At some point just over midway through this episode, Dr. Robby sits down with the Bradleys, the parents whose son lies ventilated a few rooms over, and explains to them what brain death looks like. A healthy scan for a brain shows blood blooms with black dots, like the silhouette of a forest. However, a brain void of blood is a white void, a nothingness like the ground after an atomic blast.
What Robby shows them is the epitome of brutal simplicity: life and death in terms that are as stark as black and white. In a bitter twist of irony, it’s the only part of the episode with such a clear sense of resolution. As for the 17 year old whose domineering mother swooped in with a harridan’s rage and poor timing to stop her from getting a medication abortion? The duo are mostly background figures in the episode, only getting a major scene at the very end of the hour, when the daughter has locked herself in a bathroom in a desperate bid to save her freedom from the mother who’d will her to stay pregnant.
In the skirmish between the mother and the aunt, who comes charging to her niece’s aid, mom ends up shoving Dr. Collins, who has come to break up the fight. It’s an example of the show using its structural mandate toward cliffhangers to ratchet up tension: That shove comes just as the series is starting to resolve Dr. Collins’ feelings about her pregnancy, allowing Tracey Ifeachor to finally play evolving shades of hesitancy, vulnerability, and hopefulness as she considers becoming a parent.
In one of the more poignant, funny, and gross patient encounters to date, Collins tends to a young man who has his testacle…well, let’s just say it’s in a way that a testacle shouldn’t be. Listening to the young man’s concerned mom say that he’s her heart outside of her body, Collins grows thoughtful and receptive. And when the mom asks her if she has any kids of her own, she says someday soon with an unexpected brightness in her tone. Ifeachor wisely underplays Collins’ tentative joy, which only makes it feel more palpable.
That choice also adds power to the moment that, flush with cash from winning the betting pool about the people who stole the ambulance (frat boys who’d end up crashing it within the hospital’s zone), Collins tells head nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) that she’s going to splurge on an elite stroller. “You and baby deserve it,” says Evans. The look of unguarded happiness on Collins’ face laces that shove, and its potential to impact her pregnancy, with real horror and urgency.
Another layer of dread returns to the ED in the form of administrator Gloria (Michael Hyatt), who comes with a representative from a corporate-management firm with a penchant for snapping up emergency rooms and getting those patient-satisfaction scores up. Dr. Robby’s response to this new potential overlord’s presence is understandably brittle, and he’s quick to tell Gloria that his team could manage perfectly fine with expanded staff and more resources. Her response? Figure out how to make do with what you have and then do better—or prepare to roll out the welcome mat for new management.
There’s room for the series to mine some shades of gray between the black-and-white positions taken by Robby and Gloria. Yes, healthcare is widely underfunded, unless you’re one of the wealthy elite who can tap into private resources, and in the post-COVID crunch, the medical professionals culturally lauded as heroes have been left in the lurch. But also? It’s very human and understandable to be angry at wait times longer than a work day and to expect to be treated with compassion in one of the most vulnerable moments of your life.
There’s no easy answer to what finding balance in that gray might look like, though The Pitt does offer a potential vision in Dr. King’s plotline. Last episode, while speaking with the adult daughter and caregiver of an elderly woman with schizophrenia and a broken shoulder, King shared her own struggles of caring for her, informing the woman that she has to take care of herself lest she too end up in the ER. Raising the specter of caregiver burnout is enough to spur the daughter into straight up leaving the hospital—and specifically, leaving her mother behind.
Dr. King has been in the background for the past couple of episodes, but her story here allows the show to explore the tension between offering care that remedies the body and care that also touches on the soul. Taylor Dearden expertly conveys King’s pervasive guilt—not just at unconsciously giving the daughter the magic words to flee but guilt at placing her own sister in a care facility—with a clenched posture and terseness about the mouth. The same woman who was overwhelmed by emotion for the parents of the boy who accidentally snuck a pot gummy is now unable to even look her elderly patient in the eye.
When Evans finds her alone in a hallway, attempting to soothe herself by staring at a lava lamp on her phone, the savvy nurse, who has remained a delightfully smart-ass maternal figure (a testament to LeNasa’s performance) in the background offers the young doctor some advice: She doesn’t have to hear the perfect thing; she just has to show that she cares. This arc gets tied in a tiny bow when Dr. King confronts her fear, awkwardly lowering herself to eye-level to tell her patient she’s not sure where her daughter is, but that they’re looking.
Later, King will answer the alarm she’s set to call her own sister. Dearden masters a fine combination of anxiety, dread, relief, and sadness, practically vibrating with unexpressed feelings. But she’s trying. She’s showing that she cares, even if she has to steel herself when her sister asks when she’s coming to get her.
She’s not the only character who needs to get knocked out of her binaristic thinking. Dr. Santos gets shaken out of her black-and-white belief that she’s the hot stuff and everyone around her is lukewarm at best. Her informal apprenticeship under Dr. Garcia ends when she drops a scalpel onto the ace surgeon’s foot while handing it off. And who does Garcia ask to fill in for Santos? Good ol’ Huckleberry, a.k.a. Dr. Whitaker, who has been humble, taken his lumps, and shown willingness to learn.
Treating her own wound in front of Santos, Garcia tells her aspiring mini-me that confidence is one thing but cockiness is another. Really, Santos’ fall from grace couldn’t have happened to a nicer doc—though it’s now past time for the show to explain why, exactly, she’s like this. However, this humbling could have positive benefits for the patient they were treating. While checking in on him later, Santos observes that the man’s pectorals seem swollen, which could be a sign of any number of issues, from hormone imbalances to even alcoholism. Could it be that when she’s not trying to be impressive, Santos has the makings of a decent doctor?
Stray observations
- • A meal arrives for the hungry team, courtesy of Dr. Adams’ sister, which prompts Robby to leave the lunch room and makes Evans get the younger members up to speed about their history. While it’s been admirable that the show hasn’t pounded us over the head with Robby’s lingering grief, The Pitt is closing in on the midpoint of its first season and it’s time to start building out that relationship more. How did Adams handle administration? Did he teach Robby to truly be his successor or was it a role Robby found himself thrust into?
- • The ambulance thieves have been caught, and, of course, they’re a pair of frat brothers. But also, kudos to the sound department because the sound of Javadi thunking the one boy’s hip back in place is absolutely unforgettable in a visceral and disturbing way.
- • Seriously, seeing Huckleberry get a one-up on Santos was so satisfying.
