There’s something really cocky about the first episode of The Pitt Season 2.
Maybe it’s the way it opens, with senior attending Dr. Robby Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) riding his motorbike while decked in traditional “cool guy” attire (sunglasses, hoodie, leather gloves… but not a helmet in sight). He pulls up next to an ambulance as he cruises along the Rachel Carson Bridge, gives the driver a nonchalant nod, and speeds off with the Pittsburgh sunrise reflecting off his very cool, very hip new shades. Never mind that this was the same Dr. Robinavitch who had a mental breakdown and hid while he rode out a panic attack in Season 1. No, this season’s Robby has got his shit together. I hope.
That air of surface-level cockiness seems to have seeped into the rest of the ensemble as well. Newcomer Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), Robby’s replacement for when he goes on his motorcycle-cruising sabbatical (again with the motorbikes), is 100 percent certain that integrating AI into the hospital’s systems will make everything so much better. She immediately butts heads with Robby, and the two pick a passive-aggressive fight while watching the younger doctors crank an unconscious man’s chest open and flip one of his lungs around by hand. For those who get squeamish with a little bit of blood, The Pitt has never been, and probably never will be, for you.
Laying the Groundwork
The Pitt’s younger members carry that same self-assuredness, although some of them are justified. Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), the small-town Nebraska boy who panicked the first time a patient coded on his shift, is now a full-fledged doctor and leads two new baby med students around the hospital: the annoying know-it-all Ogilvy (Lucas Iverson) and the detached, and concerningly pessimistic, Joy (Irene Choi). And Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) is too busy kissing ass to renowned surgeon Dr. Eileen Shamsi (Deepti Gupta) to notice that her friend Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) is freaking out over a malpractice lawsuit.
The only one who doesn’t look like he knows what he’s doing is Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), who’s back in the Pitt after a months-long stint in rehab. While he’s doing his best to make amends with peers and patients alike, some people (ahem, Robby) just aren’t having it. The senior attending ices out his former acolyte, banishing him to the hellish abyss that is triage.
Although this first episode has definitely laid the groundwork for the chaos that this season promises (It does take place on the Fourth of July, after all), it’s also moving a little slower than past episodes. It feels like we’re lingering a little too long on our characters, but it’s still interesting to see how confident each of them has grown in between seasons. One of the greatest strengths of The Pitt’s first season was that it could deftly fold moments of character development into the world of a high-stakes, high-stress, overcrowded, and underfunded ER. Every episode felt like a panic attack, which makes The Pitt one of the harder shows to binge-watch (I made that mistake) — but it also trauma-bonded us with its ensemble.
The joy of The Pitt comes from watching the doctors figure out how to come up with enough Type O blood for over a hundred people, how to perform a 5 French pigtail catheter procedure (What is that?), or even how best to spook a pair of anti-vaxxer parents into giving their child the treatment he needs. This joy doesn’t necessarily come from doctors feeling confident about the powers of AI, or doctors ignoring each other’s problems, or doctors driving motorbikes. It’s a slow start for this second season of The Pitt, but hopefully things pick up soon.
