Let Me Show You My Reverse Tracheotomy: “The Pitt” on Max or HBO or whatevef

“The Pitt” on Max starring Noah Wyle: this medical drama fucking RULES and we should talk about it

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i’m caught up and cannot wait for ep 6. notes so far

- pvmic but grizzled Noah Wyle is hot af
- i love the 1 hour= i episode structure
- no music! maximum intensity
- i understand like 5% of the jargon but i am fucking RIVETED to my seat
- the plate spinning of all the building storylines is fantastic
- love the chemistry btw Wyle & Dr Collins
- love Dana the head nurse
- i need Princess to crack soon bc i haaaaaate her character so much (but i know at least 2 versions of her irl)

i never was obsessed w ER or House & dont usually care abour medical shows but i am full heart-eyes emojis for this show

episode 4 really proves how good the show is imo

We've watched the whole thing so far as a family (well, most of us), including my daughter, a near-future medical professional. We love it, and while there are a few TV moments here and there, it seems pretty level-headed and relatively realistic. Ironically, the person that reminds me the most of a legit young doctor (in training) is Brian Cranston's daughter, who nails the right level of nerdy competence.

1) I didn't even notice there is no music!
2) I wonder if the doctors that wrote/consulted kept notebooks of all the random or mundane cases they had, because some of the stuff the show depicts is so very specific without coming across Very TV Doctor Show.

I used to watch ER, back-when, but not House or Grey's Anatomy or whatever, so can't compare to those. But as good as ER was in its prime, this seems different and in many ways better.

My good friend’s wife was an ER nurse in NYC was telling us they really captured the vibe and feel of a busy urban emergency room.

yeah the specifics feel very true to irl experiences on the writing staff or consultants or something — my BiL was a paramedic & i have ER nurse friends

like even the way Wyle ducks into the bathroom to kinda cry for like a nanosecond (about something genuinely devastating) but then looks at himself in the mirror & laughs felt so truthful

love Cranston’s daughter, she’s so competent and handles her shit so well in those intense procedures!

I am not usually a fan of doctor shows — I watched a few episodes of ER back when Linda Cardellini and Parminder Nagra were on it, because... well, Linda Cardellini and Parminder Nagra. And I have seen a few episodes of House, but never Grey's Anatomy. The hospital show I've probably seen the most is Chicago Med, which is... OK. But yeah, The Pitt is pretty compelling. Some of the kid doctors are annoying (the one who's a huge bitch who thinks she knows everything, and the one who keeps getting splattered with blood), but some of the others are just dumb kids and entertaining about it. They're setting up some interesting plotlines that I hope resolve well and not as horror.

the one who keeps getting splattered is kinda fun imo. waiting for him to run out of scrubs of ~any~ kind lol

oh and i said i hate Princess -i meant Trinity! I hate Trinity!

princess boned a dave navarro dude under the stars -she’s cool as hell lol

I might have said this in the other tv thread, but I started this show with a fair amount of ambivalence and maybe even skepticism. I was especially wary of the 15 eps = 15 hours of one shift; it just sounded like it was going to get really tedious. And the whole plot of the woman with the moody son who may or may not become a school shooter just felt very forced.

But lo and behold by the third or fourth episode all my reservations went away and I think this show has only gotten richer with each passing episode. I’m impressed with the depth it’s developing - a long simmer of a show.

And now for better or worse I’m expecting the school shooter plot to come back in a more unexpected way - like maybe an attempted suicide rather than a bunch of injured kids… something less predictable. Hoping for something less on the nose, at least.

the way this show handles death so matter of factly but with so much empathy is like nothing i have seen on tv in a long while

like maybe Leftovers was the last show i can think of

Only thru ep3 so not reading the board yet. Love Noah Wyle in this. Hopefully he gets to pee in ep4 :) Also appreciate casting and acting from the patients and family members. Adds to the verisimilitude

i still have not gotten over them uh, popping out the dent, in that dude’s FACE in episode 1

like

i didn’t know faces could do that. that was hardcore

my fiancé and I are both physicians and we both thought this was the most realistic medical show we’ve ever seen — or at least that I’ve ever seen, since I don’t usually gravitate toward them. it’s really tightly scripted and well acted, super enjoyable. the medical student who’s the daughter of one of the surgeons is a bit of a caricature but having known a lot of similar people it is fun to root against her.

Is this too-much intense like the Bear? or heartbreakerly so like This Is going to Hurt? Or a more general ER meets 24 kinda idea?

I have a feeling my other half will inevitably want to watch this lol. Though he's just started on 6 feet under of all things so it might be a while.

More general ER, I'd say. It's got its sad spots (so far) but nothing terribly melodramatic and intense yet. It's pretty grounded.

yeah cosign that

Yeah, it's a very grounded show. Blood, tension, anxiety, but they haven't resorted to a single "no one's ever seen this disease before" or "if we don't get this contained, the whole city will be at risk" plotline yet.

