I felt that "The Pitt" became slightly preachy and monotonous toward the end of the first season, but I was still engaged. What interested me was the choice to focus on doctors' moments of insanity--we all know that many of the patients are kooky, but the human frailty of the caretakers is sometimes (elsewhere) overlooked.
Dr. Samira Mohan seems "high on life"--she wants to keep on picking up cases even as she enters her fifteenth hour of work. A colleague observes that she is just feeling a surge of adrenaline and she will very quickly crash. We next see Dr. Mohan crying, alone, in the bathroom--then scrubbing away the tears and leaving the workplace. This was a subtle, insightful story. It resisted the siren song of melodrama. It also seemed to have been lifted from a doctor's actual testimony--like one of the monologues in Studs Terkel's "Working."
The protagonist--Dr. Robby--cannot tolerate the "vax denial" tics of a particular family--so he forces the dad to pay a surprise visit to a makeshift morgue. "If you say no to the spinal tap, your son could end up here." As insufferable as the dad is, he has a correct response for Dr. Robby: "You're an asshole." This is an intriguing subplot because Dr. Robby is not following best practice--possibly, he is breaking the law. (His boss says, in another moment, "I'm really tired of you ER cowboys.") Being paternalistic is a move that often backfires; on the other hand, the clock is ticking. If Dr. Robby forces himself to listen and empathize, empathize, empathize, the kid in question could die. It's not clear what anyone "should" do in this particular situation. I like that the script doesn't suggest that there is anything that might resemble a "correct" answer.
A flawed first season, but I enjoyed this show more than other recent new things ("Cemetery Road," "Pluribus") that I've tried.
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