Season 2, Episode 1: ‘7:00 A.M.’
When we first meet Dr. Michael Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) in the series premiere of “The Pitt,” the introduction is nothing flashy. The doctor, better known as Robby, is just a tall, rumpled guy in a hoody and sunglasses, walking into the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center for another day as the emergency room’s senior attending physician.
When we first encounter Dr. Robby in the Season 2 premiere, he is roaring to work on a motorcycle.
It’s a fitting arrival for a number of reasons. An out-of-nowhere hit last season in an old-fashioned genre that streaming services like HBO Max rarely touch — the medical procedural — it returns as one of the most acclaimed and award-winning shows on television. (“The Pitt” won five Emmys, including best drama and best actor for Wyle.) As a pop-cultural phenomenon, its return is much noisier than its debut.
Robby, moreover, is the rock star of the Pitt, the unofficial nickname for the E.R. among its denizens. The younger staffers idolize him, the other seasoned veterans adore him, and he is the nemesis of the hospital’s more strait-laced, by-the-book figures. That the role firmly reestablished Noah Wyle as one of the small screen’s biggest stars doesn’t hurt either. By all means, give him a star’s entrance.
For a man Robby’s age, a bike can communicate vulnerability as much as masculinity. If this is a midlife-crisis means of transportation, that meshes with the news we learn nearly as soon as he arrives at work: Today, July 4, 2025, is his last day at work before a three-month sabbatical. And for crying out loud, he is an emergency room doctor who doesn’t wear a helmet. That’s risk-seeking behavior, whether you’re a true nature’s child, born to be wild, or not.
Robby’s return this season was expected, but rejoining him in the Pitt are two characters who seemed unlikely to be back. One is Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), the day-shift charge nurse — every bit as respected, revered and pivotal a figure in the Pitt as Dr. Robby. Despite announcing her intention to retire after being assaulted by a patient last season — perhaps unsurprisingly given her otherwise unflappable personality — she is back after some time off.
So is Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball). Sent packing after his addiction to pilfered pain medication came to light, he is back after a stint in rehab and is making the apology rounds. So far, this does not include the swaggering Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones), who caught Langdon red-handed on her first day in the Pitt. Santos is back, too, cocksure as ever.
Rejoining Santos are her three fellow newbies from last season. Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden), an endearing, bespectacled, neurodivergent resident, is nervous about her coming deposition in her first malpractice lawsuit. The former farm-boy med student Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) is a full-fledged doctor now, modeling his humanistic approach after Robby’s. Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez), a legitimate prodigy, is in her final stretch as a student — still under the watchful eye of her mother, Dr. Eileen Shamsi (Deepti Gupta), a hospital bigwig.
The first season’s four rookies are no longer the new kids on the block. Fresh faces this season include two new med students, the sardonic Joy Kwon (Irene Choi) and the lanky know-it-all James Ogilve (Lucas Iverson). Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard), a nervous young nurse, joins the team as well.
The most prominent new figure in the Pitt this season — not that she cares for that dungeonlike nickname for the place — is Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), the new attending, who is set to take over while Robby is away. A by-the-book type, she drills the students with a mock code, in which they frantically try and fail to save a patient (revealed to us eventually to be a practice dummy). She also institutes “patient passports,” printouts detailing the tests and procedures they can expect to undergo and the amount of time it will take to undergo them.
None of this sits well with Robby, who is used to running the Pitt his way — even if, after this shift, he won’t be around to run it for months.
Cases on “The Pitt” are like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: The doctors and nurses here never know what they’re going to get. Perhaps it’s an adorable little girl (Annabelle Toomey) with unexplained bruises and injuries, which sets off Santos’s abuse alarm bells. It could be a month-old baby, dropped off safely — or abandoned, a tricky legal question — in the restroom. This appears to trigger a painful memory for the newcomer Al-Hashimi, a.k.a. Dr. Al, who freezes while looking at the infant.
Elsewhere, an unhoused man (Charles Baker) with a dramatic lack of personal hygiene raises a literal and proverbial stink in the overcrowded waiting room until Dana and Emma help him get cleaned up. Dana notes that a little soap and hot water can help make anyone feel better; sure enough, the guy’s asking if they have any conditioner before long. Whitaker delivers a speech about respecting the dead that he once heard Robby give. McKay struggles to treat an alternately polite and brusque businessman (Derek Cecil) whose busted nose and broken wrist appear to be the tip of an undiagnosed cognitive-impairment iceberg.
It’s all in a day’s work at the Pitt. (A long day: Like the show’s first outing, Season 2 will tell the story of 15 consecutive hours in the E.R., played out across 15 weekly episodes.) But “The Pitt” isn’t, or isn’t just, a workplace drama. Certainly the friendships and flirtations, the alliances and rivalries, the infuriating inconveniences and the “man, I love this job” moments will feel familiar to anyone who has worked hard with the same group of people in the same place, day in and day out.
But what Wyle, the creator R. Scott Gemmill and the director John Wells achieve here is more than a recreation the past glories of their stints on “ER,” which before the New Golden Age of TV ushered in by “The Sopranos” represented the cutting edge. More germane points of comparison for the world of “The Pitt” include the teeming city of King’s Landing in “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon,” or the fully realized and lived-in sci-fi environments of “Andor.” “The Pitt” is an act of world-building first and foremost.
That starts with the show’s formal aspects: one contiguous set, filled with all different kinds of people, filmed by two hand-held cameras, set in what is meant to feel like real time. After even one episode in that crucible, you start to see it as a place you could hang out in and explore, even get lost in. “The Pitt” shares a sense of repleteness with the grand fantasy epics — the feeling that they’re teeming with life, which continues whether you’re watching or not.
As important to that parallel, though, are the staffers of the Pitt. They are heroes, drawn from all walks of life to serve their collective mission to save that lives. Neither addiction, nor immigration status nor autism spectrum disorders prevent them from doing their jobs. Indeed, their wide variety of life experiences are crucial to their ability to help as many people as possible.
The personal struggles of the medical staff, the intriguing — and often gory and disgusting — cases of the patients, the dazzling you-are-there production: These are the hooks that get you watching. But beneath it all is a message. Rock-star Robby may be the main attraction, but “The Pitt” is a full-throated celebration of expertise, competence, cooperation, science and diversity, at a time when those values are under widespread attack. In “The Pitt,” at least, those values are still alive and kicking.
The post ‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Doctors Will See You Now appeared first on New York Times.
