“Do you have a best friend?” The pregnant wife of a young man brought in with massive burns all over his body asks this of Whitaker as she desperately tries to comprehend the scale of her potential loss. Her husband is her best friend, the person who helps the world make sense to her and who feels like home. In this question, she gives this episode its thematic thrust: The tenth hour is all about community, connection, and who you trust.
This case starts off the episode as poor Teddy, the burn victim, is wheeled in. And beyond the obvious question of whether he’ll survive, it also asks Whitaker to confront his own loneliness as a farm kid in a city ER. Teddy could well be one of the many brothers he says he could consider his best friends, all of whom are married fathers, presumably living the same lives they saw modeled by their parents. When he’s talking about being a part of the agricultural club, Gerran Howell infuses Whitaker with a confidence that feels like muscle memory, like it’s one of the last times he felt truly at ease. Later, he absolutely sparks with joy at being invited to dinner on the farm.
The importance of makeshift family attains greater urgency when Dana Evans pushes her way through the double doors, dazed and bleeding after being sucker punched by a thuggish patient. Robby and her fellow nurses race toward her, despite her protestations that she’s fine, really, she’s fine. Katherine LaNasa is casually devastating in this scene, her face a rictus of pain and vulnerability — and with that vulnerability, the fear that, if she lets the first crack show, she’ll completely fall apart. Fortunately, Robby has known her long enough to understand that he’ll need to show a strong hand and practically forces her to get a scan.
Still, the assault on the heart and soul of the ER has rattled her colleagues enough to stand up to administrator Gloria when she comes to see whether an incident report has been filed. It’s a moment that should crackle with the accumulated frustration of the staff, who’ve been living in a pressure cooker of skyrocketing expectations and limited resources while being simultaneously patted on the head and called heroes. Yet it oddly falls flat. The nurses’ concerns are expressed in dialogue that feels like it belongs in an after-school special or a brochure about healthcare-worker burnout, like “assaults on healthcare workers are on the rise.”
The scene feels even flatter juxtaposed against the more natural banter between Drs. King and Mohan, who are on the case of a young woman brought in after a stroke has left her mute and nearly catatonic. Initially, the two can’t identify their Jane Doe—who was rescued after her online-gaming community contacted the authorities when she didn’t log on for a tournament—but their collaboration with a specialist with varsity-level dad jokes eventually brings answers. Supriya Ganesh and Taylor Dearden display a lovely mutual respect and curiosity to their interactions as Dr. King simultaneously learns from Dr. Mohan, while encouraging her to lean into her “special sauce” of listening to her gut.
Both of them are coming into their own as physicians, and as people, which makes their emerging connection so pleasurable to watch. When Dr. King expresses her worries that she might not have a special sauce—really, her fear that she’ll never distinguish herself as a doctor—Dr. Mohan quickly assures her that she will. Eventually, one could imagine them as the kind of colleagues who will powerfully yet professionally sass their exes, as Dr. Collins will do for Dr. McKay when her smug doofus of a baby daddy comes into the ER with a badly fractured ankle.
Chad—because of course his name is Chad—injured himself trying to skateboard. And why was he trying to skateboard? Because his son with McKay, Harrison, went last weekend with nurse Matteo, who might have more than a professional relationship with the good doctor. A true girl’s girl, Collins responds to Chad’s snotty demand to “just knock me out” with a wry “with pleasure.” Oh, and when, in his drugged stupor, he admits jealousy of the hot, chill Matteo “with his hair,” Collins very definitely lets her work buddy know that the ex still carries a torch. Not that McKay would ever want him back, especially after it’s confirmed that his new girlfriend, who makes him an acai bowl every morning—because of course she does—was part of the reason McKay has her ankle monitor. An eye for an eye, an ankle for an ankle.
Besides, McKay has other issues, including the case of a young baseball whiz who took a line drive to the eye, threatening his eyesight and career. Unfortunately, to the kid’s overbearing dad, hellbent on seeing his son turn pro, that latter point seems more pressing than comforting his son. All his anxious badgering lights a fuse inside Javadi, who explodes at him in a furious exaltation to please just be his dad. Instead of admonishing her charge, McKay encourages her to keep her emotions in check by understanding her triggers—in this case, her identification with the baseball star as another “pressure-cooker prodigy.”
The episode spends so much time focusing on the importance of the ER team working as a cohesive group, however those bonds may form, that its great singular moment of that cohesion fracturing hits even harder. Last episode, the ongoing tensions between Dr. Langdon and Dr. Santos finally boiled over into the former yelling at the latter: Though his rage wasn’t called for at the moment, his observations about her aren’t at all wrong. She’s rude. Arrogant. Not a team player. But she’s also right about one thing: There are inconsistencies with the drugs dispensed to Dr. Langdon’s patients, and that’s because he’s been stealing them.
The scene where Dr. Robby confronts his own right hand, the man he was training as his own mentor trained him, lands as well as it does due to the strength of Noah Wyle and Patrick Ball. Robby breaks down in rage and grief, while Langdon does a fine dance of denial, then distraction, insisting that they were for his back, that he’s weaning off meds that were prescribed at this very hospital after he hurt himself helping his parents move.
Still, it would be more potent if the show invested more time with Langdon up front. Every hint of Langdon’s addiction is threaded into Ball’s performance. Langdon evinces a shark-like detachment, brutally dispatching Whitaker’s hopes of that dinner date at the farm by telling him that Teddy will likely die of sepsis before his child is born while sneering that Whitaker referring to himself as a diaper genie when taking care of his nieces and nephews is essentially calling himself garbage.
After a few of his colleagues gently tease him for all the surprises he springs on his family, like a goldendoodle puppy or sudden salmon dinner, he snaps at them. Perlah and Princess joke that he’s “hot yet feisty,” although we’re soon about to learn that feisty isn’t exactly the word for it. Could he be experiencing some withdrawal? General anxiety about being caught? Despite Ball’s best efforts, it’s just not clear enough.
There’s also a sense of claustrophobia around Langdon, his jitters ratcheting up as he watches every interaction between Robby and Santos. Perhaps cold detachment alone isn’t what makes him a shark. It’s the need to keep moving or die. “You’ve seen what I can do,” he pleads with Robby. He wants to know if a drug addict could do what he does. Apparently, Robby sighs, before sending Langdon away.
Stray observations
- • The Pitt is earning a lot of praise for its accuracy from care providers. I’d also add that it gets a lot of the micro-sorrows around infertility dead-on, like with the flitting expression of sadness on Collins’ face as McKay talks about how grateful she is for her son.
- • Javadi is going to be babysitting Harrison so McKay and Matteo can go get foot massages? No, honey, please. She needs friends her own age to tell her she should not be doing shit like this.
- • Also, Robby refers to the patient with the dog from the last episode as “Crosby’s papa.” Love that.
