'The Pitt,' Ep. 7-11: What's Up With Dr. Langdon?

Speaker 1 This episode is brought to you by salty, cheesy, cheese-it crackers. Should this whole podcast just be me eating cheese-it? That would be a top-notch podcast.

Speaker 1 You could hear them crunching in my mouth. You could think about how salty and savory and delicious they are.
You could just get cheese-it on the brain. Oh man, those cheese-it cravings, they get you.

Speaker 1 Anyway,

Speaker 1 what was I talking about? Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, cheese-it. Yeah, cheese-it crackers.
Go check them out.

Speaker 2 This episode of the Press Siege TV podcast is brought to you by Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has been searching the globe for flavors that pair perfectly with coffee.

Speaker 2 So when they heard that the new season of HBO's The White Lotus was set in Thailand, they were inspired to brew up two new flavors, Thai iced coffee and piña colada flavored creamers.

Speaker 2 They're available for a short time only. So for the love of coffee, go try them now.

Speaker 1 Hello and welcome to the Prestige TV podcast. I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 2 I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 1 And today we're returning to the pit. But as you can tell, we're doing it slightly differently than we usually do.
Joe, this is a teaching hospital, as we know.

Speaker 1 You have so graciously handed me the scalpel to figure out how we're going to navigate this week. I mean, how are you feeling as my Dr.
Robbie in this parallel? You're letting me do my thing out here.

Speaker 2 You're Rob Mahon. You're the Dr.
Robbie, are you not?

Speaker 2 I see what you're saying in this situation. Well, maybe I can be Nurse Dana.

Speaker 2 You know what I mean? Just sort of like seen it all, seen some shit.

Speaker 2 And you've seen plenty of shit yourself. But I'm thrilled to be here and try not to have a panic attack in another room or anything like that while chaos ensues at the pit.

Speaker 1 I like the Dana comp for you. You have seen some shit.
You're also currently seeing some shit that we are covering elsewhere on the the Prestige TV podcast feed. Come back.

Speaker 1 Two bites at the apple for White Lotus. You, Bill, Mal are doing the instant reaction pods on Sunday covering White Lotus.
You and I are circling back for the deep dive on White Lotus.

Speaker 1 And then we are doing severance pods every Friday trying to figure out what the fuck is happening in that show.

Speaker 1 That's now if you include this pod four times in your feed that you get to hear Joanna Robinson this week. I hope you all realize how lucky you are.
Three of you

Speaker 1 are living.

Speaker 2 Three times that I get to record with you, Rob, in a given week.

Speaker 1 What a joy. A true blessing, a true joy, almost as much of a joy, Joe, as all of the emails we have been getting at prestigetv at spotify.com regarding the pit.

Speaker 1 And one of the prompts we had put out was this idea of the pit as a show that we like to watch, maybe not quite week to week, but bank two episodes or so. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, kind of give ourselves a little pile, but not a full binge. How are you feeling with that sort of format right now?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's been interesting because we're not covering the show week to week, I tend to sort of skip a week and catch up and watching. I'm watching like two or three at a time, something like that.

Speaker 2 I've never let it go for the full stretch between our pods. So I'm like, you know,

Speaker 2 submerging myself in five hours of trauma or something like that.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of blood.

Speaker 2 But I think sort of, I did want to talk to you sort of more broadly about

Speaker 2 we've been talking about Severance and White Lotus's week to week pods and sort of how the audience is feeling about lulls in the middle of a season, or you and I were sort of talking about this idea that like maybe maybe people are a little unused to watching things week to week.

Speaker 2 I think the pit is like even way more than White Lotus and Severance is such a throwback kind of show. We talked a lot about ER when we first

Speaker 2 started covering the pit. And

Speaker 2 I think they do such a brilliant job of like bleeding storylines through

Speaker 2 so that you never feel completely lost. I like this many, you know, we're 11 episodes into a 15 episode in season.

Speaker 2 I no longer need, not not that I don't have them, but I no longer need nicknames for all the characters. I know who all the characters are.

Speaker 2 And that's great. But we did, yeah, we got a ton of emails from people sort of emailing in ideas of what to call a mini binge.
This is something that we asked about.

Speaker 1 We're at a little bit of a loss as to what to actually trademark this model that we have invented, clearly, you and I, for watching television.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no one's ever done it before, and no one will ever do it again.

Speaker 2 Here are, here are, we got a ton of emails about this.

