'The Pitt' Season 2 Episode 4 Recap and Review: "10:00 am"
After last week’s remarkable vignettes of human connection, the ER slows down again for a relatively uneventful hour.
This review of ‘The Pitt’ contains spoilers.
Sophomore seasons of phenomenons such as ‘The Pitt’ find themselves in a difficult, almost no win situation. The show is simply put, an absolute stellar example of brilliant writing and a cast that would convince their own mother that they’re doctors and nurses. It pulls you in from beginning to end because it just seems so real, and by the end of the first season, you’ve truly shared something with the characters. They feel real to you.
What viewers have to recognize is sometimes reality is not always what you want, but what you need. For adrenaline junkies (or as Dr. Langdon put it last season, those who suffer from ADHD and any other medical specialization would be too boring), slow times in the ER might be a tough pill to swallow, if you’ll forgive the medical parlance. It’s the same for most of the audience members of The Pitt as well. We love this show for so many reasons, but let’s be honest, at least a small part of all of us are adrenaline junkies. Our most memorable episodes from last season were likely the mass-casualty event that served as the climax, or some of the more traumatic injuries characters had to suffer.
But lest we forget, this show is so much more than that. There are so many episodes that remind us what it is to be human. What it is to love or to lose. Last week’s heartbreaking episode was yet another reminder from this show what it means to come together as human beings, to put aside things such as religion or beliefs to help come together as a community. Something that we often have to learn the hard way.
This week’s hour - 10:00 am - comes with a few hard lessons as well. Happy to say that this includes two of the more divisive new characters to join the cast, medical students James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) and Joy Kwon (Irene Choi). Both characters have been doing their best to remind viewers that not everyone is there to be part of the team we’ve come to know and love. Ogilve, with his cocksure yet gifted nature has rubbed many of the baby faces of the Pitt the wrong way, and when you upset Javadi (Shabana Azeez) and Whitaker (Gerran Howell), you risk the audience coming at you with a fury yet-to-be-seen. Joy, perhaps the most ironically named character, has been the antithesis of joy, bringing her hard-edged, don’t care attitude to almost everything she’s done. Joy seems like she doesn’t want to be there, Ogilve can’t prove enough how much he belongs. It’s been an exhausting experience with the new kids, but there’s one key aspect, we might be forgetting. That means those actors are really good at doing their job.
To hate Ogilve and his overachiever nature is to love Iverson’s performance, to want to rip Joy’s phone out of her hand and get her to smile is to believe Choi’s portrayal wholeheartedly. It is part of a great and well-balanced experience we call The Pitt, as we have to take the bad with the good. This week, thankfully brings a little humility to both these characters and it was the most character development we’ve had in this young season for the young medical students. Both Joy and Ogilve leaped before they looked and learned a couple hard lessons about both patient safety and their own, and for those who have been waiting to see Ogilve’s self-entitled smirk wiped from his face, this was arguably the week. We can hope that this episode is merely a launching off point for further development for both these characters, and like some of the other overly confident characters we’ve come to love, the start of a new outlook for both of them.
The rest of the episode seemed more like business as usual, to be honest. Nothing all that exciting to write home about in terms of patients. The episode seemed like a typical story beat that’s really treading water, waiting for the more exciting build up that’s bound to come in future episodes. Once again a critique of the writing this season seems to be that the teleplays are relying heavily on major beats from the first season that were memorable moments and merely recycling them. Even Noah Wylie’s wonderfully touching script from last episode had some very familiar moments to the successes from season 1.
This hour, Ahmad (Johnath Davis) got yet another opportunity to start a betting pool based on what the emergency that shut down a fraternal hospital ER’s room was, how long that might last, and how many patients The Pitt will inherit. It was certainly a great moment from last year, but it wasn’t the wagers that were the most intriguing development of this hour’s pool.
This writer can’t be the only one who picked up on Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) little flirtatious moment with Dr. Robby (Wylie). When asked about her wager, as Robby has pointed out it was bold, Al-Hashimi told her compatriot not to worry, as she would have enough money to buy him a drink. It was a moment that came out of nowhere, and took Robby aback (as it did with this writer). It would be quite an unexpected development should this rivalry lead to something romantic between the two characters, especially considering how much they have been butting heads for the first three hours of this shift, and Robby’s supposed preexisting romance with Noelle Hastings (Meta Golding), the hospital’s new case worker.
However, this writer would be remiss if it weren’t mentioned how much he personally shouted at the television for another budding romance to happen. After a couple hours of Dr. McKay (Fiona Doriff) being the target of some flirtatious banter from the athletically handsome Brian (Lawrence Robinson), McKay finally gave herself a much needed break as she invited Brian to join her to check out a gallery after her shift. The delightful little pause, and an even more delightful, delicate little smirk as McKay goes back to talk to Brian and extend the invitation may have been the most this writer has been excited all season so far.
Otherwise, “10:00 am” does serve some relatively unexciting but never-the-less necessary moments of character development. One interesting moment was when Whitaker revealed (through expositional gossip) that Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeacher) took a position closer to where she grew up and plans on adopting a baby. A necessary knot to tie off a loose end, but this writer was extremely disappointed in the fact that it came in merely a throw-away sentence. Since Ifeacher looks as if she will never return to the show (which is still somewhat of a mystery to begin with, as she was a standout performance in the first season), to merely give a beloved character one little line is a major disservice. This writer is a strong student of the ‘show don’t tell’ school of writing, which means it would have meant a lot more if we saw a picture, even through text of Collins’ new bundle of joy, or something to that effect. Perhaps there is more to come of this story, but it seems unlikely.
When Robby speaks with his friend and colleague, Dr. Jefferson (Christopher Thornton) where it is revealed that Robby, while trying to get the help he may desperately need in terms of his mental health, has yet to find the right doctor or the right kind of therapy to do so. It begs the question how much are we going to see Robby’s mental health issues rear their head again considering it was a predominant focus and some of last season’s most poignant moments. His trip, scheduled for the end of this season may be all we get in terms of Robby trying to escape the pressures of his job, the dark past he’s lived through, and perhaps even the advances of Dr. Al-Hashimi.
Al Hashimi also had a moment with Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), albeit plutonic. She had praised him for his work in the program helping him to get clean, and it seems that in hour five, we might finally get Ball back into the ER instead of triage. Considering Robby can no longer run away from his former-favorite-protege, this is one minor conflict that needs resolution. Considering Dana (Katherine LaNasa) also hinted to Robby that the fact Langdon was back before Robby went on his trip was cosmic kismet, it’s clearly the story is going in that direction.
Ultimately, episode four was really quite safe. Which sadly means that at least 75% of this show so far this season has been playing it as such. This writer knows that not every hour can be overloaded with tragedy and chaos, but it’s also easy to recognize that last season already had half a dozen tearful and soul shattering moments by its fourth episode.