Last year, I watched the medical drama “ER” in its entirety — all 331 episodes in order spanning 15 seasons from September 1994 to April 2009. And in that time, I learned one inevitability: the longer a TV show goes, the more ridiculous it has to become to keep viewers’ interest.
At the same time, up until its last few seasons, “ER” was also considered not only one of the best TV dramas of the era but the most accurate medical show up to that point, surpassed only by “Scrubs,” the sit-com which premiered in 2001.
The standard set by those two shows is being pushed even higher this season with the release of “The Pitt,” a new medical drama created by R. Scott Gemmill. Of course, the two biggest names connected to the show are executive producers Noah Wyle and John Wells.
Wyle starred in “ER” as Dr. John Carter, a medical student who grew over his seasons on the show to become an attending physician running the ER. Wells, meanwhile, was a writer, director and later showrunner for the series. These two coming back for “The Pitt” on the surface seems like it’s a reworked “ER” revival in everything but name, but with 10 episodes already aired, this is a much different show and easily the best new thing on television.
In the series, the lives of healthcare professionals in the Emergency Room of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital — ranging from student doctors and residents to administrators and nurses — are tested as they juggle personal crises, workplace politics and the emotional toll of treating critically ill patients, revealing the resilience required in their noble calling. Set in real time, each episode covers one hour of one 15-hour shift.
Our POV character is Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (played by Wyle), a senior attending still reeling from his traumatic experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the death of his mentor. Working steadily in TV and movies since his breakthrough, Wyle has not had a huge hit since “ER.” But taking on the role of a 30-year medical veteran rather than a newbie, he hasn’t missed a step and is as great as the experienced but frustrated teacher as he was as the wide-eyed student.
Populating the rest of the ER is quite a large cast of characters. With 10 mains and about two dozen recurring support cast, many sets of scrubs and lab coats are walking around. And while that seems confusing on the surface, everyone naturally flows in and out of the action, and they all have their own stories that weave in and out, neither hijacking other plots nor feeling shoehorned in for convenience.
Two of the main standouts serving as foils to Dr. Robby are Tracy Ifeachor as Dr. Heather Collins, a senior resident in the ER who we learn is pregnant after years of difficulty, and Katherine LaNasa as Dana Evans, the head nurse of the ER who is maternal to the med students and kind patients but a no-nonsense boss to the residents and difficult patients.
Balancing the relationships between the med students and interns with the more experienced doctors, nurses and ER staff, as well as their own personal character arcs, works hand-in-hand with the show’s pacing. Set in real-time — every minute in the show is more or less a minute in real life — you’d think the pacing would be slow and boring.
But constantly moving the medical staff around from patient to patient, from an injured student athlete to a woman with sickle cell disease to a man who fell off a ladder to a comatose child being taken off life support, the cases are different enough in type and severity that the tension ebbs and flows without ever going away.
And yet, it’s how the show deals with these injuries and ailments that makes it so accurate and true to its setting. While “ER” and “Scrubs” were the pinnacles for 25-plus years, they aired on NBC and could only show so much (though they did get away with quite a bit). But on Max, HBO’s streaming service, “The Pitt” can do and show just about everything, not ideal for the squeamish but worthy of praise and awards for the make-up and special effects crews.
