Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
Review
Pop Culture Happy Hour
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
LINDA HOLMES, HOST:
Hospital shows have been around for so long that it's hard to imagine television without them. The Max hospital drama "The Pitt" stars hospital show veteran Noah Wyle. It takes some elements that are common to the genre and mixes them with some very contemporary thinking about health care and an inventive structure. Where conventionally constructed hospital dramas bring in a new load of patients every week and follow long stretches of the lives of doctors and other staff, "The Pitt" does something different. Each episode follows one hour in the ER over the course of a very long day, so the layout is less "Grey's Anatomy" and more "24." I'm Linda Holmes, and today, we're talking about "The Pitt" on POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR.
HOLMES: Joining me today is Andrew Limbong. He's the host of NPR's "Book Of The Day" podcast and a reporter for the culture desk. Hey, Andrew. Always good to see you.
ANDREW LIMBONG: Hey, Linda, what's going on?
HOLMES: You know, "The Pitt," Andrew. That is what is going on.
LIMBONG: In the waiting room, stuck in there.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLMES: Also with us is journalist and author of "We See Each Other: A Black, Trans Journey Through TV And Film," Tre'vell Anderson. Welcome back, Tre'vell.
TRE'VELL ANDERSON: Hello, hello.
HOLMES: So excited to see you both. "The Pitt" is set in a Pittsburgh emergency room run by Dr. Robinavitch, known to colleagues and patients alike as Dr. Robby. He's played by Noah Wyle, who for years played Dr. John Carter on "ER". There are young doctors who are on their first day in the hospital. There are highly skilled nurses, one of who pretty much runs the place, and there are patients sitting in the waiting room or waiting for beds in the main part of the hospital. Busy hours drag on.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
NOAH WYLE: (Dr. Michael Robinavitch) As you can see, our house is always packed, and our department is mostly clogged up with borders. Those are admitted patients waiting for a room upstairs, sometimes for days. Beds are a very precious commodity around here, so please be quick and efficient with your workups.
HOLMES: For everybody who looks at Noah Wyle and thinks about "ER," the show also shares some behind-the-scenes DNA with "ER," including "The Pitt" creator R. Scott Gemmill and "The Pitt" executive producer John Wells, both of whom worked on "ER." Michael Crichton was also involved in creating "ER," and his estate has sued, claiming that "The Pitt" is an unauthorized reboot of "ER." I don't think we're going to get into the merits of that lawsuit, but it's worth at least knowing about. "The Pitt" is streaming now on Max. Andrew, I am going to start with you. Did you fall into "The Pitt"?
LIMBONG: Ah, help me. I can't get out. Listen, the "ER"-ness of it all is still, like, in my head. Has this escaped the shadow of "ER"? And I think so. And I think I generally like it. I think there are a couple of things about the "24"-esque structure that give it something interesting to say about the state of hospitals today, the state of health care. I was thinking, though, sometimes it kind of drags it down because it doesn't have the thing that "24" had, where at, like, minute 53, Jack Bauer finds out that someone - like, a bomb is set off inside of a cougar, and they need to go fix that problem...
HOLMES: Sure.
LIMBONG: ...Or whatever. But generally, I think it successfully steps into its own, like towards episode four or so as a pretty enjoyable procedural-plus with, like, a hint of elevation to it - you know?
HOLMES: All right, Tre'vell, how about you? "The Pitt" through your eyes?
ANDERSON: Yeah. I'm very middle-of-the-road on this one, OK? 'Cause I love a procedural. I actually love getting to know all of the personal details about all the many, many characters. And because of the structure of "The Pitt," you really are forced to learn about the characters as they are being nurses and doctors. You know, you don't get to go home...
HOLMES: Right. Sure.
ANDERSON: ...With any of them, for example, which is a little different and something to get used to.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
FIONA DOURIF: (As Dr. McKay) That's the thing about emergency medicine. You never know what you're gonna get, and we get everything.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character) Is that why you chose it?
DOURIF: (As Dr. McKay) Maybe a little. I also get to pick my shifts, which for a single mother is amazing.
ANDERSON: But it's super fast-paced. I like most of the characters. It was a good watch, but is it appointment television? I'm not sure.
HOLMES: When I watched this - so there are eventually going to be 15 episodes of this. We got 10. And I watched, I think, all ten of these on the same day.
ANDERSON: Sheesh.