Tonight's episode was good. Very glad to see the student doctor I dislike the most fuck up badly (without harming a patient) and get slapped down for it. Frankly, I was beginning to wonder whether sexual tension was building between her and the surgeon, or if it was just the beginning of a mentor/mentee relationship, but neither of those things is happening now, ha ha.

haven't seen this but is is v. curious to me that two shows set in pittsburgh debuted in january: this and the latest sherlock holmes spinoff (watson, 'a medical drama with detective elements' on cbs)

that watson show is a goddamn lie: thinly veiled sherlock notions but it’s basically just “Morris Chestnut IS House” zzz

tbf i just want artistic shots of the mighty allegheny and monongehela confluencing into the ohio river. and decent scripts i guess

who had primanti bros on their bingo card

I read a few interviews about the show, mostly with Wyle, and I think the pivot from making a new ER to the episode-per-hour format has been very clever. ER was a melodrama partially by necessity because it was really focused on the medical staff with the majority of the cases being one and done.

The individual patients have so much more room to breathe (until they're intubated?) in the script and they feel just as important as the staff.

I really like this

can't wait for Data's daughter to get slapped down some more as the day winds on

I really love the rhythm of this show, how there's no traditional rising or falling action structure, how each episode doesn't really conclude so much as pause the story.

yeah same, makes it very enjoyable and sort of cliffhangery, more like old fashioned serialised plays and stuff

"Sort of" cliffhangery is pretty much right, because rarely does an episode end on or even aim for an "oh shit!" moment, at least not so far. I forget how each episode of "24" ended, with, like, snapshots of whatever four conflicts/cliffhangers are going on at once?

But with this, so far there's been no "tune in next week to find out what happened!" sort of suspense, because there is a lot going on at once.

Could do with the show cooling it on the med students embodying clichesarchetypes bit.

We're still learning about them, though. Who was the person Cranston's daughter was talking to on the phone, for example? And arrogant student has a back story we haven't gotten yet, too. And Huckleberry, I feel we have a lot to learn about him as well. And of course surgeon's daughter is being set up for ... something.

mainly i just need propofol and ketamine stat

rarely does an episode end on or even aim for an "oh shit!" moment, at least not so far

The biggest one was "that's not the pregnant girl's mom, that's her aunt — the screaming angry lady is her mom".

The character I'm keeping a close eye on is the angry guy who keeps getting sent back to the waiting room; a violent outburst would not be a total surprise.

cranston’s daughter i guessed was talking to her sister, so maybe she was not only caring for a mom (who passed) but a sibling still as well idk

The angry man is also a racist MAGA dude. I forget why he's (still) there. Chest pains?

have you guys missed the entire plot point where she has a sister that has special needs and has assisted living arrangements during the day? it's why she was trying so hard to relate to the lady with the schizophrenia-having mom

Yes. Though eventually I sort of pieced that together.

have you guys missed the entire plot point where she has a sister that has special needs and has assisted living arrangements during the day? it's why she was trying so hard to relate to the lady with the schizophrenia-having mom

Yeah, I caught that; my question is, how special needs is she supposed to be? She seems at least somewhat autistic, but it's not clear yet whether we're supposed to care about that or if it's just a minor character trait.

angry guy is there for chest pains

I'm surprised angry guy hasn't just fucked off in frustration yet. Also, of course, potential school shooter guy, will that come back in the form of victims or *his* return to the ER? A lot of stuff hanging out there.

it was floated on The Watch podcast that maybe the possible shooter story intersects w the music festival story?

Hmm. That would also rope back in Noah's son. I kind of hope it doesn't go supernova dark and tragic, though tis the world we live in, I guess.

honestly that storyline with the shooter kid & the mom irked me the most, like jeez lady why are you making this kid the ER’s problem? i understand not knowing where to go for help but this really should not be the move.

honestly that storyline with the shooter kid & the mom irked me the most, like jeez lady why are you making this kid the ER’s problem? i understand not knowing where to go for help but this really should not be the move.

I did actually think this was ER: The Next Generation for a good while and chalked up any wincy tropes to being an unavoidable inheritance before vaguely remembering the lawsuit by the Crichton estate. The main actors do a really good job physically inhabiting their characters versus the patients who seem like they're making the most out of their guest spot (though does that apply here when it's essentially one long episode?), which I also associate with ER!

Between the schizophrenic woman whose daughter abandoned her and the lady who's handcuffed for some reason, this show is slightly overpopulated with sassy senior citizens.

don’t worry, there are still some very tired and boring looking senior citizens in the waiting area

that demographic is probably the largest at the ER, right? that and parents with their injured/suddenly ill children

Making yourself sick to go to the ER to tell the ER doc your kid might be a school shooter was such a strange choice it seemed like a real life event one of the writers read about or something.

I enjoy hearing about asystole again, I haven't heard that word since ER

this show is slightly overpopulated with sassy senior citizens.

― Instead of create and send out, it pull back and consume (unperson), Wednesday, February 12, 2025 1:52 PM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I invite you to spend 14 hours in an actual emergency room

SEE

I invite you to spend 14 hours in an actual emergency room

no thanks I did that in June, 10 of that was in a waiting room

i spent a long evening in ER with a gallbladder attack, lying in a bed next to a female version of the Kraken who was going through withdrawal & screaming her lungs out. It was heartbreaking. It was my first time in an American emergency room & it was very overwhelming & terrifying! i just lay there puking into a bedpan for hours just listening to this sad screaming woman.

