute best new show of the year thus far. It also has the power to make people realize just how hard it can be to care for the lives of others.
The Pitt premieres in Canada on Thursday, January 9, 2025 on USA Network with two episodes. New episodes premiere everything Thursday night at 10pm until the finale on April 15. In the US, The Pitt is available to stream on MAX.
