'The Pitt’ Episode 14: A Breakdown of Dr. Robby’s Breakdown

hello welcome back to the prestige tv podcast feed i'm joanna robinson i'm rob mahoney we are here to talk to you about the pit the penultimate episode of the pit episode 14 rob we've got a lot to cover.

A lot happens in an episode any episode of the pit um i first want to just start by thanking everyone for their emails we got so we're getting so many pit emails rob the people know what's up they're passionate about this show yeah they many of them work in medical or medical adjacent professions and others just have a lot of passion for music festivals, Jo. So PrestigeTV at Spotify.com is how you can reach us for any non-specified show that we're doing.
And that's where the pit sort of has landed. We are going to cover this episode, episode 14.
I just want to remind you all, in case you didn't hear us say it on the White Lotus Pod, we are recording our episode 15 coverage in advance because I will be out next week. So you can still email us, PrestigeTV at Spotify.com.
We love your emails. They will not be read on the finale pod.
And that is not personal slight. That is just logistics.
But you told me you were willing to do a personal podcast in which you respond individually to every email we get at prestige tv at spotify.com i feel so guilty when we can't get to all of them here's what we're gonna do though we've got we had a ton of emails i've broken them out over our 14 episode 14 and 15 coverage so you'll hear some listener emails 15. That's because I'm saving them for that podcast.

Chief among our emails that we got over the last week, Rob, are people weighing in on who's playing Pit Fest.

It's frankly my primary concern at this stage in the season.

This is energy you put out into the world.

Yes.

And the people have answered.

My suspicion is that they noticed that you like to wear extremely cool band t-shirts when you podcast. Very generous of you.
And so they're like, we got to bring our A game for Rob Mahoney. So we're going to come through with our Pit Fist answers.
Here's what we're going to do on the Prestige TV podcast. Just in case you're not tuning into this podcast just to hear me read a list of band names we're gonna break this up into a four-part prestige tv podcast investigation we've got four categories of pit fest emails that we received yep we will be reading two of those categories this week two of those categories next week so that is we're gonna break it up and at the end of the at the end of the day rob i believe we will have gotten to the bottom i think who is playing pit fest 2025 um a couple other email things that we got uh before we get into breaking down episode 14 um real quick psa at the top of the episode and i'm gonna i'm gonna do it until things change.

Please do not send us an email that you source from ChatGBT.

This is not something we want.

We love and respect you.

You can do whatever you want with ChatGBT in your own home.

But when we put a call out to folks for emails, we're looking for human experience, human opinions, human thoughts and feelings.

Joe is already in the void.

I am in my literal closet. We are desperate for human interaction.
We want human contact, not chat QBT answers. So just putting that out there.
I got some very human answers to the fact that I misused the word enervate when I met invigorate, and I shall never do that again. Let me tell you.
Atone, Joe. Atone.
And also, I want to apologize to our listener Vida and any Grey's Anatomy fan, and specifically Sandra Oh, for besmirching that show and saying that people did not ride on top of patients while doing chest compressions on that show, that they certainly did. and Sandra Oh's Dr.
Christina Yang, who is actually generally one of my top five favorite fictional doctors,

did it a plenty Oh's Dr. Christina Yang, who is actually generally one of my top five favorite fictional doctors, did it aplenty on that show.
So I apologize for getting that wrong. I will atone for that.
And then we got a really interesting email from a listener, Candice, who works as an ASL interpreter. And she was talking about, in response to one of our other emails we got about people going to concerts when they are deaf and hard of hearing.
And she says she's worked for 25 years as an ASL interpreter and has worked in festival settings like Pit Fest. It's not uncommon, she says, for deaf people to go to music concerts and festivals.
And she says, I actually interpret musical performances at a consistent consistently once a month. And in the summer, it's more.
And something that Candace noticed that I missed in the episode when the Pit Fest attendee who is deaf and his mother arrive, that as he's being wheeled off, he like very sort of almost out of frame signs. I love you, which I missed.
And when I read that in Candace's email, I started to cry cry so I just thought I would share that with everyone else okay also say the ASL interpreters at concerts

yeah I would imagine look I think there's a lot of ASL and ASL any kind of translation work that's

very literalized right that's very I need to get the substance of this translating music is really

where these interpreters get to cook and these translators get to cook and it's so impressionistic

with ASL specifically that watching them do their thing is as entertaining in many cases as whatever