HOLMES: And. I just got into it, and I - you know, like Tre'vell, I am a procedurals person, as well as a hospital show person. And it was interesting 'cause I agree with Andrew that the initial question is, obviously, you're looking at Noah Wyle in an ER, are you just thinking the whole time about "ER"? But I think you know, it's stylistically different enough. It's not as frenetic as "ER." It's not intended to be as frenetic as "ER." They don't have all of the, kind of everybody comes in and screams at the same time. It's a little more like - if you've actually ever been in an ER while having an emergency, which unfortunately I have, it feels a little more like that than other hospital shows that I've seen. But I don't know that it owes a lot more to "ER" creatively than it owes to, like, "Grey's Anatomy" and "Chicago Hope."
And what I did really appreciate about it, I think the most is that it does seem to be trying to operate with some realism about what these doctors are actually dealing with,
LIMBONG: Yes.
HOLMES: ...Including, you know, these things where Dr. Robby is being kind of followed around by somebody who is telling him how important it is to like, get numbers up and patient satisfaction surveys.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: Do you know how likely patients are to recommend this hospital?
WILEY: (Dr. Michael Robinavitch) This is an emergency department not a Taco Bell.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character) Eleven percent.
WILEY: (Dr. Michael Robinavitch) Well, if you want people to be happier, don't make them wait for 12 hours.
HOLMES: So I do like that, and I like the fact that there's a discussion of, like, what happens when hospitals or parts of hospitals are taken over by, like, management companies of different kinds. I think those things are all really valuable, and I appreciated the presence of those kinds of considerations, you know?
LIMBONG: Yeah, I think, you know, Linda, what you said about the tone of the show, how like, you know, "ER" does that thing where it would bounce back between Trauma 1 and Trauma 2...
HOLMES: Yes.
LIMBONG: ...Like, back and forth - right? That doesn't really happen on this show. There's a couple of moments, but there's one, like in Episode 2 where the dude who, like, smashes his face on the ground riding on a scooter, he comes in and they have to - first off, shout out to, like, what they can do on Max. They like, lift the guy's nose up from the inside. It's so gnarly. Yeah.
HOLMES: Oh, man. There is some gory stuff going on on this show.
LIMBONG: Yeah.
HOLMES: It's like kind of appreciated.
LIMBONG: But, like in "ER" - right? - that would be underscored by like, (vocalizing) like that, like score.
HOLMES: Yes.
LIMBONG: Whereas like, the score in this show is - you almost, like, don't notice it. It's really subtle. It's really tasteful. You like - it just, like, elevates your heart rate just a scooch, and then it disappears for a bit.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
WILEY: (Dr. Michael Robinavitch) Here we go. One, two, three.
(SOUNDBITE OF THUDDING)
LIMBONG: It manages to do that without sacrificing interest. Like, it's not boring - right? It's not like a slower...
ANDERSON: Yeah.
LIMBONG: It still feels - has that energy.
ANDERSON: It's also still very chaotic, right?
HOLMES: Right. Exactly.
ANDERSON: It's still going from issue to issue in the hospital. I think for me, I was actually more taken by the form, by the chaos, than I was any particular, like, acting performance or anything. Like, I just - by the end of every single episode, I was surprised that we were at the end, because the episode just moved so quickly.
HOLMES: Yeah.
ANDERSON: We were dealing with, you know, seven different, you know, major cases that people might have to deal with in the ER, in addition to personal things that are coming up for these folks while they're on this shift. But I did appreciate the fact that while it maintains some of that chaos that you might have felt in "ER," it's done in a different way that still, like, I think, keeps you on the edge of your seat so that when the end of the episode comes, you're actually not expecting that to be the end of...
HOLMES: Right.
ANDERSON: ...The episode.
HOLMES: Right. Right.
ANDERSON: Which makes you, Linda, want to continue watching, if you have ten of them to watch.
HOLMES: I think that's what happened with me. And you know, one of the other interesting things, you know, you talk about the pacing of it, and I found that when I rewatched "ER" - not that long ago, I rewatched a bunch of "ER."
LIMBONG: All of it? Did you make it through to the end?
HOLMES: I did not make it through 15 seasons.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLMES: But I watched, you know - when a reasonable amount of the original cast was around, you know.
LIMBONG: Right.
HOLMES: And one of the things I noticed was how in this ER, the doctors have nothing but time to sit around and talk to people about their lives and meet them and discover what interesting characters they are and all that stuff. I think there's much less of that illusion in this show. The way that you get to know the people who are in this hospital is because the doctor talks to them a little bit at a time all day. And that felt to me more like what more happens in a hospital, as opposed to the doctor being able to just, like, sit around and have a long chat with you about, like, what you're like and what your kids are like. And, you know, it would be great if they did, but I think they usually don't.
