Everybody Said The Pitt Was Great, So I Finally Watched It, And Now I'm Experiencing Two Extreme Emotions

Watching TV these days is basically a full-time job. I mean, it’s literally part of my job, and I have a hard time keeping up. Between the time it takes to actually write about entertainment and taking care of a couple of young kids, I don’t have a lot of time to watch TV, so it takes some time to get around to something I hear is good. This is why I only now used my HBO Max subscription to watch The Pitt.

The show hadn’t really been on my radar before. Considering all I knew about the drama before it arrived was that it had been sued in the wake of the failed ER reboot, I assumed the show would be a standard TV drama set in a hospital. However, everybody said The Pitt was amazing, so I finally flipped it on. I have now finished Season 1 in all its glory, and I am equal parts obsessed and traumatized.

The Pitt Is The Best Series I’ve Seen In Years

It doesn’t take a great deal to get me to enjoy any given TV show, to make it worth keeping it on. However, like many other people, I’ll find myself looking at my phone or doing other things if it isn’t holding my attention. The Pitt had me putting down my phone to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

For a series with such an extensive cast of characters, it’s remarkable that every single one of them is compelling and interesting. There isn’t a single one that I don’t like or don’t want to see more of. Even Dr. Santos (Isa Briones), who is probably the character easiest to dislike, isn’t all bad. She could have been written as the “evil” one, but she’s much more complex than that.

By the same token, I don’t really have a favorite character, either. This means that I don’t feel more or less invested in the characters as the story jumps between its various emergencies.

The way The Pitt handles its various patients is incredible. Some storylines appear and are dealt with over a single episode. Some form mini-arcs over several episodes, and some essentially run the length of the show. No story overstays its welcome, and as one patient leaves the ER, another is there to take their place. There's simply no way to know when stories will start or end or how they will impact everything else.

The show’s overall structure is another piece of greatness. The idea that each episode represents one hour of time in a single day is a great way for the story to fit together. There isn't any sort of “real time” gimmick (episodes aren’t 60 minutes long), but the structure compels one to continue watching from one episode to the next, not because of some contrived cliffhanger, but simply because each episode ends so abruptly you simply want to see what happens next.

And, I did want to see what happened next. I stayed up far too late watching The Pitt some nights, which in itself was fascinating because I needed to keep watching, even though it was an absolutely horrific experience.

The Pitt’s Surgical Scenes Are More Gory Than Many Horror Movies

If you’ve ever had to sit in the waiting room of an emergency room, and most of us probably have, you know you see all kinds of injuries, ailments, and conditions there. The Pitt is certainly no different, and some of what we see on the show truly brings the word “emergency” to the Emergency Room.

Most of the medical dramas I have seen in my life have been on standard network television, which means what could be shown as far as blood and bones was limited. The Pitt, being on streaming, has no such restrictions, and it takes full advantage of this.

There is some pretty visceral carnage on display over the course of The Pitt’s 15 episodes. People are cut, shot, punctured, and otherwise have their bodies damaged in a multitude of ways. We even see a woman giving birth. Like…we really see a woman giving birth. It's not something I have a problem with, but no way was I ready for it.

I’ve seen horror movies that were less graphic than some of the bloodiest sequences in The Pitt, and there’s a reason I don’t watch a lot of horror movies. At the same time, these scenes fascinate me because, as a lover of visual effects, I’m impressed by the way many of these bloody scenes are done. Some of them are quite impressive...at least they looked that way as I watched them through my fingers.

The Pitt’s Stories Feel So Real It Hurts

But, the physical discomfort that The Pitt puts me through is nothing compared to the emotional discomfort. There are some absolutely harrowing stories during these 15 episodes. Parents lose their children; as a parent myself, this destroys me whenever I see it on screen. A surprising number of people die, because, again, with most medical series, the doctors almost always succeed. These deaths still hit harder because they all feel more real.

In another medical drama, when Whitaker (Gerran Howell) lost a patient, an event which rattles him, he would get some sort of redemption moment where he saves somebody else later in the series. This never really happens. Following the death of a patient, Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby tries to rally his doctors to talk about it, to help them refocus their grief. Unfortunately, he’s not even able to finish his speech before the next serious patient arrives in need of help.

Despite the fact that so many of these patients take up a comparatively small portion of the series' total runtime, each one feels real and each one feels important. I’m still thinking about some of them even now. And, I'm not the only one. Even Noah Wylie's mom had an emotional reaction.

I am so happy to learn that The Pitt Season 2 is already in production, as it means I won’t need to wait two or three years between seasons, as we have to do with so many other streaming series. I’m already looking forward to returning to The Pitt, even if I know that doing so is going to be as brutal as it is wonderful.