I'm sorry. these interpreters get to cook and these translators get to cook and it's so impressionistic with ASL specifically that watching them do their thing is as entertaining in many cases as whatever is going on on stage.
Are you thinking of anything specifically? Because I will let you know that I watched the entire Kendrick Lamar halftime show as interpreted in ASL and it was amazing. Fucking great.
But yeah, I've had a really, I like, I find the, like, those particularly, like, and it's not just concerts, because that's amazing. But I've also watched SL interpretations of, like, musicals.
There's just, like, a lot of fun, like, dynamism that they put into those specific performances. It is a practical job of conveying meaning, but it's also a kind of performance whenever you get music or art involved in any capacity.
Last but not least, the helicopter situation that we talked about last week as an ER reference. A lot of people emailed in saying yes.
And put your mind at ease. This is an ER spoiler.
We said at the end of last week's episode, once again, we're here to talk about a helicopter incident that happened on er a show that aired decades ago but just in case um twas the rear rotor blade yes that took dr romano's arm and you know that now because you watch i have seen i sent you the youtube clip so you have seen it happen see i thought you were going to allude to the other er spoiler which is apparently this guy who got his arm lopped off by a helicopter blade is then summarily crushed by a different helicopter at a different time yes i gotta see that episode that sounds insane this time it's personal i feel like it was just the very next season they were just like and a helicopter falls off the roof of the building and he's down on like the ground level outside and gets crushed by a helicopter. This time it's personal.
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How do you feel about the fact that it was Whitaker here? I actually feel pretty good about it for two different reasons. One, he gets Robbie on his feet, but that's about it, right? Robbie is mobile, but still full on breaking down in real time and not dealing well.
And I would say actively avoiding many of the situations that are happening on the floor. There's lots of stuff going on.
He's like, yeah, I can't deal with that right now. I'm not going to deal with you right now.
I'm going to zero in on the things that I can control that are very tangible, that are very specific right in front of me. That feels true to the circumstances.
And also, I mean, with Whitaker specifically, the idea that ultimately this is someone who had to be coached by Robbie on how to deal with loss and how to keep moving and how to keep doing your job. We love to close a loop, Joe.
I am a sucker for that kind of storytelling. So when he repeats Robbie's words back to him, that's when that got me.
That landed for you. Yes.
The follow-up conversation sold it for me as much as anything. Here's a couple things I liked about that.
Number one, something we haven't really talked about much with Robbie is his faith or lack thereof, which he talks about. I'm not even sure I believe in God.
But we see him clutching the Star of David necklace and muttering the Shema prayer. And this is something that I thought was really interesting.
I was going back through and I asked some people who remembered ER better than I did. I was like, was John Carter? I knew that he wasn't Jewish, but I was trying to remember if John Carter on ER, Noah Wiley's character on ER, if he was Christian or Catholic.
His family is very like Kennedy coded. I was like, are they Catholic? Is this come through? And the answer is no, that there is no sort of like religious connection to Dr.
John Carter and ER. So however this show is conceived as a continuation of John Carter or not.
Which is, we should say again, not ER. Legally.
Legally speaking, this is not ER. ER.
And legally speaking, this is not a John Carter performance. So this added aspect of his Jewish faith, which he both has and doesn't have, I thought was a really interesting shading on the character.
I really liked so much of what Noah Wiley is bringing to this breakdown. Yes.
They can get real cartoonish in movies and on TV sometimes when characters have to have these moments. They can either get way too loud, way too expressive, or way too kind of crumbly, mumbly in a way that just doesn't feel emotionally true.
And I think the idea of Robbie shutting down, a guy who has seen a lot, who has experienced a lot, even today, to say nothing of the rest of his career, having to find a moment of some kind of clinging faith, regardless of what he actually believes or actually thinks, in kind of a more neutral, sobering moment. I found that to be really effective.
I also thought, we a great email from Timothy who was talking about how there's this quote that many physicians know regarding the sort of like graveyard of patients that they've lost. And the quote is this, every surgeon carries within himself a small cemetery where from time to time he goes to pray, a place of bitterness and regret where he must look for an explanation for all his failures.
And that's Rene Lurie-Chu. That's such a great concept and it's clearly the idea that they're tapping into more so at the end of the last episode than here, right? Now he is praying, trying to find peace and stability to just like get on his feet.
But the last time we saw Robbie, he was muttering through all the events of the day, all the people he had lost, all of the cases that had kind of gone awry. Right.
And this is, again, just one day on the job, one shift. And this is the kind of processing he has to do to be able to continue on with that.
I also like, to your point, that that didn't make it like Whitaker shows up with a pat answer and everything's fine. No.
When Whitaker pulls him to his feet and then Robbie shoves him away. Yes.
I really liked that moment. Whitaker's assessment too is quite frank, which is we are fucked if you do not come out here, which is true.
He's just being honest about it. And they start calling Robbie captain, which have they been calling him that all season? Maybe here and there.
I feel like it was really ramped up in the last you know like here here at the end like once the mass casualty starts like i feel like this idea of we're a mass unit you're our captain really starts to come through um and another thing that i really liked is when you know whitaker basically winds up in there because he loses rochambeau to sant Santos yeah and when he comes back out with the blanket and she asks him sort of like what you see in there or whatever and he doesn't say anything no and you know I I believe that Whitaker won't like of all the people define him I think Whitaker is like one of the few you know there's a few other like maybe Dana and like whatever who wouldn't gossip about what he saw there but I also like that in that before he goes in there or even in the direct aftermath before Robbie like pulls himself together and walks out we get a lot of people saying have you seen Robbie have you seen Robbie where's Robbie where's Robbie like that you can't even leave for five minutes without everyone if you're like and we experienced this early in the season when the man can't even go to the bathroom at a certain point in his shift so um I still have not ruled out bladder infection you know a lot of things are going wrong for him right now like this man could have a UTI he could have some stuff going on yeah he's gonna have to get checked out but I have two questions about this whole sequence joe for you one how differently does the end of season one go if santos wins rock paper scissors and it's i would say the intern at this point with the worst bedside manner

the worst doctor to patient relations what happens if she has to treat all the yeah i'm

you know some things are just meant to be and i think i think whitaker was meant to win that game did you have another question for me did we get the clown in the er just so he can call this whole thing a fucking circus did we reverse engineer the clown just for that line i really hope not i hope not too but i hope not look it just it felt like that's what they were trying to set up the whole time i'm gonna say this i didn't include in my official roundup but we got um more than one email uh intimating that perhaps insane clown posse was playing at pit fest and that's how a clown wound up in the air that's not what a juggalo

looks like no i'm gonna say that not at all what a juggalo now if you told me dr robbie some years ago had a had a juggalo moment i'd buy it you see it okay demographically i buy it part of what happens here in the immediate aftermath is that robbie goes back on the floor gloria is glorying as she does.