Relatively close in time to my viewing of this show, I sort of experienced a thing in my own life where somebody that I knew, you know, was having some care issues that were pretty - it was pretty like, complicated. And you feel like the communication is not what you wish it was, right? They're not communicating with us enough. They're not telling us enough about what's going on. I think they do a good job with this show of explaining how you can understand how each of these patients wants more of the doctor's time than they're getting.
But you can also understand that Dr. Robby, in particular, is giving as much time as he can to each of the people. And so it felt compassionate toward the staff to me in the sense that it really kind of gets across that idea that they are dealing with a whole bunch of things at the same time. And when they're not talking to you or they're not updating you, it's not because they're, like, talking at the nurses station, which is what it would be on "ER, " right?
LIMBONG: They're not making out in the break room.
ANDERSON: Right.
HOLMES: It's because they're off talking to another family - right? That, plus the fact that, you know, there's even a recognition at one point of the fact that patients get angry...
ANDERSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: ...These days at staff and can lash out at them. So it did feel to me like maybe it's a little more understanding about the challenges of being in that kind of job in this particular moment in all of our lives.
ANDERSON: But it also brings up, like, a variety of, I feel like, of-the-moment topics that should be showing up in a medical show, whether that's abortion, whether that is how trans people are treated in, you know, medical facilities, whether that is you know...
HOLMES: Opiates and...
ANDERSON: ...Busted BBLs, you know? There's everything here, which I think also keeps you, as a viewer, interested the in many ways that people experience emergencies and then how the staff of these hospitals are, you know, trying their best to save people's lives.
LIMBONG: Well, you know, when I was watching it, I kind of rolled my eyes at how much from, like, headlines of the day that they were trying to cram in there. But, like, you know, this has inspired my own "ER" rewatch, you know? And I was like, oh, they've always been doing this. This is just, like, part of the DA.
HOLMES: Yeah. "Grey's Anatomy" has also been like that. You know, the medical challenges that people have are very much part of the zeitgeist or whatever.
LIMBONG: Yeah. I think it's so interesting, though, what - Linda, what you were saying about how getting to know a character bit by bit is that because every episode is an hour, if you have, like, a plot that you don't like or is boring to you, it's like, oh, I'm gonna be stuck with these guys for a couple more episodes.
HOLMES: It's true. It's true.
LIMBONG: Like, the brother and sister of the older man who is dying, I don't know why. I just could not - I thought they were so - I was like, I did not have any time for that storyline. I thought that their energy was weirdly, like Folgers ad - you know? I thought they were a little too close, and I didn't like it. And I was like, oh, we're just - we're going to be stuck with these guys for a little bit. OK, I guess so.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #3: (As character) What would you do?
WILEY: (Dr. Michael Robinavitch) I really can't answer that for you. This is your father. That's your decision to make. I can guarantee you that we will keep him as comfortable as possible if a natural death is what you choose.
REBECCA TILNEY: (As Helen) But he's not your father. And he can recover from this.
MACKENZIE ASTIN: (As Jereme) What my sister means is that we're still deciding the best thing to do.
HOLMES: Interestingly, that's one of the stories where I told a couple people, if you have aging parents...
ANDERSON: Oh.
HOLMES: ...Watch out for this socking you right in the aging parents. You know? And I think you're probably right that different people are going to take different levels of interest in different stories. But, you know, we heard that clip in the intro where he was talking about the fact that they have all of these people who are only in the ER because they're waiting for beds upstairs in the hospital. And there's a lot of really - to me, really interesting kind of territorial departmental warring going on about, you know, you're just - you have beds. You're just pretending you don't have beds 'cause you don't want to give up the beds that you have, which I think is interesting 'cause that kind of bureaucratic business is always going on everywhere.
ANDERSON: One thing I did feel was missing, perhaps, for me, is, you know, I really wanted a meaty piece of, like, script - for somebody just to give me a really good, you know, scene, you know, where they were deeply feeling something or challenging something. My favorite, you know, medical drama as of late is "The Good Doctor." I was...
HOLMES: Sure.
ANDERSON: ...Looking for a "Good Doctor"-esque scene where somebody stares into the camera and a single tear falls down their face, like Denzel Washington in "Glory."
(LAUGHTER)
ANDERSON: And...
HOLMES: Or Denzel Washington in "St. Elsewhere."
(LAUGHTER)
ANDERSON: I did not get that, and that is something that I just felt like I was expecting. But that might just be, you know, more of a comment on me as a viewer, less on, you know, the show itself.
