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Show of hands: Who here is watching The Pitt, Max’s breakout medical drama starring Noah Wyle?
When I posed this question to a group of friends at a bar last weekend, I was surprised I wasn’t alone in my newfound obsession. Unbeknownst to me and to each other, we’d all been quietly watching the series and can agree: The Pitt is a perfect TV show.
For the uninitiated: Each episode of the The Pitt’s first season covers one hour of a single shift in the emergency room at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, adding up to a jam-packed 15-hour day/season. (It’s been described as ER meets 24.)
Leading our ragtag group of overworked doctors, nurses, and new hires is chief attending Dr. Michael Rabinovitch (Wyle), known by both his peers and his patients as Dr. Robby. He’s an easy-to-root-for Good Guy and an even better teacher, though he’s not without his faults, as nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) and Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) are happy to point out to him.
The show also features breakout performances from Isa Briones, who plays the infuriating Dr. Trinity Santos, Gerran Howell as the bumbling student doctor Dennis Whitaker, and Taylor Dearden as the sensitive and quirky Dr. Melissa King. (Fun fact: Dearden is Bryan Cranston’s daughter.) Shabana Azeez, Patrick Ball, Supriyah Ganesh, and Fiona Dourif round out an outstanding ensemble cast.
And while the focus of the show remains squarely on the patients’ ailments and their needs, the writers do an excellent job of eking out just enough of the doctors’ and nurses’ personal histories to create a hum of drama in the background. The Pitt is no Grey’s Anatomy when it comes to relationships or sex in utility closets, but there’s enough there to sate the need for a little juice. Oh, Dr. Robby and Dr. Collins used to date? Fascinating. Tell me more, after we save this six-year-old drowning victim.
But don’t just take it from me: On January 16, a week following the January 9 series premiere, Wrapped reported that the show debuted as one of the top five most-watched Max originals ever. The show currently has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has earned plenty of praise from critics like The New Yorker’s Inkoo Kang, who wrote that “the Pitt”—the emergency room at the Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Center—“is exactly where you’d want to be for some counterintuitive comfort TV."
Personally, I’m more interested in the reactions from real-life ER doctors, one of whom called the show “the most realistic portrayal of an ER I’ve ever seen (taking crown from ER season 1)” on the r/Television subreddit. In the same thread, an ER nurse followed up, “Every single thing that happens is 100% something I’ve seen in the ER at some point!”
Part of that realism can be chalked up to the team’s collective experience. Creator R. Scott Gemmill and executive producer and director John Wells may not have been actual ER doctors, but they’re the next best thing: alum of the beloved ’90s medical drama ER. Wyle, too, is a veteran of the network show most often mentioned in conjunction with George Clooney’s name (it’s where he got his start). But don’t call it a reboot (although some people are—the estate of Michael Crichton, the creator of ER, is suing Warner Bros., calling The Pitt an unauthorized remake. Warner Bros. calls the allegation “baseless.”)
For millennials like myself, however, part of the joy of discovering The Pitt is feeling as though I’m experiencing the heyday of the network medical drama. ER premiered in 1994, when I was a year old. Then came Scrubs in 2001 (more of a comedy, but still). House M.D. nabbed the coveted post–American Idol slot in 2004, and was followed up by Grey’s Anatomy in 2005. With The Pitt getting such rave reviews, it really, truly feels as if the medical drama renaissance could be upon us. Sheltered preteens of the early aughts who weren’t allowed to watch Grey’s because of its “sexual themes”—this is our time.
New episodes of The Pitt air at 9 p.m. ET on Max. The finale will air on April 15.