And I gotta say,

Gloria in her pink blazer

has been an irritation all season, a rather frequent visitor to the floor in a way that seems implausible over the course of an ordinary shift. But here in crisis mode makes a lot more sense for all of the sort of logistics and PR that she has to do.
Robbie explodes at her, which I think is, but like in terms of how they use Gloria this season, I think we all had a moment early in the season where we're like enough of the Gloria Robbie interactions. Yes.
But I have to say if she just showed up here at the end to sort of like be the functionary of the emergency situation, Robbie lost at her. Yeah.
I think that'd be harder for us to roll with than Robbie being like all day with this shit Gloria leave me alone um and Dana and Jack clock it immediately and and uh what do you think of this explosion like this is this is the we had the the freak out and the breakdown right but this sort of explosion we've had the we had confrontation, but this felt like this is just a much more public version of that Langdon interaction. What did you think of this? I think we're setting up throughout this episode a lot of occasions in which Robbie is having an inappropriate emotional reaction to something because, again, he is not post-breakdown.
He is mid-breakdown. Disregulated, yeah.
Completely dys dysregulated i think this one is really important i also think the beginning of the measles case we start to unpack here is also very important because it's so clear that robbie is right in terms of the medicine and it's so clear that he is wrong in terms of the way he is talking to these like the the parents parents of this patient. And having that dynamic I think is really crucial.

To show sort of the frustration of where you're building to.

In hour 14 of a 12 hour shift.

A key part of this breakdown that is happening for Ravi.

Over the course of episodes.

Is the Jake factor right.

Obviously his inability to save Leah.

But the fact that we see several times this episode. Robbie just clocks Jake.
Yes. Without even talking to him.
Right. I would say actively steers around him for the majority of this episode.
After she sees this explosion, Dana goes to Jake. That's what she sees.

Like her move after seeing Robbie explode is to go to Jake and,

and hug him and cry.

The next thing she does is pull Langdon out of a case and we don't see her do

it,

but clearly she pulls him out of a case and asks him to talk to Jake.

And so Langdon goes up to talk to Jake at Dana's behest.

And then Robbie gets to see Langdon stick up for him to Jake and say if he couldn't save her, nobody could.

Did this feel genuine to you from Langdon or did this feel manipulative at all, knowing that Langdon knows that he has to make up some ground with Robbie?

I think it probably is genuine. You know, there's pretty much universal respect for Robbie as a doctor.
And if anything, people were trying to ward him away from doing too much in a crisis circumstance. Like he was going so far above and beyond treating Leah as he would any other patient.
They're having to get him to move on. That said, this exchange makes me super nervous about how Robbie, who is watching this exchange with Langdon and with his kind of like surrogate adopted kind of stepson.

Yeah.

And the amount of leeway he may be willing to give Langdon for, frankly, like talking him up in a difficult moment.

Langdon gives Robbie, in talking to Jake, a lot of grace.

How much grace is Robbie then willing to give Langdon for everything that has happened over the back half of this season how much grace do you want him to give langdon i think that depends on what langdon wants you know if like i i'm concerned based on just the the bits and lines of dialogue many of which are langdon originated right of like Of like, oh, this is only a problem if you report me. This is only a problem if you make it a problem.
I would like for Robbie to treat this with the seriousness it deserves. I would not like to see Langdon just showing up for work tomorrow as if nothing happened.
That would be a, I think, a huge blemish on overall like the kind of honor and respectability that we've seen in Robbie throughout this season.

I don't believe him to be that kind of character, but these are crazy moments and incredibly charged emotional times.

I don't know what his takeaway from that is going to be.

I think it's in order to help diagnose how we feel about that.

It helps me to look at the Langdon Santos interactions.

Langdon and Santos, though, they clocked each other, did not really have to directly interact because Santos was in the yellow zone and Langdon was in the red zone and, like, they were not interacting. But you can't keep Santos down and she's bored with the yellow zone.
She's bored with the clowns. Where's the blood? And the blankets.
She's like, I'm going to go find something more interesting. What can I stick a tube in?

Yeah. So this cyanatic is a new term that I learned.
This positively blue kid shows up from Pit Fest, was saved by the brother of the woman whose husband died in the previous episode. he's a Navy corpsman and he had been running around pit fest, saving people for the last couple hours before he collapsed himself and becomes his own case.
I just want to point out, we got an email from a listener, Nate, who also was a Navy corpsman, who said, I appreciate them portraying how some medical people really shine under pressure in the situations. As someone with ADHD, it is how I'm wired.
I'm much calmer under pressure and feel anxious when things are slow and calm. So Nate was a former combat medic and is now a doctor, but was talking about that sort of personality.
But it was so funny because I had just read his email and he was like, I was a Navy corpsman. And then this guy is like, I'm a Navy corpsman.
Next time on the pit, here's a Navy corpsman. Exactly.
Okay, so Langdon and Santos show up in the room at the same time, from different entrances into the same room. I love, I rewatched this a couple times, the way they choreographed this, because you're following Langdon in.
So Langdon's on the search for a case. So he walks in, and just like, from the other side of the room, we didn't see her coming necessarily, Santos walks in and you're like, oh, oh.
And then in the middle of this dynamic, we have Dr. Parker Ellis, who we've just met, who's on the night shift with Dr.
John Shen. Aisha Harris.
I really, really like her. this is like we talked about the impression that Dr.
John Chen made last week I really really like

the This is like we talked about the impression that Dr. John Chen made last week.

