Warning: This review contains full spoilers for The Pitt Season 2, Episode 10!
The best episodes of The Pitt are nothing if not an ordeal. They leave you physically and emotionally exhausted after an hour of watching these intrepid doctors and nurses frantically scramble to stem the tide of human suffering. Watching the series is equal parts stressful and rewarding, and rarely has that been more true than with Season 2, Episode 10. This latest installment fires on all cylinders as it chronicles another harrowing hour at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center.
I won’t even bury the lede here – I think “4:00 PM” is the first 10-worthy installment of Season 2. It’s not that this episode is drastically different from its predecessors. Given the way that this series unfolds in real-time across a single day, there’s obviously a strong throughline linking each and every episode. But all the moving parts combine in a subtle way to create what is easily the most harrowing and gripping installment of Season 2 so far.
The big development in “4:00 PM” involves a new influx of patients injured from a malfunctioning waterslide. That in itself yields plenty of compelling drama. We get the woman with the severed leg (a subplot that benefits from a bit of black humor involving Ogilvie [Lucas Iverson] fumbling over said leg). We get the father more concerned about the whereabouts of his son than his own serious injuries. And we get the mystery of whether the critically injured, potentially paralyzed child is that son. All of this combines to add even more urgency to an already frantic ER.
This drama is only intensified by the fact that several of the doctors are beginning to reach their respective breaking points. Obviously, Dr. Mohan’s panic attack is the most visible sign that things are starting to break down. That scene is easily the highlight of the episode. With the way the sound cuts out and we follow Samira as she’s hyperventilating and being surrounded by angry patients, it’s all too easy to feel her desperation and claustrophobia. This scene brings to mind Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) similarly intense psychological breakdown from Season 1. That’s one of the real strengths of The Pitt. It makes you feel the immense toll this job takes on people in a way few medical dramas can rival.
Speaking of Robby, this episode is very unflattering in its depiction of his handling of the Samira situation. It’s a nice change to see Robby cast in a more antagonistic light, particularly because it allows Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) to emerge as the voice of reason in all this chaos. The season could use a little more of that.
It’s also great seeing the simmering rivalry between Dr. Langdon (Frank Ball) and Dr. Santos (Isa Briones) come to a head in Episode 10. As before, there’s not a lot of overt squabbling between the two; Santos simply responds to every order and interaction with a steadily building dose of passive-aggressive arrogance. Briones and Ball both deliver strong performances here, and you can feel the battle raging between them just beneath the surface.
As fun as that tension is, it’s also a relief to see Santos finally called out for her unprofessional behavior. I noted last week that I’m not really feeling the romantic entanglement between Santos and Dr. Garcia (Alexandra Metz), but this episode does make better use of the pairing as Garcia rips Santos a new one. Who would have thought this sharp-tongued surgeon would emerge as the voice of reason and decorum?
Episode 10 also makes great use of the Roxie (Brittany Allen) subplot as a counterpoint to the bigger, louder drama unfolding in the ER. These scenes are quieter and far more moody, dealing with a different side of emergency medicine and a patient who finally seems ready to die. Allen’s moments are as intense and grueling as anything else in this episode, just in a slightly different, more low-key way. It’s impossible not to be moved by Roxie’s struggle and the ways in which her family members are trying to put a brave face on it all. Javadi’s (Shabana Azeez) brief meltdown feels only too appropriate here.
At this point, I like to check in every week with how the series is faring on the Ogilvie front, as he’s slowly developed into the show’s most frustrating character over the past couple of months. Fortunately, things are definitely beginning to look up here. For one thing, there’s the aforementioned black humor involving Ogilvie dealing with the severed leg. It’s enough just to watch him squirm and suffer a bit. But more importantly, we’re finally starting to get a better sense of Ogilvie as a person with thoughts, feelings, and motivations of his own, and not just as a self-righteous jerk with an empathy problem. There’s still a way to go before Iverson’s character feels as well-rounded as the rest of the main cast, but the show is finally trending in the right direction there.
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