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The thing that’s always rankled me (and plenty more TV fans) about our ongoing “content” era — when streamers desperately try to fill their services with more original shows and movies than anyone could possibly watch, with less and less importance placed on those shows and movies being good — is that for all their fretting over low churn rates and stuffed release calendars, no one wants to make traditional TV seasons anymore. I mean, come on. If all you really care about is keeping subscribers from canceling their subscriptions every quarter, why not make two hit series with 22 episodes per season instead of six hit series with eight episodes per season? Isn’t it easier to keep people hooked on one show vs. three shows? Isn’t it simpler to produce TV the way TV has always been produced? Isn’t there a clear and obvious market for something that’s had a clear and obvious market for the better part of a century?
Sure, “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” and “True Detective” set off a cultural shift toward serious, serialized narratives that weren’t meant to last 20 hours at a time, and yeah, movie stars flocking to the small screen didn’t like the idea of being booked up on one show for nine months a year. But as the second golden age faded to peak TV pewter, and the value of broadcast hits like “Friends,” “The Office,” and “E.R.” refreshed yet again — since these shows offered hundreds of hours of programming to fill up the lucky licensor’s digital library — there was still widespread reluctance to make new shows like those old hits. TV critics cried out for longer TV seasons, and TV networks just made fewer episodes over a longer period of time.
Enter: “The Pitt.” Created by veteran “E.R.” writer/producer R. Scott Gemmill with Noah Wyle onboard as the star doctor and executive producer and “E.R.” showrunner John Wells as an executive producer and director, the new series seems specifically designed to combine the comforting, replicable structure of classic TV dramas with the effortless, endless binge encouraged by streaming platforms. Finally, a network has seen the light. Finally, a show with long seasons and strong production values. Finally, audiences will be treated to the best of both worlds.
Well… not quite.
At 15 hourlong episodes, “The Pitt‘s” first season is four episodes shy of “E.R.’s” shortest run, but still feels enormous compared to most Max original series (the last of which I watched, Steven Soderbergh’s excellent little mystery “Full Circle,” lasted just six hours). Only 10 were screened for critics, and it still felt like I was on a long-haul train ride, or halfway through a pretty wild double-shift, the latter of which is exactly what the show depicts.
Wyle plays Dr. Michael Robinavitch, the chief attendant of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital’s emergency department. Kind and considerate, calm and clear-minded, Dr. Robby makes an ideal steward not only for his sprawling staff of nurses, residents, doctors, and surgeons, but for the audience watching at home. Wyle knows the territory well, and his experience instills his new doc with needed authority. Even as his grueling shift (running from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.) starts to wear on him, Dr. Robby is the kind of self-aware, humble individual who’s not above apologizing for his brief, brash behavior or taking responsibility for a mistake that could easily be blamed on someone else. He’s a good leader and a good doctor, and Wyle carries both mantles with a natural blend of weary reliability — a port in the storm for every soaked seafarer.
The storm, however, is less compelling. “The Pitt” isn’t short on plotlines, from Dr. Robby’s peak-COVID flashbacks to the dozens of patients explaining why they need emergency care, but the presentation leaves a lot to be desired. Where “E.R.” feels visceral — long, roaming, walk-and-talk scenes captured with Steadicams and cut together with in-the-room urgency — “The Pitt” feels clinical. Most shots are fixed. Many take a wide view of spacious rooms and hallways, with close-ups reserved for characters’ emotional beats or (impressively) grisly wounds and bloody surgical maneuvers. There’s plenty of verisimilitude, but rarely does a scene make you snap to attention or quicken your heart.
(When it comes to the difference in style between “E.R.” and “The Pitt,” perhaps the most telling moment is when a patient gets medevaced in, and instead of seeing doctors rush to meet the helicopter as it lands — the camera mounted on the rolling gurney — the slowly cut together wide and medium-wide shots show Dr. Robby & Co. standing motionless by the edge of the landing pad, patiently waiting as the air team walks the injured party over to the hospital entrance. Basically, you’re watching the doctors go to work instead of joining in.)
That level of remove also applies to the way people are written. “The Pitt” is completely devoid of modern medical dramas’ preferred long-term arcs, which is both a blessing and a curse. There’s no will-they or won’t they romance between doctors, unless you count one mention of Dr. Robby’s past relationship with a senior resident, Dr. Collins (Tracey Ifeachor). There’s no extended breaks in the action for best friends to catch up on what’s going on in their personal lives, like Mark and Doug on “E.R.,” or Meredith and Cristina on “Grey’s Anatomy.” There’s no time spent outside the hospital at all, save for when a staff member steps outside to take a phone call or smoke a cigarette.
‘The Pitt’Courtesy of Max“The Pitt’s” real-time construction doesn’t prohibit any of this, it just prefers to keep you in the center of many disparate moving parts. With so many subjects and so little time given to developing them, it means suffering through a whole lot of blunt exposition and even more clichéd or half-formed characters. That may feel familiar, even comforting, to fans of broadcast dramas, which thrive by creating self-contained arcs every week, but “The Pitt” isn’t operating at a high enough level to make them work.
The medical jargon is convincing, but a lot of the other dialogue is painful. A doctor advises a teenager about to go on a date to “always wrap it before you tap it,” without a trace of irony or embarrassment. A nurse mocks a doctor’s flowery speech by saying, “OK, Jane Austen,” to which they reply with… a quote from Shakespeare? After a resident gets peed on by a patient, another doc quips, “Congrats kid, you earned your yellow wings.” There’s also a troubling recurrent theme of angry, violent, and/or distraught mothers, who we are asked to watch suffer or inflict suffering on others time and time again. Why is “The Pitt” so mean to its moms, and why are moms so mean in “The Pitt”?
Just as upsetting is the E.D. itself (short for Emergency Department, since they’re not called E.Rs. anymore). Although it’s as white, sterile, and bland as most modern medical facilities, this is still the set of a television show, and as the set of a television show, it’s eye-numbingly ugly to behold. Rooms are indistinguishable from one another. The lighting never changes. Spending more than few hours staring at the alternating gray and ivory walls and floors is enough to explain why people hate hospitals — or instill a fresh hatred for this hospital in particular.
Still, the soulless setting does underline the show’s two key principles: realism and routine. Whether you’re repulsed by it or ignore it altogether, “The Pitt’s” hospital is how hospitals look, its staff dresses like a hospital staff dresses, and its cases are plausible enough to believe that’s what a hospital staff has to deal with (maybe not all in one shift, but at some point). Getting audiences to buy in is no easy feat, and even if an overacting mother here or a nonsensical bit of dialogue there takes you out of the experience, “The Pitt’s” steady storytelling rhythm doesn’t leave you adrift for long. At its best, “The Pitt” is a process show, and it’s so very easy to get sucked into one process after the next, whether it’s a new patient examination, a new surgery, a new administrative quandary, or something else Dr. Robby has to deal with at some point during his very long day.
I expect the ease at which “The Pitt” allows viewers to turn off their brain for one hour after the next will be enough for many of you, dear readers, especially if you’re already a fan of the genre. Frankly, it’s probably enough to get me to finish the first season, with the caveat that I want “The Pitt” to succeed because I want networks to make more shows like it. I just want them to be better, as “E.R.” and a hundred other old shows prove they can be.
Grade: C+
“The Pitt” premieres Thursday, January 9 with two episodes on Max. New episodes will be released weekly.
English (US) ·