I really, really like the Dr. Ellis ingredient in here because she's someone who clocks the problem.
Right. and is like kind to Santos, an ear for Santos,

but not in the toxic way that the surgical... is like kind to Santos, an ear for Santos,

but not in the toxic way that the surgical consultant was earlier this season for Santos. Not in the what's your sign kind of way.
Gives her a Kit Kat, but also is like, get the fuck up. You know, like we gotta figure this out.
out. And him calling her Bright Spark in that way is just like, I was just like.

Just one of the most disrespectful things you can say to somebody as far as I'm concerned.

Five minutes Bright Spark.

I was just like, Jesus Christ, get it together.

Do we think, here's a really important question I have for you.

Do we think Dr. Santos, who is, how old is she? Can I guess where you're going? Yeah.
That she would make a Wayne's World joke? Does she know Party on Wayne? Does she know Party on Wayne? Not. That was 100% a Gen X writer speaking through a Gen Z actor.
That is 100% what happened there. Okay, great.
I do think overall, the Langdon part of this to me is a lot of, we are getting to the point of being post mass casualty event, right? We're easing back into a sense of ER normalcy. Things are slowing down.
Dr. Ellis is not only working with Santos, but we're back into teaching mode a little bit.
It's a little bit of like, what do you think here? Let's walk through this, help diagnose this and we'll kind of correct you as we go. And that's such a key part of it.
But overall, as we're doing that, the fact that we're also seamlessly incorporating all of these night shift doctors in a way that is very ER to me, right? You can just sort of gradually turn over the cast. And here's four doctors I just really like spending time with right off the bat.
And if that's not just proof of how successful a formula this is, I don't know what is. You can plug and play all kinds of people in these scenarios.
And as long as they are interesting characters relative to each other, you're going to get fireworks every time. So you say four doctors.
So you're talking about Dr. John Chen.
Yes. Dr.
Parker Ellis. Yep.
Dr. Jack Abbott.

Yes.

And are you including Dr. Emery Walsh in your four people I really like?

You know what?

I am.

Okay.

And I say that, I'm detecting some skepticism from you, Joe.

Are you not up on Dr. Walsh?

It's a tough beat for Dr. Walsh, I think.

Is it?

So I don't know. I think, well, we got an email.
Okay, I will say this. So let's go to this.
Dr. Jack Abbott is teaching Mohan.
He's like, we should do this wildly experimental procedure. Here's a straw.
Here's a pencil. Here's a couple of paper clips.
Drain all the blood from this guy's heart. You probably don't know a Waynesville reference or a MacGyver reference.
But if you do know a MacGyver reference, this is what you should do. Maybe a MacGruber.
We could only hope. Or maybe the MacGyver reboot.
Who's to say? But Dr. Walsh is here and her job as a surgical consult is to be the wet blanket to Jack's sort of like maverick attitude here.
I don't mind that.

I don't mind her as like a voice of reason.

She's just being like a real dick about it as she's doing it.

She is being a dick about it, but he's also not not being a dick about it.

I know.

I know.

He's a real cowboy for sure.

I don't know if this is like internalized misogyny or whatever, but I was just like

Dr. Walls.

Jesus Christ.

We did get the. OK, we got an email from dr sophie chung yes um about how the emergency department is seen by the rest of the hospital she has not gotten she like wrote this email to us when she was like on episode six so she's not she's not here where we are at the end of the season but soph Sophie, if you are here now, hello.
Thank you for the email.

But this is what she wrote.

She said the emergency department,

the ED as a department gets shit on by every other department in the hospital.

They're experts in the first 15 minutes of taking care of everything, which means that they get a reputation for being a jack of all trades,

master of none in the medical world.

