HBO Hit TV Show ‘The Pitt’ Gets Trapped in Liberal Pieties

The origins of “The Pitt” are worth revisiting. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the actor Noah Wyle received a high volume of responses from fans of “ER,” the medical drama where he played compassionate medic Dr. John Carter. Together with writer R. Scott Gemmill and producer John Wells, who also worked on “ER,” they conceived a spinoff centering on Dr. Carter, in the midst of a pandemic. When negotiations with the estate of Michael Crichton, who created “ER,” broke down over contractual rights, this led to the creation of “The Pitt”, the medical drama on HBO Max that carries the spiritual DNA of the previous medical show while being original. Mr. Wyle returned to “The Pitt” as Dr. Michael Robinavitch, aka Dr. “Robby,” the attending physician at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room. “The Pitt” is entirely focused on what happens in the emergency room during a 15-hour shift — hence, there are 15 episodes per season. With no title sequence and minimal soundtrack, it is more concerned with the operations. The stakes are heightened by the hospital being understaffed and underfunded. Some of the doctors are in their first day at Pitt as interns, being exposed to graphic injuries minute-by-minute. Every character is confronted with their own set of personal struggles, which invariably interfere with their skills as doctors. Like “ER,” “The Pitt” is hugely popular with viewers, joining “House of the Dragon,” “The Last of Us,” and “The White Lotus” as heavyweight HBO Max mainstays. Central to the show’s glowing reception is its realism. Whereas most medical dramas prioritize the personal lives of their characters or feature plots that veer into absurdity, “The Pitt” is entirely focused on real-time authenticity, making its ability to shift between characters more economical and balanced. The stakes are therefore more compelling, especially when the team has to save numerous victims from a mass shooting.Sometimes, as in real life, the doctors aren’t able to save lives, and accordingly this deeply affects the characters. One episode showed Dr. Robby unable to revive a six-year-old girl who drowned to save her little sister. This triggers flashbacks to Dr. Robby who didn’t save his mentor when he contracted COVID and in turn saddens Dr. Mel King, a neurodivergent medical student, played by Taylor Dearden. As a result, the performances, especially those of Mr. Wyle and Ms. Dearden, are moving, enabling their characters to be measured and grounded. However the show’s meticulous approach to realism is sometimes undermined by an accompanying preaching to the choir which surely must strike apolitical viewers as out of touch. Moreover a progressive, vocal fanbase views Dr. Robby with contempt, because his lawfulness constrains some of its character’s romantic sense of justice. Furthermore, one of the absurdities of modern television is that so-called progressive viewers get upset, even with liberally-minded shows such as “The Pitt,” when fictional characters do not behave according to their own rigid requirements of social justice. We saw this when viewers protested on social media about the final episode of “The Pitt.” The objections ranged from accusations of ableism, when Dr. Robby challenged a colleague with a seizure disorder, to the departure of Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) generating accusations of unfairness against the fate of woman of color characters.The liberal naysaying also extended into reaction to the extensive media coverage devoted to “The Pitt.” The show got slammed for a lack of women of color being featured on a Variety cover, while Noah Wyle, hardly anyone’s idea of a card-carrying conservative, faced a backlash for quipping of Dr. Robby in “The Pitt,” “someone bring me another women to yell at,” in an otherwise fawning GQ interview.In reality the biggest problem with “The Pitt” is that the show goes strenuosly out of its way to have its viewers believe every choice a character makes is rational. There are mentions of the term “unhoused” to describe the homeless while a medical student gets scolded for unconscious bias towards an African-American patient. Another example is a plotline in which a woman puts herself in the hospital because she suspects her son is a mentally ill incel who could commit a mass shooting. This plotline is more than contrived; it’s morally unhelpful. Dr. Robby tries to speak with the son, but another of the Pitt’s residents, Dr. Cassie McKay, a single mother to a young boy, makes things worse by reporting him to the police. Dr. Robby then tells the worried mother that men like her son aren’t encouraged to open up their emotions, hence they succumb to “toxic podcasts.” In having medical professionals straying from their expertise to lecture the viewer about the dangers of masculinity, “The Pitt” loses its poignancy.The ambition of the second season, which recently finished, seemed more scaled back. Dr. Robby’s goal, during his shift, is to leave for his three-month sabbatical as early as possible. But he can’t, because he feels that, without his presence and maintenance of order, the interns and residents will struggle under the unorthodox Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, played by Sepideh Moafi, who yearns to make the hospital more efficient, yet hides a dark secret.The moralizing, this time around, is slightly more subtle. The action takes place on Independence Day but alas “The Pitt” does not itself take a vacation from preaching to the choir. One episode features an ICE agent interfering with an operation involving a patient who is an undocumented immigrant and a woman who has to be tested after being sexually assaulted. But the show suffered from giving characters, both old and new, less depth. New interns are defined less by their professional abilities than by always seeming to have one quirky personality trait, as demonstrated by medic characters Joy Kwon and James Ogilvie. Even the personal struggles of the characters first seen in the last season, which could not be expanded within one day of work, have less weight compared to those faced by Dr. Robby. Dr. King, a fan favorite, not only has to face a deposition, but is unhappy her autistic sister, whom she takes care of, is in a sexual relationship. Then there’s Victoria Javadi, a young medical student who lives under the shadow of her surgeon parents working in the same hospital, but is also a social media influencer. Some of these subplots get played for laughs, but they seem cheap and less insightful about why the choices in a given scenario have been made.When “ER” aired, the show was hardly shy about tackling politics. It had a character who had been diagnosed with HIV and tackled geopolitical events like the Iraq War. This choice often led characters like John Carter to ludicrous situations outside of the emergency room and bestowed on him a hero complex he ultimately failed to earn.The characters in “The Pitt” are also confronted by political events which enables the creators of the show to demonstrate their partisanship. Despite this, the doctors in “The Pitt” still resemble the people who have either taken care of you or that you have worked with. With “The Pitt” now having been renewed for a third season, can the show maintain this hard-won reality?

HBO Hit TV Show ‘The Pitt’ Gets Trapped in Liberal Pieties

HBO Hit TV Show ‘The Pitt’ Gets Trapped in Liberal Pieties

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