Investing in any season of television requires a certain amount of faith. You have to trust that the writers will land the plane thematically and that any previous moments where characters felt odd or off were intentional breadcrumbs for something that will be brought to the surface later. That’s doubly true of a real-time show like The Pitt, which is operating with a much slimmer margin of error. Because we’re seeing just one day of growth for these characters, the show needs to be incredibly intentional about where and how it pays off the tiny nuances of their arcs. What concerns me a bit about “8:00 P.M.” is that even this late into the game, the show is still punting all that work to next week’s finale.
While Monica and Donnie clock out for the day, the majority of our main ensemble are kind of just hanging around, waiting to get to the (perhaps literal) fireworks factory. Instead of wrapping up some arcs here to clear the runway for next week’s finale, The Pitt puts Santos, Mel, McKay, Whitaker, Javadi, Samira, Al-Hashimi, and even Dana in a holding pattern. They all have their little moments: McKay complains about potentially missing her date and sticks up for Javadi’s TikTok activism. Whitaker looks for his lost ID badge and pushes back against Langdon’s “little buddy” routine. Javadi has a cute friendship with the waiting room clerk who replaces Lupe. Dana gets choked up when Monica and Abbot compliment her caring touch. Mel decides she wants to join the historical reenactors. (Again, the Mel/Langdon ‘shippers are eating well this season.) Santos…charts. But it all feels pretty slight.
Indeed, one of the big fan complaints about The Pitt is how often episodes run under 50 minutes, even though they’re ostensibly covering a full real-time hour of a hospital shift. So it’s especially notable that this episode clocks in at just 41 minutes—the shortest of the season yet. An extra 10 to 15 minutes could have been put to great use fleshing out Samira’s slow downward spiral or Mel’s shifting identity as a caretaker for her sister. Instead, “8:00 P.M.” pretty intentionally narrows its focus on Robby, Langdon, and Duke, of all people. Only none of their arcs quite feel complete yet either. And with the somewhat random cliff-hanger reveal that Al-Hashimi seems to have been having absence seizures all day, it makes me wary about how next week’s finale is going to juggle its screen time in order to cap off so many arcs at once (not to mention solve the mystery of Baby Jane Doe).
If “8:00 P.M.” has a thematic through-line, it’s about intervention. From Robby pushing Duke to get heart surgery to Langdon’s risky emergency procedure that could leave a car crash victim quadriplegic to Whitaker’s regret over ordering a Lyft for a patient to the potential divine intervention of Robby’s motorcycle getting dinged by an ambulance, questions of when and how to intervene are all over this hour. Most notably, we’ve reached a critical mass of people who are well aware that Robby isn’t okay, but are unsure if and how to intervene in the life of a grown man who’s given them no true concrete evidence that something is wrong beyond a bad vibe.
The thing is, though, the show has been operating in that space with Robby for the past few episodes, if not the entire season, if not the entire series. So while “8:00 P.M.” delivers some nice scenes, it doesn’t exactly elevate the themes of the season. There’s a little bit of a build here, but there’s also a whole lot of repetition. How many scenes can we get of Robby saying some version of “I don’t want to be here anymore” then dramatically walking away to deal with a medical emergency while his friend looks on in concern? Especially when there’s no way in hell the show is actually killing off Noah Wyle next week.
True, each version of this scene has featured Robby opening up a little bit more than he did the last time. Here he’s honest with Duke about how the ER is the only place he can find purpose and distraction and that his motorcycle trip is an attempt to recreate that kind of adrenaline rush escapism in some other environment—or die trying if he can’t. But while that’s in-world progress, it’s also something I’ve been intuiting for most of the season, so it doesn’t play as a particularly impactful reveal. And though Jeff Kober has been a nice presence as Duke, it just seems odd to give that character so much focus here when so many of our main cast members feel underserved.
Instead, the most interesting arc of the week belongs to Langdon, who gets a welcome dose of perspective from Parker Ellis. (Now there’s a platonic male/female friendship for you.) The idea that the day shifters are all self-involved martyrs while the night shifters are all chill, well-adjusted straight shooters is a very funny one. And while it’s pretty unsubtle to have Ellis just tell Langdon, “He’s not mad at you—he’s mad at himself for failing you,” at least it gets us somewhere new in the Robby/Langdon dynamic. Earlier in the season, Langdon might have shut down at the rather cruel way Robby demands he “doctor the fuck up” and pull off an impossible cowboy medicine move. Here, however, he rises to the occasion.
The manual C-spine traction scene that follows is one of the tensest, most thrilling bits of medicine we’ve seen this season. And the way Langdon absolutely beams with pride after receiving a “nice job” from Robby only to have to run off to take a drug test could be a perfect final button for his arc this season, with his tweaked back setting him up for new challenges next year. But the way Dana notes that Robby got his wish and won’t have to say goodbye to Langdon suggests to me we’re not quite done with those two yet. As with so much of this season, how well this episode works in retrospect is going to come down to whether next week’s finale sticks the landing.
Perhaps the other key theme to keep an eye on is about communication styles. Sometimes yelling works—like when Caleb snaps at Robby to get his attention or Whitaker stands up for himself with Langdon or Robby righteously condemns some EMTs who failed to properly place a 12-lead on a patient because they were scared to get under her boobs. But sometimes yelling elides true communication too. Robby chews out Javadi for her TikToks without stopping to hear her point of view. And though it’s not yelling, exactly, Robby’s dark joke about Orlando not jumping from a high enough spot turns the conversation away from the fact that Samira clearly isn’t doing well. (If there’s anyone I’m worried about actually harming themselves in the finale, it’s her.)
Hopefully that will all feel meaningful and intentional as the show wraps everything up next week. The Pitt certainly has no shortage of characters and ideas to work with. Right now, however, we can only go on faith.
Stray observations
- • So Ellis’ go-to reference is the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola teen motorcycle drama Rumble Fish, but she thinks knowing the band Styx makes you old? Okay!
- • I wasn’t sure if the show was going to have some kind of big PSA moment about Monica’s values, but I like that she ultimately just exists as a reminder that sometimes “beloved” health-care workers are racist conservatives.
- • I don’t really understand the nuances of straight-male culture. Is it normal to make small talk with a co-worker you’ve known for two days about how ripped they got since you last saw them? That seemed wild to me.
- • On the other hand, I thought Dana calling Langdon “honey” was so sweet!
- • Al-Hashimi’s medical chart reveals she’s been living with a seizure disorder for the past 35 years after getting viral meningitis as a kid. I thought her condition was going to be related to the Dashte Barchi hospital attack the show referenced but didn’t explain earlier this season, but I guess not.
- • I couldn’t exactly track where Whitaker’s sudden anger at Langdon came from, but personally I think Robby is the Skipper, Whitaker is Gilligan, Mel is the Professor, Langdon is Mary Ann, Abbot is Ginger, Santos is Thurston Howell III, and Javadi is Lovey. Dana is the S.S. Minnow.
- • Gnarliest moment of the week: The ambulance bay is especially intense tonight, with two bloody victims of a bar fight (“Gentlemen, you’re on different health journeys now”) and a gunshot wound to the head for a stoned guy who was firing into the air. Still, I’m going to give this one to the brutal tug-of-rope accident from the Hansen family reunion. That was truly unsettling, although it was fun to see them again!
Caroline Siede is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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