This is where Sophie like was,

she says,

if you ever go to a doctor party, you will gain instant rapport by going up to basically anyone and saying the fucking ed am i right unless of course the person you're talking to is ed trained um sophie does have other caveats in her email where she's like they do a lot of things that i couldn't do yes as uh but she was also basically her point was this show allows the ER doctors to do a lot of things that I couldn't do. Yes.
But she was also, basically her point was, this show allows the ER doctors to do a lot more than ER doctors would ordinarily be allowed to do. And she says, the pit does not depict nearly enough consult calling for an academic center.
The ED is way too cocky about making their own decisions about patients. At my hospital, the ED would never take care of even a small burn without calling burn surgery first to come and evaluate.
And the ED would never have the balls to discharge someone that surgery wants to admit. They would be begging for a lawsuit as well as burning bridges forever.
So Dr. Sophie Chung sort of giving us this sort of pecking order at the hospital helped illuminate the Jack, the Dr.
Abbott, Dr. Walsh dynamic for me.
And I, and I, and I hope that like this, something it feels like they've introduced here at the end of things. Cause we had surgical consults throughout the season, but not quite like this, not like this, this, this is dynamic.
And, you know, it seems very personality dependent here inside of this situation, as do a lot of, you know, workplace conflicts. I liked the scene.
I liked Dr. Walsh as, hold on one fucking second here.
She's just, I might come to love her dickishness. I really like it.
I gotta say. I think what did it for me is, as we're saying, we're kind of getting out of the mass casualty ER and into a more normal workflow.
And one of the things we're starting to notice is that, oh, Dr. Abbott wasn't just improvising to meet the moment.
This is just kind of who he is. This is how he operates.
He is a cowboy. And because of that, they are naturally going to get into it on more dedicated surgical consults versus, hey, let me just whip something together here in the ER in a way that frankly, no other Dr.
Robbie included would probably do. I really like them together.
I love the philosophical divide. I think they have pretty fun banter, even when they are kind of both being dicks about it.
It's a new dynamic in the room that I am already really coming to appreciate. So you, Rob, I think feel like you're one of those people out there who's like, give us night shift.
Give us the pit night shift. Is that what you want? I'm torn.
I'm really liking these doctors, but I think it's the mix that makes it go. And so maybe it's, you know, it's not night shift, it's holiday shift where half the people have it off, but it's mixing and matching a little bit.
Can I just say, oh yeah, Christmas time at the pit? Dr. Shen's already off.
He's already locked it down. Dr.
Shen will be there. Okay.
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Season two of Andor is now streaming only on Disney+. I now present to you part one of our four-part investigation into Pit Fest.

Okay.

Titled, What is that hippie doing there?

Yes.

Okay.

We got so many emails about this.

Mike wrote in to say, My assumption from the moment I saw him, he is a deadhead who's been to 300 fish or dead concerts in 42 different states and he is at Pit Fest slinging tie-dyes and merch. Deadhead or no deadhead, jam band or no jam band, the merch pros who got their start in the shakedown street gotta eat.
So he's merch slinging is what Mike says. I respect it.
Obviously respect that whole line of work and the people who are traveling trying to make a living off merch i think this guy though is just there for the vibes okay he's either there for specific acts or the vibes i don't think he's working it that is okay that brings us to sarah's email sarah says so my dad is basically that guy yeah loves all kinds of music festivals and specifically requests tie-dye shirts from me for christmas his favorite kind of music to see is blues rock influence as well as bluegrass. He and my mom go to two to three festivals each year and are living their best lives.
He also lives in Pittsburgh and has his medical card. So that's what Sarah said.
Dave thinks the old hippie is working crew. He's a little old.
Not to be ageist, but like that's heavy physical labor. This is what Jamara said.
To your point, this is what Jamara said. It's a similar thing.
My guess on the old hippie is that he's friends with one of the festival staffers and literally just goes to any festival happening, has been for decades. He's probably been working a bit for years, maybe a former roadie who everyone loves and grew up with.
I feel like they lovingly slide him a general access pass and he helps set

up water stations or something early in the day. A vocational festival goer since early Newport days who just loves to celebrate peaceful gatherings of humanity.
Bless him. So that's that concludes part one of our four part investigation.
What is that hippie doing there? So yeah, vibes only

Possible

It doesn't have to be a jammy band

Or a

You know What is that hippie doing there? So, yeah, vibes only. Possible.
It doesn't have to be a jammy band or, you know, a Grateful Dead cover, Dead & Co., or like anything like that. It can just be like, I love watching people watch music, enjoy music.
I love new music, all of that sort of stuff. It's also not challenging to find a band the hippie would be into.
I think the difficulty of the needle we were trying to thread is who would Jake and Leah also be listening to? Well, please return for part two of this investigation. I now bring you to something I'm going to call Nepo Daddy Corner, and that is...
Fuck yes, Joe. Yes! The introduction of legendary actor brad duroff as mckay's father and if you have not been following this dr cassie mckay aka dr bangs uh is played by fiona duroff who is the real life daughter of legendary actor brad duroff who shows up very briefly too briefly i would I would too.
To play her father and get off this impeccable line. Chadwick Harrison Ashcroft, the third douchebag name for a douchebag guy.
Facts. Rob, Brad Dourif, what do you want to say? Just one of my all time favorite character actors.
Yeah. Who else play dr bangs's father it was right there the whole time i can't believe we never even talked about the possibility when we flagged fiona durf so early in this season and the fact that oh i would love to see what the daughter of brad durf can bring to this particular show i really liked her performance i love seeing the two of them together i love seeing brad durf and literally anything and boy can that guy play anything uh all over the place in terms of the performances he can potentially deliver you may know him from one flew over the cuckoo's nest you may know him from lord of the rings i know him from fucking deadwood first and foremost where he is incredible on that show uh obviously blue velvet like he's he's everywhere and every time he pops up very memorable like a three or four episode guest star in the middle of a random giant tv show just can steal scenes he can be creepy he can be unsettling he can be comforting in this case he can just be a a perfect grandpa i love brad duraf um i love that like it was funny obviously yeah rob and i are a huge Lord of the Rings fan.
So obviously Grima Wormtongue always, always delight to see him. Yeah.
Um, but the fact that he's like doc between Doc holiday and Billy Babbitt and one flew over the cuckoo's nest. I'm like, this is just a medical family.
This is just like, we love a hospital. We love, we love to practice medicine.
We love, we love to do our best. Right.
Um, Also Harrison, we should say. We learned one more pertinent detail about Harrison, which is loves a carbonara.
So this is a kid who just loves watching movies and eating pasta. And I have never found a more relatable character on television as far as I'm concerned.
Goals. Absolute goals.
Okay. So that's the good of the McKay.
Yes. Here we get to the part that I feel like is so far to me less good, which is we are circling back on David.
And this is Robbie, Dr. Robbie in a and I told you so beat that I don't really love.
What was that about? It doesn't seem right to me. Like, what's your, yeah, what's your read on this? Okay, so, well, actually, before I get there, I should say, in the mix with all the who's playing Pit Fest emails we got, we got a lot of who's the shooter.
Yes. Conspiracy emails.
Just yarn walling it up, and I appreciate the Seferin's hangover that everyone has.

