After the emotional roller-coaster of last week, The Pitt returns to the slower pace that has defined its sophomore year. And while I was a little confused about that pacing choice at the beginning of the season, I’m starting to understand the approach. Last season followed the doctors and nurses on what was almost certainly their worst day of the year—where they dealt with not just triaging a mass shooting but also a hate crime subway attack, a drowned little girl, a stolen ambulance, a braindead teen, and a mom who made herself sick just to get her troubled young son some help. And that’s not even mentioning Robby’s COVID flashbacks, Langdon’s drug stealing scandal, an angry patient punching Dana in the face, McKay’s ankle monitor drama, and Dr. Collins’ miscarriage.
This season, however, we’re seeing the Pitt on a more “normal” day. It may be the Fourth Of July, and they may be taking in extra patients from Westbridge, but (for now at least) the chaos is manageable. This is the Pitt operating at its best, and that allows the show to emphasize how much an ER lives or dies based on the small decisions its healthcare providers make. Advocate for an extra test and you could save a patient from a brutal heart attack. Move one small piece of glass from a wound and a patient might bleed out on the table.
What makes The Pitt so compelling is that its characters are hypercompetent enough to make those small yet critical decisions over and over and over again, even when they’re juggling a dozen patients at a time. But that hyper-competence is a learned skill, and “10:00 AM” makes a point of highlighting how it’s learned over the course of a doctor’s career.
At the bottom of the totem pole are new student doctors like Joy Kwon (Irene Choi) and James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson), who are brimming with book knowledge but lacking in practical experience. “10:00 AM” highlights just how dangerous that combination can be as Ogilvie’s desire to prove himself manifests in a massive ER fuck-up. High on self-confidence and a morning of wins, he assumes he can just quickly grab a small fragment of glass from a patient who Parkour-ed his way through a florist shop skylight. But when it turns out that fragment is actually a much larger piece of glass blocking a now overflowing artery, he’s suddenly like a panicked kid who has no idea what he’s doing. (“I can push it back in!”)
It’s a terrifying situation but also a crucial learning one too. When Ogilvie tells Robby “it won’t happen again,” you can tell he actually means it. He’s rattled by the experience and how much worse it could have been. And that will (hopefully) inspire him to be less cocky and more cautious in his future as a doctor.
Of course, you can’t lose that cockiness altogether either. It’s the blend of confidence and caution that makes our “top tier” doctors so great at their jobs. It’s why Robby, Al-Hashimi, Langdon, Samira, McKay, and Dana are able to make snap decisions and perform difficult procedures all while teaching the next generation of doctors and nurses. They may still need help in their personal lives (psych doctor Caleb Jefferson is pushing Robby to try out another new therapist), but, professionally, they’re all basically competence personified. McKay even manages to make a date with one of her patients without crossing any ethical lines.
With that wide gap between the newbies and the pros, the most intriguing doctors are arguably the middle tier bridging the two groups—characters like Whitaker, Javadi, Santos, and Mel. What The Pitt understands is that the growth from newbie to pro isn’t necessarily linear. Though Javadi is now being actively requested by patients thanks to her informative TikTok videos, she still needs to be reminded not to call a psych consult on a sedated patient. Whitaker, meanwhile, has basically doubled in confidence from his experience as an overwhelmed fourth-year medical student to his new role as an intern. But Santos is experiencing the opposite arc in her transition from intern to resident. When Al-Hashimi warns her that if she doesn’t keep up with her charting, she might have to repeat her R2 year, it rattles her more than we’ve ever seen before.
It’s the sort of small-scale struggle that our top-tier doctors may no longer relate to, since they’re so far removed from the start of their careers. But it’s one that Mel—who was in Santos’ shoes just last season—intimately understands. She delivers a lovely bit of both mentorship and friendship as she guides Santos toward being a more attentive doctor while also offering a supportive ear if she needs one. It’s the role Langdon served for her last season; and as Mel moves up in her own career, she now gets to pass along the favor.
In a lot of ways, “10:00 AM” is a low-key episode that keeps its current patient storylines going rather than introducing any big new shockers. Our proud diabetic patient rejects the idea of a GoFundMe, our new bulimia patient asks for the help she needs, Joy gets a small blood exposure cut that requires her to officially become a patient, our romantic Walmart greeter gets a painful miracle cure, our superglue lady finally gets to open her eye again, our waitress with the infected foot is back and doing way worse, and we still don’t know exactly what’s going on with our mentally altered college student or our baby Jane Doe.
But however those stories unfold from here, “10:00 AM” proves that even a slower-paced version of The Pitt can still be compelling. The daily grind of an ER may not exactly be glamorous. But it’s riveting in its own way—a place where everything can tick along perfectly until suddenly, disastrously, it doesn’t. Good thing the most competent team in Pittsburgh is here to help.
Stray observations
- • We get a whole bunch of continuity details this week: Whitaker and Santos are still living together, plus he’s keeping up with the “farm widow” from last season. Meanwhile, Dr. Collins finished her residency, took an attending job in Portland, and plans to adopt a baby. Good for her!
- • Mel notes that there are five hours left until her deposition, which should put that around 3 p.m. or our ninth episode.
- • I think McKay’s flirtation with her athlete patient would have worked better if we’d actually seen them meet and banter with one another rather than him just hitting on her from afar.
- • I liked the PSA about speaking directly to deaf people, not their interpreters. Ditto the moment Mel notes that bulimia is underdiagnosed in Black women. But the discussion of health-insurance gaps felt like it was geared toward someone who’s never lived in the United States before, not people deeply steeped in this cruel system. (Noelle Hastings’ only advice is to apply for ACA coverage??)
- • It wound up working out well for the bulimia patient, but do people actually go to the ER for a cough and 102-degree fever? That seems like an Urgent Care issue at best.
- • Javadi is shocked that Whitaker is an astrology girlie, but I’m more shocked that Santos is one!
- • We get some nice character building with the Code Black betting grid. Al-Hashimi proves she’s not a stick in the mud by immediately getting onboard with the game (and directly challenging Robby’s bet). Whitaker, meanwhile, proves his cool-kid cred by putting $40 in the pot.
- • Give Noah Wyle an Emmy just for the playful way he says “piece of glass” when Al-Hashimi asks what happened to Joy.
- • Gnarliest moment of the week: This episode wasn’t that bad, but Louie’s tooth drainage and McKay’s rectal-related tailbone fix are both effective in their unglamorous realism.
Caroline Siede is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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