POP-CULTURE COLUMN: The Pitt Is Eating At My Gut
By Dan Brown I gotta stop watching The Pitt. The HBO Max medical drama about a chaotic ER in Pittsburgh is stressing me out. Now in its second season, the Pitt is an unrelenting show from the beginning of every episode to the final minutes. My life is already stressful enough without having to keep track of all the storylines and characters. I have two jobs, a wife, two dogs, two cats. I have enough going on in my life without the extra pressure of not knowing if the ER team, led by Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby, is going to make it through the day. Each hour of the show represents an hour of a shift. In the first season, the shift was unfolding like any other day when a mass shooting shook the city, flooding the hospital with wounded patients. In the current season, the major complication is how a ransomware attack means the doctors, nurses, and specialists on duty must do their jobs without the help of computers. The problem for me is that the show is so damn compelling. When the next instalment drops, I know right now it’ll be hard for me to resist watching. I guess I want to see how Wyle and his co-stars deal with the patients that wind up needing emergency care. It’s called competence p*rn – how fans get off on seeing characters who are professionals rise to an occasion beyond their understanding by improvising. The same fetish is also powering the stellar box-office numbers for Project Hail Mary in theatres right now. People love watching Ryan Gosling get stuff done on the big screen. Some human beings are apparently turned on by people who are really good at their jobs. I’m one of those suckers. I do feel a sense of relief when a dying patient is saved on the Pitt. Or when a student doctor pulls a solution out of their butt – the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center is a teaching hospital, a neat narrative trick that allows readers to understand what the medical team is up against in each individual case as the team talks out possible treatments. But it’s an ordeal to watch. The Pitt gets on my nerves in a way few TV shows ever have. When I was a young TV watcher in the 1980s, there was another series that had a similar effect, the cop drama Hill Street Blues. It was gritty and so realistic for its time. That was the first television offering to make me grind my teeth in the same way. Each episode of Hill Street Blues also started with the beginning of a typical shift and followed the characters through their long day. I credit the cast of the Pitt for grabbing my attention. The emotional give-and-take between head nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) and Dr. Robby is the heart of this second season. Keeping up such a hectic pace, it’s easy to see how the folks working in this particular ER would get burnt out quickly. And there are all kinds of subplots. One doc is a recovering addict. Another was recently homeless. Another may be about to do self-harm, which means I gotta see if she goes through with it. Who am I kidding? I know I likely won’t change my viewing habits. The Pitt is just too damn good. Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 33 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly graphic-novel group.