I appreciate the like, who's dying next week on White Lotus energy that people have.

I understand that.

The pits like, throw your conspiracy theories in the toilet.

A, the shooter is someone you've never met.

B, we have a line where it's like, do we know why he did it does it matter no end of end of sentence that's it it's not david it's not no doug driscoll we should say david has been exonerated he is not the shooter definitively not the shooter shout out to david for just being a creep making a hit list and not a mass shooter he still wrote a hit and uh Robbie being like giving McKay this this hard line told you attitude is bizarre to me uh I I can't really I can't really uh square it other than to say it's part of him just dissolving here at the end of this impossible shift that he's had. You know, I do think his patience has run thin basically across the board and he is not being his best self.
I would say ultimately, like these conversations are both he and McKay not being their best selves in terms of how they approach it in the room. Not deftly handled.
But Robbie, to me, is worse because of this preliminary conversation where he is he is doing the i told you so and he's saying specifically i suggested another way uh sir what is that other way other than don't call the police about the guy who made a hit list yeah like do nothing was his plan that's that's not a better way and for him to turn in like this idea of like oh now this is your problem to fix on mckay i think is completely uncalled for i take is hopefully what's meant to be a character beat for robbie who's just over everything and handing things off left and right not able to deal like especially empathetically in the way he did earlier in the season because yeah he is he is not on it here one thing i want to say before we sort of circle in on what i think is sort of like the last major storyline is to zoom back to the previous episodes. There's a couple great breakdown articles out there about episode 12 and 13, you know, in the heart of the emergency and on Vanity Fair, David Canfield and Parade.com Mike Bloom.
Both great breakdowns of how they made that episode.

Based on the placement in VF, this is clearly an Emmys push from HBO and who can blame them.

But this is a we want the Emmy for this episode sort of kind of article where they're talking to the director, the stars, you know, the showrunner, blah, blah, blah.

Like that's that's what they're trying to be like, look at the totality of the effort of, of this episode. And when you, when you go to, so like best director, best, best writing and, and best series, like you put one episode forward.
So they're like, take a look at this thing that we accomplished. But something I thought was incredible that I didn't realize in reading those two breakdowns was Joe Sachs, who's a top medical advisor on the show and the co-writer, credited co-writer of episodes 12 and 13, did a lot of investigation into mass casualties, speaking to people to people around you know columbine or the las vegas shooting or you know um etc etc and ask them questions like what would you wish you had done differently or what do you wish had been available to you or all these sort of things and so some of the systems that they put in place, including the slap bracelets and the waterproof charts that they put on people's wrists, were things that Joe Sachs innovated for the show that hospitals don't use.
And perhaps they could and should use. He was talking about how, you know, in like the Vegas shooting specifically, that they were like writing on people's foreheads, writing on bedsheets, you know, how little tech is used inside of like mass casualty triage situation like that.

And I thought that was incredible.

I'm like, what if the pit innovates, you know, ER medicine?

Like that would be astonishing. and then also

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who is the director

on the episode

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and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and then and like that would be astonishing and then also um amanda marsalis who is the director on the episode was talking about we we clocked this but in terms of having to have a 360 of everything that's happening in the hospital and having to have you know to be able to see santos or langdon or Whitaker or Mel or whoever else in the background, she said, she said like any error in the corner of the frame, a prop mishap, a missed shot, a flubbed line required a full reset of everyone. And just the sheer undertaking of something like that, where it's just sort of like if you mess a line, you can't take again.
And in an easy setup, you just have to get like everyone back to the top and go again. And that's just, um, so I guess I'm doing some award season PR for them, but I just thought that was just incredible.
So is it, is it PR if it's just true? You know, I think it's well identified that 12 in particular is just made for award season, right? It's great individual TV making in terms of the self-standing episode it pays off so many things we saw all season long our season long relationships to these characters but it's just a marvel in terms of the way that it's made and the pacing of it is so unrelenting even within a show that's already so unrelenting i i i just can't express how impressive it is to have a show that already is at such a high gear. Yeah.
And then you can just find another one, right? You can just find that in a moment with an event like this and it feels even more dramatic. The stakes are just amped up that much more.
I don't know what that means in terms of what you do in a season two and how you continue to sort of play with these ideas and like crescendo the drama of a season two after something like this.

But boy,

would I love to see what they come up with?

The last case that I want to talk about is the measles case.

You already alluded to it.

We've got Mel,

like our,

our favorite,

my,

okay,

I'll say this.

My favorite daytime doctor,

Dr.

