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Noah Wyle: "The Pitt"

 In its many years on the air, "ER" landed only one (one!) Primetime Emmy Award for a series regular. The actor was Julianna Margulies. No one else ever won!


And so "The Pitt"--after its first season--has already defeated "ER." Both Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa have Emmy Awards. 

While the early years of "ER" were centered on the love affair between the Margulies character and the George Clooney character, there isn't a comparably soapy storyline in "The Pitt" (at least not within the first four hours, which are the hours I've watched). No one seems to be passionately in love with anyone else. Instead, the doctors and nurses have unglamorous storylines: Should I get a pet when I'm already overwhelmed with childcare duties? How do I manage an obnoxious frenemy? When my noisy iPhone ring disrupts a meeting, how do I tell my "inner voice" to shut up and move on?

One thing I'm often aware of in a TV show is "retconning." That's an act of belated revision. It's when the show claims to be in final-draft form--and *then* revises itself. I find this deeply irritating. A famous example is the introduction of Tony B late in the run of "The Sopranos"--are we really to accept it's plausible no one would ever mention or contact this guy in Seasons One through Four? Glenn Close--as Mona Simpson--is another version of retconning. More recently, "Matlock" decided to give a complicated mother to the Leah Lewis character. I just know that this wasn't in the initial blueprint. The mother was invented--on the spot--because the twist was convenient for a particular script.

To my relief, so far, Mr. Wyle et al. do not seem to be victims of retconning.

"The Pitt" does a nice job of slowly revealing secrets about its characters--we know that these secrets were part of the initial plan. A certain doctor is pregnant. Another seems to have a cloudy "legal history." A third--who often seems placid--has a kind of volcanic emotional core that becomes increasingly problematic. To be around these characters is to re-live one's own work experiences: We're always silently questioning one another, especially in tense office situations, and we entertain ourselves with mysteries (mysteries that could often be addressed with one or two direct questions). 

It's nice to see a new series with quite a bit on its mind. I'm cautiously optimistic about "The Pitt."
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