The Pitt feels overstuffed

Early in this fourth hour of his shift, Dr. Robby dispenses some characteristically rumpled yet profound wisdom to the adult children of Mr. Spencer, the man brought in from the nursing home with severe pneumonia. After the Spencer siblings agree to take their father off of ventilation to begin the slow, heartrending watch for his death, Robby tells them that a mentor once advised him of four things to say to a loved one who is slipping away: I love you. Thank you. I forgive you. Please forgive me. 

These simple words are given potency by the complex feelings pulsing beneath their surface. Wyle’s rueful yet tender delivery of those words, in an episode he wrote, says a lot about the mentor who shared them with Robby, the late Dr. Adamson, whose death from Covid hangs over the series with a spectral potency: that he was a man of grace, who knew how to ease other people’s suffering without offering sugary platitudes. He was the kind of doctor anyone would have wanted for their loved ones. He was the kind of doctor Robby aspires to be. 

It’s no wonder, then, that Mr. Spencer’s slow passing, the reckoning it brings within his children, and the memories it stirs in Robby, are easily the most emotionally and narratively resonant plot threads in the episode. Heading into the 10–11 a.m. hour, the issues with The Pitt’s approach to structure are becoming more apparent, with the show feeling too overstuffed and incomplete on the episode level. Some patient stories feel like they’re lingering on for too long, while others are blitzed in too quickly to make an impression. 

After Mr. Spencer, the patient who gets the most real estate is Jenna, the young woman brought in with an accidental fentanyl overdose from the same batch of laced Xanax that left Nick, her college classmate, brain dead. Shell-shocked and recovering from her own brush with death, and the knowledge that the nice young guy from her study group is gone, she also contends with her friend, chattering about some concert as if life is simply going to go on normally. Fortunately, Dr. Mohan and Dr. Santos catch on to her irritation, with Mohan asking the friend to kindly take it outside. 

Attempting to make small-talk, Dr. Santos sks Jenna about school and sports. Jenna, whose world has been cleaved into a before and after, responds incredulously that her friend’s father thinks she killed him, that she really can’t be thinking about sports. With all the bluntness of a hammer seeking a nail, Santos tells her it’s important to move on and focus on the good things in life.  

Unsurprisingly, Mohan calls her out for being less than compassionate, which prompts her to defensively insist that she’s had her share of hard knocks in life. “We bring our education to this job, not our lives,” snaps Mohan, suggesting that there’s a dormant rage under her smiling, saintly facade—or that, perhaps, part of her may enjoy wielding her reputation as the kind doctor over others. At this point, we don’t really know. It’s a stark reminder that at hour four, it’s time to start defining these characters through more than insinuations and subtle allusions to the past.  

When Santos has yet another skirmish with Dr. Langdon about not consulting him before doing a procedure on one of the tech leads for the aforementioned concert (an arrogant mistake that nearly costs the man his life), it feels like the same old terrain. The only difference is that Dr. Garcia (Alexandra Metz), the resident brittle and prideful surgeon, sticks up for her, which may or may not lead to something. We have to wait for episode five—or six or even seven or eight— for it to pay off, which could be quite frustrating as a viewer. 

Indeed, this episode is so frustrating because it exemplifies where The Pitt is at its weakest and where it excels. When a mother with a crying, inexplicably ailing baby comes into the ER, Collins is pulled off her case, allowing Mohan and King to deduce the cause and robbing a character who has otherwise been woefully underdeveloped (seriously, we know she’s pregnant and she doesn’t like rats) a chance to flesh out further. Having an anxious single mother in a high-pressure career attend to a frazzled mother out of her mind with fear and exhaustion is a narratively rich proposition that the show completely sidesteps, instead foisting Collins off on a pregnant teenager seeking a medical abortion. Of course, there are grounds for tension there—and we’ll have to see how it pays off—but it feels a little too on-the-nose. 

That said, the episode draws the experiences of the Spencer family to a conclusion that feels more satisfying because it was given depth over several installments. As the Spencer children say their goodbyes in a pediatric room painted with cartoon animals—the perfect way to introduce the lore that Papa Spencer was one of the creatives behind Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, with specific responsibilities for developing the sets—the reason that the man’s daughter was so resistant to taking him off the ventilator becomes poignantly clear. Though her brother can rattle through his thank yous easily enough, she’s had a strained relationship with her father. 

Anyone who has ever remotely been in her position will feel their pain in her words. There hasn’t been enough time. It’s unfair. She’s angry; she’s scared. There’s so much she wishes were different. “I love you, Dad. I’m thankful for everything you did to provide for us,” she says. “You weren’t the dad I wanted, because I didn’t play baseball, or build models, or fish. My friend’s dads all had grown-up jobs.” It’s a testament to Wyle’s deftness in crafting dialogue, telling whole stories in a monologue, that she moves through the I love you, the thank you, the I forgive you, and the please forgive me, and into a place of sorrowful acceptance.  

Wyle the writer also wisely resists the urge to layer on the pathos of Robby’s traumas in too many flashbacks: There’s one, a close-up of Robby’s face in his PPE, beholding the family photos taped to Dr. Adamson’s bed. The Pitt is most effective when it allows itself to linger on these human moments instead of feeling compelled to make an hour go by in a blur of patients and activity. It’s becoming apparent that the show is a bit overstuffed, with some characters feeling more like afterthoughts or mere apparatuses to get to the next set of hijinks. Instead of checking in with every character in every episode, The Pitt would do well to streamline and focus on a handful every installment. The performers are game, and there’s clearly good material when the show is allowed to breathe. 

Stray observations 

• • The side plot where the medical techs, nurses, and security track the path of their stolen ambulance and take bets on who did it is really a delightfully grim riff made even funnier when the social worker lets her mask of implacable calm drop to make a bet. 
• • McKay and Javadi attend to a wine sommelier who regales them with the tale of the $18,000 bottle of wine she once sold in New York City, which is such an eye-popping amount of money that I felt compelled to share it again here.