Content warning: This review discusses themes of suicide ideation and self harm
“What happens if I don’t come back?” asks Dr Robinavitch in the last seconds of the episode. With two episodes left of the season, the big cloud hanging over the season has finally erupted, and the rain is falling hard on Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
As we’ve discussed in previous reviews, its clear that Robby isn’t coping, no matter how much he gives the impression early on. The accumulated trauma of Covid, the shooting and the general pressure of running the emergency room has left him on the brink, and the clear thread running through the last couple of episodes is one of him putting his affairs in order.
His final row with Dana betrays his mindset. Circumstances are stopping him from leaving for good, because he can’t let go of the issues he feels are his responsibility – from Dr Al Hashimi’s ability to manage the ER (triggered by her having another zone-out moment as she did with baby Jane Doe) to breaking the news to his pal Duke that he’s seriously ill and needs surgery.
He also says goodbye to Noelle, the hospital administrator and love interest we last saw at the start of the season, and there’s a definite sense that he’s saying a proper goodbye while she’s just saying see you soon. As he acknowledges, it’s very much a case of ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. Given he’s clearly been papping off therapy this year despite the best efforts of his pal in the psych team, Robby’s mental state is on a cliff edge, and folk are starting to notice.
Between Robby’s increasing erraticness and Santos’ pocketing of a scalpel last week to continue self-harming, there’s a definite sense of a bad end coming for someone in the show’s last two episodes of the season – and a new contender for a tragic end has entered the fray.
Someone we know won’t be coming back to the Pitt is Samira Mohan, after it was announced last week that Supriya Ganesh would not be returning for series three. The show has notably been setting up her exit over the last few weeks, then delivers in spades this episode as diabetic patient Orlando returns, having fallen 20ft from his construction site job and suffered serious injuries.
The irony – in a running theme for the episode about how the failings of American healthcare funding for those who can’t afford private insurance – is that Orlando’s injuries are now enough to qualify him for the Medicaid and Medicare that he previously didn’t receive, leaving him $100,000 in debt (and mirrored in the other main case, involving a teenager with asthma who missed out on Medicaid for his treatment because it went to the wrong address).
Between that, discovering her and Ogilvie’s English teacher patient died on the operating table, and that Dr Cruz Henderson from the nightshift has not only applied for the same ultrasound fellowship as her, but has been published in the field and used his own set-up to triage two patients that have been waiting for x-rays for hours, does for her and – after hours of Robby belittling her and her own panic attack earlier – exits understandably very upset.
Elsewhere, the night shift has arrived, and it’s time for the staff handover. We’ve already met Dr Shen and Dr Abbott, obviously, from last year, and Dr Ellis who was deposed alongside Mel earlier in the season. We also have a new intern, Dr Nazely Toomarian, who Dr Al Hashimi impresses thanks to a smattering of Armenian.
If the frazzled, exhausted day shift are at their wits end, the night shift are – understandably – the exact opposite. As they do their rounds and pick up the overhang from the day shift, they’re a slick, innovative, well-oiled machine running as cool as Shen’s apparently bottomless iced coffee cup.
There’s an online move to see a Pitt spin-off with the nightshift, and while seeing more of Abbott, Henderson, Shen and Ellis would undoubtedly be fun (and in the latter case, is going to happen, with Ayesha Harris being promoted to regular in series 3), the point of the characters here is to serve as a counterpoint to the main team.
Our regulars are still hanging about, though, as Abbott has them scanning in the paper medical records accumulated throughout the day now the computers are up and running again. It’s a moment of, albeit exhausted and annoyed, calm for Whittaker, Mel and Santos as they get stuck with yet more scut work, leading to Mel booting a jammed shredder in frustrated and what seems to be an actual left-in outtake of them corpsing.
With much of the chaos behind them, we also get a couple of lovely little dialogue scenes. Mel and Langdon in the staff room, as a rattled Langdon worries he’s not ready to come back to work after all after almost misdiagnosing a collapsed lung, and Mel putting him at ease, is a lovely resumption of their fun relationship, while Whittaker gives Ogilvie a proper Mark Greene pep talk in the ambulance after the traumatised student questions if he’s cut out for emergency medicine.
And Emma and Dana give Digby – yes, he’s still hanging about – a shave and a haircut, leaving him so different he worries his own family (who, we learn, live in his house while he chooses to live homeless) won’t recognise him. He has a point, as intern Dr Toomarian thinks Digby’s done a runner and someone else is in his cubicle!
In all, it’s a weird episode of The Pitt, this. In many ways, it feels like the lull before the storm, with everyone winding down – realistic in that respect – but because of Robby and Samira’s obvious issues, the threat of something huge coming on the horizon. It’s almost like a mid-season filler episode, except at the end of the season and clearly setting up the final two hours.
And obviously there was some budget left over in the show, even this late in the season, so we get a couple of extra guest stars popping in for the episode. Mary McCormack – you’ll know her from The West Wing and Deep Impact, among lots of high profile roles – pops up as head of neurosurgery to drill Orlando’s skull open, while Geoffrey Owens has a quick cameo as the cardiac surgery going to be looking out for Duke.
Oh, and Noah Wyle’s wife Sara has a fun turn as an exceptionally health-obsessed patient who’s mysteriously turned yellow in this week’s silly case. Santos gets dragged in to diagnose her since, as McKay points out, Trinity has a way with the ‘weird ones’.
“I just think what’s the stupidest thing this person could have done, and assume they did it.”
Turns out she’s overdosed on turmeric. Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Spice really does screw you up…
Grizzly factor: Orlando’s surgery is pretty spectacularly horrible without ever being a bloody mess. Javadi counting under her breath the turns of the drill as it bores through his skull is simultaneously quite sweet and also one of the most horrible things in the show’s two seasons.
Best quote:
Mel: “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”
Langdon: “Ah. Friedrich Nietzsche.”
Mel: “Nietzsche. Yeah. Not Kelly Clarkson.”
The Pitt – Season 2 Episode 13: “07:00pm”
Written by Joe Sachs
Directed by Damian Marcano
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