Mel King,

my favorite night shift doctor, Dr. John Shen.
John Shen's john shen's great and then rob the team up of the century yeah this is just what else could you want i mean the number of times two that john's like seems like it's over and then something comes careening into the ambulance bay great great stuff from dr john shen um but mel doing this sort of like buttonhook second take, seeing Georgia, the younger sister of Flynn, the guy, the kid with the measles in the ambulance and looking down and seeing all the blood all over her and goes like, oh, yeah, that's scary. Right.
That's scary. but we because we've had this long term investment

in Dr. Mel King and her story over this shift

have to be thinking about Mel earlier in this shift and how she had to interact with another young girl worried about a sibling and stuff like that. So we have to be thinking about that when we see her interact with Georgia.
The, the little girl who's playing Georgia is incredibly good. A lot of great kid actors on this show she's really really good and this is you know we already had like an anti-masker earlier in this season but here we come with like anti-vaxxers with a side of like Dr.
Googling um and what do you think of this as one of the I mean we only have one more episode after this like one of the final cases for the season. What do you think of this as one of the, I mean, we only have one more episode after this, like one of the final cases for the season.
What do you think of this? I'm not sure yet. I think at this point it is, I mean, it grabs your attention very quickly, right? Another child in peril being rolled into the ER after everything does seem to be whether Dr.
Shen is right or not, like slowing down, right? Like you're getting at least back to normal. And all of a sudden, here's a case that is not only incredibly dire for a young person, but also quite treatable if you move quickly and you follow the advice of your doctors.
And this one is tough because yeah, it does have some very heavy messaging overtones as far as not just measles specifically, but doctor-patient interactions. You're right.
The Googling thing is almost a separate issue that's been shoehorned into this one on top of it, though obviously they're related and they do your own research kind of sense. I hesitate to say it's heavy handed though when this feels incredibly timely.
Unfortunately, there is a massive measles outbreak happening in my home state in Texas right now. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of cases.
I think it's already doubled the national total from last year in Texas alone. It's getting really scary out there because people don't want to vaccinate their kids against measles.
And so, yeah, this performance, this character, it's a little directly on the nose. But sometimes life is a little directly on the nose.
And unfortunately, that's the timeline that we're living in right now. They want medical treatment, but they don't want medical advice is both one of those lines in this show that I'm like, okay, you just said the thing.
But also I think it was like pretty succinct, like a point well and succinctly made. The last thing I will say in all of this, again, you know, we have to wrap up a few things before the day shift gets to clock out we've got one more one more episode to go but this moment with with mel who has been dealing with this one with ptsd whose husband died and gets to reunite her with her daughter yes is dealing with georgia and thinking about you know other cases that she's had today all this stuff and she and Mel who has been you know in a slightly neurodivergent seeming sort of way like you know um somewhat detached from the way that some of the other doctors have expressed themselves this season.
And then she has this breakdown. I mean, she's had incredible compassion and all this other stuff, but she has this little mini breakdown and she apologizes.
And Robbie, and I think this is what's important. I really dislike Robbie's interaction with McKay in this episode.
Yes. And it can go right next door to this moment with Mel,

where he says that she's awesome

and he's so glad that she's with them.

And so that's what this show can offer us

with any given character is like,

Robbie being a tremendous leader in this moment?

No.

Being a tremendous leader in this moment?

Yes.

And he can do both of those things in any given day.

I also think for a viewer, I would like to think i am better than this but joe i am not there's something so genuinely affirming about watching characters that we have spent so much time with all season work hard and be told that they did a good job yeah and so it's like having this robbie and mel exchange you get mateo and victoria like him calling her a rock star you get abbott having this moment with mohan too of like that was your save you did that like bigging big upping her too because it was too risky for jack to do it maybe so i was genuinely caught off guard by how meaningful those scenes felt yeah and i don't know what that says about me or I'm watching on TV, but like it feels part of the allure of the pit is seeing people who care about what they do and are trying earnestly to be very good at it and occasionally get it right and do well and save lives. And in this case, like be told, hey, you did it right today.
Press TGV at Spotify.com if you want to tell Ron Mahoney that he did a great job podcasting. Or diagnose me, however you would like, you know, whatever you hear there.
All right. Before we leave today, it is part two of our Pit Fest investigation time in which I run a few bands past Rob Mahoney.
Okay. And you tell me what you think of these suggestions.
Amber, in response to, quote, what act gathers this broadened audience at a music festival, suggests the Alabama Shakes. What do you think of the Alabama Shakes as an option here? It is broad.
Is it hippie broad, though? I think, again, it's they feel more Leah Jake coded than they do hippie coded, if that makes sense. Fair.
She says their rock, their soul and Brittany Howard singing live can make anyone have a religious experience. That sounds true to me.
Okay. Joe and quite a few others suggest Tame Impala.
Yeah. This one kind of makes sense.
Okay. I think a band that has had a long enough lifespan and kind of shifted genres and styles a little bit where the hippie could have been in early and also jake and leah late that make that tracks for me joe writes um the first couple of tame albums have a garagey roughness that could appeal to robbie if he's a gen x-er oh perhaps stopped into some pavement shows the most recent albums first of all that's look you don't need to bring pavement into this that's we're getting into direct hit territory and I don't appreciate it.
Rob, are you looking forward to Pavement movie? I'm looking forward to everything Pavement all the time, Joe. That's where I'm living.
Sounds right. The most recent albums, Currents in particular, have been major touchdowns for young millennials and Gen Z.
Tracks on these albums are some of the most used and remixed audio on TikTok, IG, and youtube ever so yeah omar suggests and i'm including this selfishly because i just really love this band uh my morning jacket yep uh personalized recommendation for me joanna robinson is the track magita which is like if i play magita once i will play it 20 times in a row. That's how I feel about that song.
Okay. Glenn suggests Willie Nelson and says, I've been to a couple of his shows and they're the most diverse concerts I've been to.
And unlike Fish and Dead and Company, he does play festivals. So, Willie Nelson? Very possible.
I mean, clearly on the hippie end. I think maybe Jake more than Leah, if I had to guess.
Yeah had to guess yeah yeah okay kit who has worked a concert venue in a mid-sized city says the most diverse audience they've ever seen hosier this is a great call is hosier playing pit fest i think i think he is playing pit fest is he the exact act we're looking for? Maybe. He does hit something that is valuable here, which is a broad American Idol-esque demographic appeal.
Right? You're hitting enough of the, not just the quadrants, but the sub-genres and sub-audiences that are going to bring a festival crowd together. I could honestly see it.
I'm not not saying it's the hippies first choice of act, but he sees Hozier on the headliners or like maybe, maybe the second headliners late in the day. Yeah.
I think, I think he'd wander over and see what it's about. And it's the hippie, Jake and Leah and all the lesbians.
And they're having a great time with Hozier. Okay.
Elizabeth likes to point out that we've had a lot of collabs recently between emerging pop artists and classics. You're Sabrina Carpenter plus Paul Simon.
You're Chapel Rome plus Elton John. You're Lady Gaga plus Tony Bennett, et cetera, et cetera.
She says, plus modern weed culture brings together icons like Willie Nelson and modern pop faves like Miley Cyrus. Yeah, fair.
Not to mention the neofolk movement where artists like Noah Kay and are vaguely reminiscent of vintage Dylan.