I just realized new episodes of this air on Thursdays...just like ER

Does that mean HBO is going to do gritty homages to Friends and Seinfeld?

I mean they already have Curb

tonight’s episode was really good - i never knew about that heart machine! that is incredible technology

-that meeting between the two patients was peak contrived emotional manipulation but you know what, it worked on me
-I seriously thought that maybe the mother was lying about her daughter being molested, esp after Santos went into the room and threatened him, storyline's resolution seems a bit too...I dunno, neat? I can see Santo's threat biting her in the ass
-a miscarriage is a hell of a thing to throw halfway into the season

the tiktok beauty influencer one’s diagnosis was really predictable imo, if you like detective games or am an amateur epidemiologist

not in a bad way, just “when are they going to put this together”

S2 renewal lfgggg

yeah the Santos storyline w molester didn’t go the way i expected so maybe this has a longer tail that it seems. when Santos went to the daughter i was like girl wtf are u doing, she is so “Ready Fire Aim” i find her v stressful

loved Dr Mel & autistic table tennis dude, she handled all of that so beautifully, made me a bit emotional

dr collins miscarriage i was really lowkey anticipating, the way she was trying to hide her wincing last episode i was like this doesnt bode well

i was hoping tiktok girl had a parasite, oh well cant win them all lol

yeah the Santos storyline w molester didn’t go the way i expected so maybe this has a longer tail that it seems. when Santos went to the daughter i was like girl wtf are u doing, she is so “Ready Fire Aim” i find her v stressful

Good on Collin’s for calling Robby out for being a dick to everyone. Dr Mel and table tennis guy was best part of the episode. And good on Langdon for acknowledging it after brushing her off earlier.

I hate how mean Dr Robbie is to Slow-Mo, my guess is he sees some trait in her that maybe got him into hot water when he was coming up? Like she cares too much & he doesnt want her to get hurt or something idk? it feels like a really hardcore overcorrection tho

I think it’s mostly explained by the admin lady’s hectoring about metrics etc — emergency medicine, at least the way the suits would like them to practice, is all about stabilization and throughput. spending too much time getting to know a patient takes time away from seeing the next pt in line and keeping things moving. that’s what internal medicine is for lol [cries]

agreed with pgwp about the incest dad storyline and a couple of other seeming shark-jumping occurrences. not a great sign. these last two episodes were a bit of a drop off for me

why would the doc try to get his peers not to feel too much for their patients, on this, the anniversary of his mentor’s death as a patient, etc

I think like k3vin said he’s just feeling the pressure from administration to move through patients as quickly as possible.

i think mh is being sarcastic imo

there are a lot of reasons in the text!

Husband asked me how I (a famously squeamish person) can watch this, and I said that fifteen years of ER taught me never to look at the screen when the patient on the gurney has burns or the word "degloved" is used.

lol otm

They've only shown glimpses of Robbie's flashback, but iirc this was the first week where they had him upset and panicking in the flashback, and maybe pushing treatment a little too far. Shades of Whitaker on the show, but also showing that he's had to make a lot of tough personal decisions he's seeing other people make, too, while trying to remain neutral/impersonal. As an administrator/mentor/supervisor/manager he wears one cap, as a doctor he wears another, as a human/friend/colleague he wears a third, and they're all colliding on this inauspicious day. Which, given Chekov's school shooter and Chekov's music festival and Chekov's his song, may indeed not bode well, but I hope the show zigs where I expect it to zag, because yeah, there were a few plot turns in this one that seemed a little much. Still great acting and direction, though.

I was convinced the good samaritan was the guy that pushed her, and was going to find a way to threaten her into silence, but that would have been *too* TV! As would making the racist in the waiting room the one who *did* push her, but I guess tbd.

only watched the first episode but it seems pretty good

noah wyle and the head nurse have aged extremely well
welsh guy looks like he's 16 (he's 32)

her dickishness almost distracted me from recognizing isa briones from (the terrible) 'picard'

between pittsburgh and my mom's dementia and my own increasing age-related frailty this might be too fucking real. like i'm cool-ish with dying but i'm not sure i want to watch the half-measures play out ad infinitum

total crush on fiona dourif

A couple of weeks ago I saw Neko Case interviewed, ostensibly about her new book. I forget how it came up, but she told a story of a friend that had died suddenly a couple of weeks earlier. A mutual friend had attempted CPR but failed to revive her, but rode with her to the hospital in the ambulance, and iirc because she made it to the hospital before she was pronounced dead they approved her as an organ donor. Neko told the story of her and her friend walking the body of her late friend down a line of every hospital employee paying tribute to her friend and her generous sacrifice after death. The entire auditorium was in tears.

Anyway, that's how I felt after this episode.

God, I’m sobbing after this episode.

yeah fuck that was heavy