Midway through the second season of The Pitt, Princess (Kristin Villanueva), a nurse at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, tells a patient her “secret” to dealing with the never-ending onslaught of crisis that is her job. “I go home at the end of every shift, leave all this behind,” she says, leaning in with a conspiratorial smile, “and escape to Love Island.”
It’s an unintentionally ironic answer, coming as it does from a character on a show that itself feels, improbably but unmistakably, like an escape. With its graphic injuries, frequent tragedies and devastatingly plausible dilemmas, the HBO Max medical drama might not seem like the stuff of obvious comfort viewing. But in the aura of care and competence radiating not only from the characters but the cast and crew behind them, it’s a balm all the same.
The Pitt
The Bottom Line
Exciting, engrossing and healing.
Airdate: Thursday, Jan. 8 (HBO Max)
Cast: Noah Wyle, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Supriya Ganesh, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, Shabana Azeez, Sepideh Moafi
Creator: R. Scott Gemmill
Not that this will come as a surprise to anyone already on board with The Pitt. Consistency has been a hallmark of R. Scott Gemmill’s real-time hospital drama from the first season, and it’s gotten no less reliable in the second.
The emergency room might be chaotic as always (the latest run unfolds over the Fourth of July, so mishaps fueled by fireworks or margaritas are a given), but the editing guiding us through it remains as meticulous and fluid as a symphony. The characters are messily human as ever, whether they’re dealing with unrecognized biases on the clock or romantic situationships off it, and the performances bringing them to life as precise as can be. The tone, too, remains one of near-perfect balance between excitement and frustration, hope and sorrow, sprinkled with unexpected bits of humor. And undergirding it all is still a steady hum of warmth, flowing first and foremost from Dr. Robby, Noah Wyle’s eminently decent senior attending.
The experience of re-entering this world, then, feels akin to catching up with an old friend. Over the nine episodes sent to critics (of a 15-part season), I delighted over and over again in the things that haven’t changed about this place, and the things that have.
Ten months have passed since the events of the previous season, and it’s gratifying to see how formerly fresh-faced rookies like Santos (Isa Briones), Javadi (Shabana Azeez) and especially Whitaker (Gerran Howell) — whose newfound confidence and fundamental kindness mark him as Robby’s heir apparent — have settled into their roles. Or to watch as the formerly esteemed Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), fresh back from rehab, tries to make amends. (We are all Taylor Dearden’s Mel King eagerly running up to hug him, and then awkwardly thinking better of it at the last second.) Or to clock how protective Dana (Katherine LaNasa) is of her new hire Emma (Laëtitia Hollard) following her own encounter with a violent patient in the last season.
The familiarity has some slight downsides, particularly for the new characters in our midst. While I appreciated the shifts in dynamic spurred by this year’s crop of med students, know-it-all Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) and disinterested Kwon (Irene Choi), I could not muster up the same affection I’d had for their predecessors — perhaps because while Santos, Javadi and Whitaker had served as audience-identification characters, learning the ropes of this hectic place right alongside us, the new duo are positioned as interlopers in an environment we already know well.
Likewise, though The Pitt is certainly better for having a character like Dr. Al-Hashimi — a new attending hired to fill in for Robby as he embarks on a three-month motorcycle trip — to challenge Robby and butt heads with him, I found it difficult not to reflexively take his side in early episodes. He’s the hero we’ve known and loved for a year now, after all, whereas she’s an unfamiliar presence whose semi-radical new ideas send Robby’s eyebrows creeping all the way up to his hairline — though Sepideh Moafi’s performance, self-assured and charming, eventually makes Al-Hashimi feel like she’s always belonged there.
But these are minor quibbles with a series that, on the whole, still feels like it’s firing on all cylinders. As in season one, the storylines are a purposely mixed bag. The world of The Pitt, like our own, is one in which the silliness of two dude-bros branding themselves with the Pittsburgh Penguins logo might butt up against the somberness of a terminally ill cancer patient figuring out how best to die, just down the hall from a baby abandoned by its caretakers or a flirty old man refusing to let his fractured tailbone get in the way of his thriving sex life.
Amid such a varied and lifelike tapestry, The Pitt does not need to stand on a soapbox to comment on the sorry state of health insurance in the U.S., when it can make the point by having Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) deal with a diabetic father refusing care lest he rack up another five figures in medical debt. Or to spell out the cascading effects of Trump’s mass deportations when it can simply introduce a severely injured boy who’s been left in the care of his overwhelmed big sister after their parents were abruptly removed to Haiti.
In one of season two’s recurring themes, Robby and his staff are forced to consider the relationship between medicine and technology, as they face top-down pressure to use generative AI tools or scramble to find analog solutions to a digital crisis. In weighing the tantalizing potential of cutting-edge technology against its very real drawbacks, the series reveals itself to be skeptical though not dogmatic about the roles machines might play in modern health care.
It’s a fitting stance from a series that, for all its championing of science and its frustration with those who might reject it, has always placed its faith first and foremost in the human impulse to care for one another. In a real world that can, especially as of late, feel overrun with incompetence or cruelty or plain bad luck, The Pitt serves as our portal into one guided by the principles of empathy, courage and dignity. In doing so, it reminds us that even in the darkest of times or the scariest of places, we might look around and find the best of us.