Point being,

I could see an old hippie going for the vibes

in the Puff Puff Pass,

even if his personal playlist

differs from Jake and his girlfriend.

So we've been focusing

on the band and not the strain.

That's what I'm hearing.

Our eye has not been

on the right ball.

Okay.

All right.

Last two.

Jennifer just points out

that her kids

love the music of the 70s and 80s. She her son's favorite band is Queen sick but they've also had a more recent renaissance she said I'd like to take credit for that but they're exposed to a lot of that music on Instagram from reels being sent to songs from that era she votes for the Eagles, Aerosmith or Death Leopard they're all touring and I can totally see hippie dude and blonde overdose guy jamming out to any of them okay last but not least karen suggests wilco see that's too robbie and not enough hippie or jake and leah i agree i disagree i think hippies really like wilco i mean it is dead center robbie Robbie.
I mean, just straight up. I think hippies like Wilco.
California stars? Look, if you're a hippie, please email us at prestigetvatspotify.com and let us know what you think of Wilco. I feel like they are a little bit more Gen X late millennial.
Okay. Or old millennial, I should say.
All these options, you're going tame Impala. Is that, is that your sense? Can I, can I proffer a couple more that we were emailed? Oh, please.
Uh, Christopher emailed us with a full Venn diagram. Oh, Jake and Leah.
I was going to save this for next week, but I love it. Do it here.
Yes. Well, maybe we should tease it.
I don't, I don't want to get ahead of you. No, no, no.
The, the, the, the, the physical Venn diagram that we got is just incredible. So hit us with it.
Well, one of them I want to bring up because our producer Donnie Beacham also brought this act up last time after our recording, which is Thundercat. Yeah.
And I can see us really finding the midpoint here with Thundercat. Donnie also brought up Doobie Brothers as a hippie inclined or hippie interested band.
I think that's a good one. But yeah, I think overall the issue is like these sorts of festival acts are so much one or the other.
And I am very compelled by Thundercat. Ultimately, the only other one that someone brought up in the emails that I had to think about was the Flaming Lips.
Do the kids know about the Flaming Lips? Do they care about the Flaming? Do they realize is what I'm asking you, Joe. Do they even know about Yoshimi? Like, what do you think? Certainly not the pink robots.
Maybe one of the two. Okay.
But yeah, I'm not sure the kids are into the flaming lips, but vibe wise, I could see the hippie being along for that ride. All right.
Well, that has been part two of our Pit pit fest investigation stay tuned next week for parts three and four the conclusion of who played pit fest 2025 um anything else you want to say before we wrap up brad duriff starring in the pit episode 14 rob mahoney i have one more query to the listeners out there which is we get the information in this episode that Whitaker was a theology undergrad into med school pipeline. Yeah.
I've never heard of that one before. Like, obviously, you don't need to be explicitly pre-med.
You don't need to be explicitly hard science. Theology is a new one for me.
I would love to know if this is a prevalent or semi-prevalent or a thing that people have encountered out in the world if you're in medicine. It caught my ear.
That's for sure. Press TV at Spotify.com.
Reminder, we will not be reading those emails. Well, I will be.
I'll be reading them. I'm so sorry.
We just won't talk about them on the podcast. We will not be reading those emails aloud, but we will be reading them.
We read all your emails. Thanks so much for sending them.
Thanks to the full crew on this, the day shift and the night shift on this

podcast, Donnie Beecham

for his excellent taste in music, Justin

Sales and

John Richter. We'll be back for

the Pitt finale and

the White Lotus finale

next week on the Preston TV Podcast