The Pitt Season 2, Episode 2 Review – “8:00AM”

With an open shoulder dislocation, a rock-hard dick, and some surprise maggots, The Pitt is already off and running in its second hour, with an episode as narratively dense and rich as the fun, focused season premiere. However, as “8:00AM” continues to re-establish the regular, occasionally chaotic rhythms of an hour in The Pitt, season two’s second hour finds a bit of thematic unity amongst the outside forces, both physical and otherwise, setting themselves up as obstacles to be knocked down as the season continues.

These ideas spring to the surface in a lot of interesting ways in “8:00AM”, which works to give the non-medical scenes some needed tension, and even heighten things with each patient case, a real sign that The Pitt‘s ideas for its characters and setting are already percolating, finding little pockets of pressure to push and release throughout the hour – not much unlike the aforementioned shoulder Mel helps manually slide back into place – little push in the right direction, and it all comes horribly, and beautifully, back into place.

Initially, “8:00AM” leverages the obvious contrasts between Robby and Al-Hashimi, to comment on everything from their mannerisms – Robby’s old-school reliance on informed instinct everywhere he goes, Al-Hashimi’s more careful, statistical model-based approach to seemingly her entire professional life – to their embrace (or rejection, in Robby’s sake) of integrating artificial intelligence into the medical process, one of the obvious major topics sizzling on the surface of season two. And at times, this gets a little heavy-handed, with the constant cuts from Robby to Al-Hashimi and back, re-establishing over and over that not only does he not trust her approach to medicine, but he’s just enough on edge (the sight of him driving his motorcycle to work with no helmet on to open the season is really sticking with me) enough that he is clearly setting himself up to undermine the moral high ground he clearly thinks he’s established for himself.

(We also learn he’s hooking up with another co-worker, when Noelle the case manager comes to discuss one of McKay’s patients waiting for surgery…. Robby clearly has a thing for problematic entanglements with women of color.)

However, there are plenty of other interesting stories poking around a this idea, whether its Santos and the injured little girl with a body full of bruises, Al-Hashimi using AI with a mentally disabled patient (and nearly leaving an antipsychotic medication on her chart as a resulting error), or even McKay, whose aggressive patient from the first episode is suddenly pacifying and even friendly when she comes back to check on him. Spreading this out across the surface of The Pitt a bit more doesn’t thin it out, in the slightest: in fact, the only time it comes across as forced and reductive is the cascading set of rolling eyes and deflections Robby has thrown at Al-Hashimi for the first two hours of the season – and even there, “8:00AM” at least starts to push the needle forward when she confronts him about his complete dismissal of her and her approach to healthcare in the final moments of the hour (after reminding him that she’s never faced any medical malpractice lawsuits, of course).

From there, “8:00AM” extrapolates on this idea of instinct and its many forms; from Dana and her attempts to not assume the worst about her young patient, to the aggravatingly brash confidence Ogilve brings to the emergency room on the first day of his sub-residency (which puts him in direct competition with Javadi, something she naively tries to blow off before experiencing it firsthand). Smartly, not of all these manifest themselves strictly through patients; Mel struggling to compartmentalize work with her impending afternoon deposition being the best example… or even to stay with Mel, her starting to befriend a patient before he violently knocks her off in his attempts to quickly evade the police (her luck isn’t as bad as Whitaker’s, but with a near-concussion and buckets of anxiety before having to hold, and slightly massage, a over-hardened dick in place , she’s not exactly having a great day either). Doctors doubting their own abilities can be an incredibly dangerous thing, especially in an emergency medicine setting; watching characters like Mel and Santos waver, even a little bit, is certainly a sign of tumultuous waters to come for both young doctors.

And then, of course, there’s The Pitt‘s continued condemnation of AI, acutely filtered through Robby in many scenes – but also through the concerned looks of characters like Langdon, whose apprehension towards the technology (which someone like Al-Hashimi seems 100% in on, in a way that thins her character just a shade) is a silent undercurrent in moments of observing the technology in use. Some of this predictably comes down to a “numbers vs. feelings” thing (Al-Hashimi and Robby’s conversation before the abrasively unhinged college student arrives, delivering responses no AI would be able to make sense of) that is clearly a loaded argument; while I’m certainly on the side of the writers and creatives in its application in any capacity of any professional and creative environment, the introduction of these ideas is the one part of season two that’s felt a little ham-fisted in its first two hours (that, and Ogilve’s competitive arrogance, which randomly becomes a dominating theme in the episode’s second act).

Of course, like any other episode of The Pitt, there are long segments of “8:00AM” with other distinct priorities – Whitaker’s Alzheimer’s patient and her quest to find her now-deceased husband being chief among them – but those pockets of narrative prove incredibly necessary, especially in an hour that is hammering on a specific set of stories so hard in the course of the hour. Amongst the flurry of extremely hard dicks, throat broccolis, and liters of fluid come a flurry of other pressure valves season two is slowly building (and lest we forget, it’s only 8AM on the morning of July 4th; as was noted in the last episode, this is a slow start to the holiday for the people of The Pitt) – but in this episode, they are almost salves, giving the much heavier application found in the more prominent, featured stories of the episode. All in all, another strong 45 minutes for The Pitt, in a season that’s already percolating with new ideas, intriguing patient mysteries – and of course, that unshakeable, kinetic feeling that things for everyone, both professionally and personally, are right on the edge of chaos.

Grade: B+

Other thoughts/observations:

• who is this Dr. Jay the woman with the superglued-eye is looking for?
  
• There are definitely some Dr. Kerry Weaver vibes going on with Al-Hashimi, but I’m willing to give The Pitt the benefit of the doubt and see how they continue to build her character.
  
• “They did the wee-search”… that’s comedy gold, Jerry. Gold!
  
• McKay and Dana both immediately clock what’s going on with Noelle and Robby – but it’s Dana who warns Noelle, and drops a very saucy little “Ok, big girl” response under her breath when the case manager walks away.
  
• Whitaker got his first paycheck!
  
• “First signs of flaccidity” is not something people normally celebrate – however, when you’ve been draining blood from someone’s hard dick with a thick needle for a half hour, I think it is definitely a cause for a bit of joy.
  
• The minute Javadi learns of Ogilve’s attitude, she immediately becomes combative and performative in ways she never has before. Methinks there’s a bit more of her mother in her than she’s willing to admit.
  
• Oh yeah – the nun from “7:00AM” has gonorrhea. “Maybe it’s an immaculate infection!” Santos wonders.
  
• What a fun first two hours for Emma! That poor girl is going to be going through it, Whitaker-style, all season.