Season 2, Episode 2: ‘8:00 A.M.’
Maggots feasting on a living man’s arm. A bone poking through a bloody wound before getting forcibly shoved back into place. A man smiling happily as his distended stomach is drained of liter after liter of fluid. A syringe drawing blood from a fully visible and erect penis.
Normally, you’d have to turn to the work of purveyors of the extreme such as Clive Barker, Takashi Miike or Lars von Trier to see such sights. This week, they’re on America’s favorite weekly medical drama. Who says Hollywood is risk-averse?
Gore and graphic content have long been hallmarks of the medical procedural, of course. A little shock via simulated surgery or injury reminds the viewer that actual human bodies are on the line every day in the E.R. But from the start, “The Pitt” has taken a show-it-all approach to every aspect of the practice of emergency medicine, presenting us with the good, the bad and the ugly — and now the erect.
Attention-getting visuals aside, this episode is full of intriguing and emotionally involving cases. Santos continues to investigate the mysterious injuries on a young patient. The hospital’s social worker on duty, Dylan (Becca Blackwell), sees few signs of abuse, though they’ll need to speak with the father and perform additional exams before they can be sure. A potentially serious underlying health issue can’t be ruled out, either.
Javadi and Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) must inform a nun (Heather Wynters) that her gruesome eye infection is a symptom of gonorrhea, which she contracted from contact with tainted bedding and clothing at an unhoused shelter. (They offer her gloves from the hospital supply closet since the shelter can’t afford enough on its own.) Whitaker must repeatedly inform a woman with Alzheimer’s (Jayne Taini) that her husband has died, only for her to forget and need to be told again and again. Sisyphus had it easy compared to this.
And Dr. Mel King, slated for her first malpractice-lawsuit deposition later in the day, gets swept off her feet by a handsome bicyclist (Jesse Lambright). I mean this literally. The guy repeatedly tries to pick her up, as unsubtly as possible, but is thwarted by her inability to perceive metaphor, irony or insinuation. They’re finally getting somewhere in their conversation — Mel likes Renaissance Faires and is happy to tell anyone who asks — when the cops show up to arrest him for robbing a liquor store. The guy high-tails it, knocking Mel off her chair and flat on her back. She bangs her head on the floor pretty hard but appears to have escaped serious injury. The embarrassment is going to sting for some time.
King is also a stop on Langdon’s apology tour. Informing her that his absence is due to a stint in rehab after he got busted stealing drugs, he says he is sorry for letting so many people down. “You never let me down,” she assures him, but he rejects her consolation, insisting he was supposed to be a role model, “not a cautionary tale.” He also thinks to keep the neurodivergent, slightly traumatized doctor in a quiet, dark room in order to cut down on upsetting sensory overstimulation.
He and Santos, however, keep managing to avoid each other. She’s the one who caught him stealing benzos and turned him in. They’re going to have to have a conversation sometime.
Javadi, meanwhile, is hoping to snag herself a double residency, an extraordinarily difficult task she somewhat egotistically believes she can ace. Why wouldn’t she? She’s deep into med school and she’s only now turning 21 — she has aced pretty much everything else she has tried. She has competition, however, in the form of Ogilvie, the new brainiac on the block. (She seems to have less to worry about from Joy, who mainly makes morose wisecracks and messes with her phone.) Dr. Robby chastises the two competitors for being worried more about their futures than about their roles on the team.
Although Robby’s sabbatical is just hours away, he continues to spar with the new resident, Dr. Al-Hashimi. Her reliance on A.I. to enhance the performance of the E.R. seems ill-advised, given the obvious mistake it makes during her demonstration of how effective it is. She makes Mel feel bad by revealing she has never been sued. She gets laughed at in the middle of an emergency case during which she alienates the formidable surgeon Dr. Garcia. And she gets straight-up overruled by Robby during his successful treatment of a choking victim.
But as reliable as he is under pressure, Robby isn’t good at everything. For example, he’s terrible at hiding his romantic relationship with the nurse Noelle Hastings (Meta Golding), whose job entails shuffling eligible patients off to other hospitals that accept their insurance. This would appear antithetical to Robby’s decidedly anti-system approach to medical care, but hey, the heart wants what it wants.
The episode ends with the arrival of a seemingly disturbed young man whose agitated affect promises fireworks next week. I’m sure he’ll be treated with equal parts compassion and intelligence by people who are emotionally and physically exhausted by the work they do. More than anything else, that’s the story of “The Pitt” to me. The dislocated bones, the maggot-ridden flesh, the sexy liquor-store robbers, our old pal Louie and his belly full of liquid, the nuns with gonorrhea, the eight-hour erections — all these problems and more are handled by normal working stiffs.
Their jargon may sound arcane to the layman. Their cases may be painful or bloody or bizarre to witness. But their hopes, fears and foibles are instantly recognizable. They instill hope that we, too, can achieve our own quiet triumphs.
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