And so draws to an end the sophomore season of television’s most realistic medical drama. Now firmly in the spotlight after the critical acclaim of the first series, and a shelf-shattering haul of gongs at the various awards shows this year,
Season two ends, largely, as season one begins – back on the roof of the hospital. Although this time, it’s not Abbot briefly considering a swandive but most of the dayshift watching as the July 4 fireworks light up Pittsburgh.
Absent though, is Robby, who is downstairs with perhaps the most famous character from series two – Baby Jane Doe herself, as he sooths the crying infant to the sounds of Thousand, by Rosie Carnie, and assures her that the future may not be terrible after all. Obviously its as much Robby reassuring himself as the baby, after an episode where he gets to have the final chats he’s either been avoiding or threatening for the last 14 weeks.
Not least from Jack Abbot – a man who’s had more than his own brushes with death as a veteran and SWAT team medic – who finally pulls Robby aside and gives him a proper talking to about how important his work in the Pitt is, in the wake of a remarkable double save they make earlier on. As he points out, he’s survived because he found an outlet, spoke to therapists and managed to find something approaching peace – something he implores Robby to do rather than heading to a site where buffalo used to be driven off a cliff and ‘doing a Thelma and Louise’.
“I’m still your emergency contact and I do not want to be contacted,” he gently reminds his pal.
A clever retcon is smuggled into Abbot’s speech too. Earlier in the season folk spotted that Shawn Hatosy was still wearing his wedding ring, which led to him revealing his own head cannon that Abbot was a widower alongside a veteran, something now made explicit in the dialogue.
At the other end of the scale, Langdon also gives Robby a chat as the two finally have the conversation Robby’s been avoiding. Robby tries to position his riding of his former wingman as tough love, but Langdon tells him he saw similar folk in rehab – the difference between them and Robby being that they all realised they needed help.
Javadi gets a gentle pep talk as Robby encourages her to keep up her videos, having now watched them, and tries to encourage Mohan. And he watches Whittaker head off with his farmer’s wife pal and their kid – an approximation of the life Robby admits to Mohan he thought he would have had by now.
Lots of loose ends finally get wrapped up – Langdon goes to see his nec fash victim from earlier, Javadi makes a final decision about her future, Mel’s deposition fears are paid off and Dana finally gets the cops to take the rape kits.
Oh, and we find out what happened to Whittaker’s pass. At least it’s being put to good use…
The one person who doesn’t get at least a neutral, let alone positive, end to the day is Dr Al Hashimi. After last week’s revelation, Robby tells her she’s not fit to work in the ER, in case she has a seizure while she’s dealing with a critical patient – despite the fact she’s had treatment and has a plan to avoid critical cases as part of her two attending on in dayshift plan. As she points out, he didn’t rat out Langdon for his drug abuse – and a strong case could be made for him being additionally hypocritical given his own perilous mental health all day – but he demands she tells the hospital administrators by Monday or he will reveal it to them instead. Our last glimpse is Baran breaking down in tears in her car.
That big save we mentioned earlier? The finale goes out in suitably spectacular medical fashion as a woman is brought in suffering from pre-eclampsia. With no medical care as she wants a free birth, she’s not had any treatment or support, but after suffering seizures and cardiac arrest the nightshift – plus Robby and Cassie McKay – have to resuscitate her AND deliver the baby via a resuscitive hysterotomy. It’s one of the most impressive pieces of procedure seen in the season in terms of prosthetics, as they carry out a c-section to remove the premature baby.
That, and being with Baby Jane Doe, appear to give Robby something like the hope he’s clearly needing to carry on, having told Abbot that watching so many people die under his care has eaten away his soul. It’s expertly done too – no dramatic music, no frenetic editing or shouty performances, just medical experts doing medicine expertly. What the Pitt does best, really.
Oh, and stick around for the mid-credits sequence. You won’t regret it…
Overall series thoughts:
To the show’s eternal credit, it didn’t just go for the obvious rinse-repeat approach and try to outdo last year’s horrific mass casualty event. Indeed, it gave us a couple of fakeout moments along the way to make us thing THIS was going to be the big incident of the season – the cyberattack, the waterslide, ICE. In the end none really tipped into that. The cyber attack provided a catalyst to keep the team longer than their 12 hours and see them through to the end of the season, but once the initial challenges of adapting to fax machines and clipboards had been overcome, it was just background noise. The waterslide was a nice subversion of expectations as we come out of the cliffhanger thinking ‘here we go’ and in the end there’s only three injuries and they’re dealt with in an episode. Indeed, as Dana tells new nurse Emma at one point, barring the loss of the computers this is just a normal day.
Instead, the focus was on the staff and their responses to trauma, both experienced and vicarious. It was about dignity, or the lack thereof – how we deal with death as people and as medics, how we do or don’t find forgiveness. How we present, or mask, our traumas from those suffering their own, and what happens when the mask slips.
There’s been definite issues this season. A couple of characters have felt like they’ve been spinning wheels for long stretches of the season, particularly Mel and Trinity – which does at least give some extra fun to their post-credit sequence. Part of this was unavoidable – Isa Briones suffered from a medical issue which necessitated limiting her involvement from some of the season, hence she was largely sitting down charting – and both did get their moments, Mel with her sister, Santos with Langdon. Mohan felt weirdly unused for half the season, and with Supriya Ganesh leaving, it feels like her potential as a character was squandered a bit. Even her exit moment feels like a damp squib.
You also have to feel for Sepideh Moafi. Al Hashimi’s been weirdly, poorly defined at times this season. Her character felt like a game of telephone at times, changing from episode to episode. Should we see her as a threat to Robby? Or is she actually the good guy here bringing new ideas? Is she berating Santos unfairly? Oh, she’s a MSF-veteran who’s been through a massacre. And now she’s blanking out. Moafi was never less than excellent in the role, but the role itself lacked the clarity of our existing staff in a way that was missing during season one’s introductions to everyone.
An interesting sidebar has been the show’s challenges with its own fandom which, in the space of a season, has managed to become surprisingly toxic. Internet fans and the tendency for parasocial relationships with characters can often be unhealthy, but usually it takes a few years to get there, not a few months, and certainly not so quick that it starts generating mainstream coverage. Yet the fans have also raised some genuine questions about some of the show’s creative choices – not least that, for the second year in a row, it’s a prominent woman of colour being cut from the cast in surprising circumstances, not one of the many white men.
At least, for all the character wobbles, the writing in The Pitt in terms of plot and theme never truly wavered. For all the talk of toning down the ICE story the show went studs up on Trump’s Brownshirts, it didn’t flinch from criticising the cost of healthcare in America and it continues to – rightly – draw clear, strong attention to the challenges faced by medical staff just doing their jobs in an era of misinformation, spite and underfunding.
We know series three will be another time jump, although how much forward remains to be seen, and the talk seems to be it’ll be winter when we return to PTMC, bringing with it much potential for very different trauma and cases in a frigid, snowbound Pittsburgh. Who will be back in the Pitt, though, is still very much an unanswered question.
Grizzly factor: The c-section is as gruesomely realistic as it is tense, while the blue, unresponsive baby is a remarkable piece of effects work.
Best quote:
“What was his chief complaint?”
“Hemorrhoids and constipation.”
“No shit!”
“Hence the constipation.”
The Pitt – Season 2 Episode 15: “09:00pm”
Written by R Scott Gemmill
Directed by John Wells
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