HOLMES: Well, it's perhaps a comment on some of the advantages and disadvantages of perhaps a more realistic way of approaching how these people are working. Because - and I would say, too, it's possible that more of that is going to come up in those last episodes that we haven't seen, where they're...
ANDERSON: Absolutely.
HOLMES: ...Kind of building to kind of the doctor loses it over, you know, something. But I do think that the way that they approach that is that even the doctors who are having serious personal crises - they just sort of have to go back to work. And...
ANDERSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: ...So that's one of the reasons that you don't get those big emotional scenes, is that, listen, you may have something happen to you, but you have to go back to work. Now, is it realistic necessarily that everybody on this show would have major personal things going on on the same day? Maybe not. I think all these things could happen. But it's interesting 'cause I think you're right - there's not a lot of time for these folks to sit around and have deep emotional discussions about their lives because they're running around, trying to deal with so many emergencies.
ANDERSON: Yeah. And I just feel like it just requires you as a viewer to, like - you got to pay a little bit more attention because a lot of the acting is - for me, at least, was internal.
HOLMES: Yeah.
ANDERSON: You know, where you can see it on people's faces, but they're not necessarily saying anything. As a viewer, it requires you to, like, actually pay attention to what's happening, or you might miss something if you're just, you know, playing "The Pitt" in the background while you're cooking dinner.
LIMBONG: I was scared. In the first episode, where we get that first COVID ER flashback from Robby, I thought we were going to get one of those, like, in an episode. I was like, oh, we need these? But they're really tasteful. It's like - they let you know...
ANDERSON: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...Like, when he's, like, dealing with it in his head just enough. And they don't, like - they trust that you're watching it, not making dinner (laughter), I assume. Right?
HOLMES: Yeah.
LIMBONG: They think that - yeah.
ANDERSON: Right.
HOLMES: Yeah. And they - I think they do a good job acknowledging that at least for some people, it continues to be something that they think about all the time, depending on what their losses were, depending on what their experiences were, depending on what they have or haven't done to kind of deal with it since then. But I agree with Andrew that it could have become kind of all about looking back at that, which it doesn't.
ANDERSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: Is there anything else that you would like to talk about?
LIMBONG: I didn't realize that they were still making, like, cocky students, like, at the med student factory.
(LAUGHTER)
LIMBONG: You know, I didn't realize...
HOLMES: Yeah.
LIMBONG: ...That that model of - archetype (laughter) was still being made. I was like, oh, OK, we're still cranking these guys out. OK.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "THE PITT")
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) I thought you were some kind of kid genius.
SHABANA AZEEZ: (As Dr. Victoria Javadi) I'm like any other third-year med student.
UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #4: (As character) Clearly.
HOLMES: I like the medical students. I - it's fascinating to me that, like you say, they have a lot of the same - they make a lot of the same errors that young doctors used to make for a long time, not just on "ER" but on other medical shows. It's the balance of, like, you have to have confidence, and you have to - you know, you have to be humble. And...
LIMBONG: But I think they deploy them smartly. Like, they spread them out across.
ANDERSON: They're spread out, yeah.
HOLMES: Yeah.
LIMBONG: There's no canoodling in this show, right?
HOLMES: No, not really.
LIMBONG: There's some hints of past canoodles that have happened.
HOLMES: Yes. Yes.
LIMBONG: But there's no active...
ANDERSON: Yeah.
LIMBONG: Which I think is interesting and refreshing, almost.
HOLMES: That's the sense in which it's not "Grey's Anatomy," certainly.
ANDERSON: Yeah.
HOLMES: Like, it's not all about the doctors...
ANDERSON: Right.
HOLMES: ...All sneaking off to make out with each other and all that kind of stuff.
LIMBONG: I mean, "ER" had a fair share of it (laughter).
HOLMES: Absolutely. Absolutely.
(LAUGHTER)
HOLMES: "ER" did, too. All right. Well, "The Pitt" is streaming on Max. We want to know what you think about "The Pitt." Find us at facebook.com/pchh. That brings us to the end of our show. Tre'vell Anderson, Andrew Limbong, thank you so much for being here.
ANDERSON: Thank you.
LIMBONG: Thank you, Linda.
HOLMES: And just a reminder that signing up for POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR+ is a great way to support our show and public radio, and you get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor-free. So please go find out more at plus npr.org/happyhour, or visit the link in our show notes. This episode is produced by Liz Metzger and Lennon Sherburne and edited by Mike Katzif. Our supervising producer is Jessica Reedy, and Hello Come in provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to POP CULTURE HAPPY HOUR from NPR. I'm Linda Holmes, and we'll see you all next time.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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