Roush Review: Back in ‘The Pitt’ for Another Grueling, Riveting Day
Review
The Pitt
What To Know
- The second season of The Pitt maintains its gripping, hour-by-hour depiction of life in a Pittsburgh trauma center without resorting to melodrama.
- Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby faces a pivotal day before his planned sabbatical, clashing with his replacement, Dr. Al-Hashimi, and dealing with Dr. Langdon’s return from rehab.
- The show balances intense medical cases and complex workplace dynamics.
It’s all in a day’s work as we settle in for another long and soul-testing shift at Pittsburgh’s Trauma Medical Center, the setting for this deservedly Emmy-winning medical drama that reinvents the ER formula with an hour-by-hour emotional urgency. To its credit, the second season of The Pitt doesn’t try to top the first with melodramatic excess. Just making it through the day is an accomplishment.
Leading a remarkably appealing ensemble of dedicated and exhausted doctors, nurses, residents, and med students, Noah Wyle‘s Dr. Robby watches the clock with extra intensity on this July 4 tour of duty that’s anything but a holiday. He’s planning to start a three-month motorcycle sabbatical the next day, mocked as a midlife crisis by many of his skeptical coworkers, though the factors prompting his departure are more complicated.
His replacement, the clinical and cool Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), couldn’t be more different. She favors A.I. tools, while Robby believes in gut instinct, “this thing that A.I. will never have.” And before the day is over, they’ll need to rely on their wits more than ever when their electronic tools are no longer an option.
The Pitt certainly has guts, and most other bodily fluids, in depicting a riveting parade of cases, as troubling as an abandoned baby and as trivial as a fashionista who’s super-glued her eyelid shut with false lashes. The workplace dynamics are thrilling, as we see the growth in characters from Season 1 who are now guiding a new set of newbies through the harrowing paces. Things can also be awkward, especially with senior resident Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) returning from rehab after 10 months and Dr. Robby not exactly welcoming him back with open arms or mind.
But thankfully charge nurse Dana (Emmy winner Katherine LaNasa) has a quip for every occasion: “Punchy is my new baseline,” she asserts. Though when it’s time to get serious, providing care and compassion to a rape victim, there’s no one better.
With humor and pathos underscoring the constant panic and grief, The Pitt is anything but the pits.
The Pitt, Season 2 Premiere, Thursday, January 8, 9/8c, HBO Max
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