[Editor’s note: The following review contains spoilers for “The Pitt” finale — Season 1, Episode 15, “9:00 p.m.”]
On the finish of a backbreaking, soul-shaking hospital shift, it’s solely becoming for Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) to rally the troops. “At present ought to by no means have occurred,” he says, because the weary docs, nurses, and medical staffers collect round. “Such a horrific act is the worst of humanity. But it surely introduced out one of the best in the remainder of us.”
Throughout his two-minute tribute, Dr. Robby — who’s affected by acute existential exhaustion on prime of the day’s extra-fine grind — falls again on a handful of cliches. He peppers his pick-me-up with phrases like “higher angels” and shares his delight in every of them for “rising to the event.” Close to the top, he can’t maintain again his tears and encourages the remainder of them to do the identical. “It’s simply grief,” he says, “leaving the physique.”
Dr. Robby’s phrases imply lots. Seeing a frontrunner truly step up and lead is a rarity today, and Wyle’s mix of inspiration and vulnerability show potent. They might even find yourself bringing Dana (Katherine LaNasa) again to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Heart, because the cost nurse considers if this ought to be her final tour of obligation.
However they’re not the defining phrases of “The Pitt” finale.
These belong to Robby’s buddy and colleague, Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy). Whereas he isn’t round for the majority of his buddy’s 15-hour day, Jack exhibits up when it counts, in additional methods than one. The night time attending clocks in through the mass casualty scenario (set off by a shooter at Pitt Fest), after which steps up on the roof, subsequent to Dr. Robby, when the bedraggled doc can’t cease blaming himself for falling in need of his personal inconceivable expectations.
“I broke,” Robby says. “I shut down. The second all people wanted me essentially the most, I wasn’t there. I couldn’t do it. I choked.”
The grace he offers to his coworkers is notably absent from Robby’s brutal self-assessment. He doesn’t consider he rose to the event. He doesn’t really feel happy with all of the lives he saved. He solely remembers those he didn’t. The identical drive and imaginative and prescient that allowed him to efficiently lead the therapy of 106 out of 112 sufferers received’t permit for a couple of minutes of non-public human frailty.
However that’s all they had been — a couple of minutes, in a shift that stretched on for greater than 15 hours. With a bit of distance, Robby would possibly be capable of see the utility he provided throughout 95 p.c of his shift vastly outweighs the 5 p.c when he felt ineffective. It’s simply onerous to step again if you’ve been in the midst of it for thus lengthy, a perspective “The Pitt” excels at crafting all through its unrelenting, real-time first season.
However that’s probably not what’s bugging him. What’s bugging him is that it occurred earlier than, throughout COVID, it occurred at this time, within the aftermath of a mass capturing, and which means it can seemingly occur once more. How lengthy will it final then? Who will he lose subsequent time? What’s he alleged to do, residing with the assumption that he’s destined to disappoint himself?
Nicely, he’s supposed to acknowledge his personal limitations, as one man in a world of billions, and when he can’t try this — for all the explanations outlined above — Jack does it for him. When Robby says he broke, he choked, he failed, Jack is there to inform him, in no unsure phrases, “So fucking what?”
“That’s what occurs if you’re in a battle and nothing is sensible,” Jack says. “We survived as a species as a result of we realized the best way to cooperate and talk. So once we’re in the midst of killing one another, it defies the very logic of our existence. Your mind begins to short-circuit. All you are able to do is give attention to the medication. The medication is the one factor that saves the affected person — and your sanity.”
The medication is the one factor that saves the affected person, and the medication is the one factor that saves the physician. It sounds so easy, and for as blunt as Dr. Abbott is in that second, he nonetheless is aware of it’s not a straightforward thought to simply accept. He is aware of from expertise.
In the beginning of Robby’s shift, Jack talks about spending two hours attempting to resuscitate a dying veteran. When he couldn’t do it, he wrote a notice to his household. Clearly, veterans are a private precedence for him. Later, within the park, Jack removes his prosthetic leg, and the implication is that he’s been to battle — precise battle — and it’s given him the angle wanted to know what Robby goes by way of.
Regardless of Robby’s ball-busting complaints about his speechifying, Jack doesn’t simply bullshit his method by way of his buddy’s disaster. At all times the physician, he speaks on to what’s ailing him.
In doing so, he additionally speaks on to what’s made “The Pitt” a minor streaming sensation. Past enjoying spot the nepo child and guessing “How’d they try this?” throughout graphic operations, past the nostalgia for well-mounted broadcast-style medical dramas and the nostalgia for “E.R.” particularly (which Wyle carrying scrubs can’t assist however evoke), what the primary season of R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells’ Max drama gives is medication — medication for the damaged, burned-out thoughts.
What Jack describes to Robby is a scenario they each lived by way of. It’s what occurred to them, that day, on the hospital. But it surely’s additionally what’s occurring throughout us, day-after-day, particularly in 2025. We’re surrounded by battle and genocide, environmental catastrophes and illegal deportations, financial collapse and extra mass shootings. Most of us aren’t witnessing these occasions first-hand, in the best way these docs did with the Pitt Fest victims, however we’re nonetheless witnesses to unfathomable assaults on humanity. In case you attempt to take all of it in, or one tragedy after the following, your mind will short-circuit, too. The one option to survive is give attention to one single factor that is sensible.
“The Pitt” gives its viewers that one single factor. After a protracted day of labor, college, childcare, volunteering, organizing, protesting, and all the pieces else you do to interact with the world you wish to make higher, “The Pitt” is an totally absorbing expertise that instructions your full consideration. It’s the break your mind wants from the issues which are breaking your mind. It’s the medication, and also you’re the affected person.
Different TV exhibits, motion pictures, and numerous types of leisure can supply the identical physic treatment, and there’s additionally the chance that distracting your self from actuality turns into so addictive that you just get completely misplaced. However that’s a part of makes “The Pitt” such a wise alternative. It’s a present that appreciates a robust work ethic. It respects the dedication its characters are making, in addition to the precise dedication of the docs they symbolize. It makes it onerous to detach fully — what with all of the speak about real-world points like medical health insurance, vaccines, and, oh yeah, mass shootings — but it surely beckons you so easily into its world that your time there nonetheless seems like break day.
That’s not a sense you will get from second-screen TV. You’re not going to really feel such as you’ve escaped our present hellscape after spending two hours doom-scrolling with one eye and monitoring plot-points with the opposite. “The Pitt,” regardless of persistent flaws (that might principally be mounted earlier than Season 2), is aware of the best way to earn your consideration. It is aware of it wants to earn your consideration, and it is aware of you want it to earn your consideration.
Possibly that’s a bit of convoluted. Possibly it’s lending a TV present a bit of an excessive amount of management over my psychological well being. Possibly I ought to take Dr. Robby’s recommendation and cease speaking.
…you get what I’m saying, although, proper?
“The Pitt” Season 1 is out there on Max. The collection has already been renewed for Season 2.