Speaker 2 Someone suggested

Speaker 2 seconds.

Speaker 1 Sure.

Speaker 2 Intermittent binging.

Speaker 1 Okay. I see what they're doing.

Speaker 2 A sminge.

Speaker 1 I don't like it. We're getting somewhere, though.
We're not quite there, but I like the momentum of we're building.

Speaker 2 I love a portmanteau. Smidge plus binge is great, but the act of saying the word sminge is simply a no for me.
Yeah. Chunking.

Speaker 1 Okay. Like a chunk of episodes.
That sounds like something else, though. I don't know what it sounds like, but something else.

Speaker 2 Cluster viewing.

Speaker 1 Sounds a little clinical.

Speaker 1 Batch.

Speaker 2 Batch viewing sort of thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Twinging.

Speaker 2 We got several people saying twinging, twinge. Yeah.
Twining.

Speaker 2 Anyway, a lot of people really liked this sort of like the idea of a twin for two and binge together. Twinging.

Speaker 2 And last but not least, and this is, this is the one I'm my favorite, is micro-binging, like micro-dosing, but you're micro-binging.

Speaker 1 Yes, I like this.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's that's where I'm sort of landing: is micro-binging.

Speaker 1 My only concern about micro-binging is that there is a breed of viewer, and if this applies to you, I'm speaking directly to you, and I am begging you to change your habits and your life.

Speaker 1 Of people who will binge watch shows, but watch them at like 1.5 or 2 or even faster speeds.

Speaker 1 I could see someone misunderstanding a micro-binge as like, I'm just going to, I'm going to bust through even this binge watch at an

Speaker 1 frankly inhuman pace.

Speaker 2 Absolutely no. I like, I know that I think it was Audible got in trouble for putting out a sort of ad

Speaker 2 about how you should not listen to audiobooks at a faster speed than 1.0.

Speaker 2 I'm not here to like speed shame anyone necessarily.

Speaker 1 I'm here to speed shame you.

Speaker 2 I don't think it's the best way to enjoy a story.

Speaker 2 I would encourage everyone to watch it 1.0.

Speaker 2 Have I listened to a podcast in my day at like 1.2, 1.3? I have. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But watching a show,

Speaker 2 come on.

Speaker 1 What are you doing? If you are watching a TV show or a movie at anything beyond 1.0 speed, just read the Wikipedia. You're not enjoying it.

Speaker 1 You and I are not here for the same reasons, effectively.

Speaker 1 But I like those options. I do like the batch, the batch binge as well.
The batch binge. Or the batch watching.

Speaker 1 Maybe that's like the budding small batch baker in me where I'm trying to rein in the portions a little bit. I'm trying to get things things under control.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to spend all day watching the pit. You know, I just want my two hours of dedicated emotional trauma and then I'm going to digest for a little while.

Speaker 2 Are you a small batch baker, Rob?

Speaker 1 Well, not usually.

Speaker 1 It was somewhat of a foreign concept to me, but at a certain point, you just have so many leftovers, and I can only eat 80% of a batch of cookies so many times in my life before you start modifying your lifestyle.

Speaker 1 Got it, got it. All right.

Speaker 1 I think in particular, it applies to the pit because of everything we've talked about this show. It is so dense.
There are so many cases.

Speaker 1 there's just so much flying at you it's incredibly stressful we've been getting lots of emails from people in the medical community even still talking about the accuracy of this show but also hearing from people who work in those fields who say i can't watch it for that reason it feels too much like being in the trenches a little bit like the the triage and the flow and the pay like dealing with patients in this specific way in an ER setting over and over and over and I would say maybe no more so than this batch of episodes.

Speaker 1 We're talking through episode 11 today. Things are just getting increasingly emotional, increasingly gut-wrenching.
And with where we are right now, Joe, how are you feeling about the show overall?

Speaker 1 How are you feeling about some of the emotional heft of what's being thrown at us?

Speaker 2 Thanks so much for asking me.

Speaker 2 I'm having such a good time with the pit, and I'm so glad it was Rob's sort of idea and insistence that we come back before the finale and do a sort of midway, mid-mid, midway check-in.

Speaker 2 And I'm so glad.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I'm so glad he did because

Speaker 2 this,

Speaker 2 I love love this show.

Speaker 2 I think it's phenomenal.

Speaker 2 And I'm so emotionally invested. I think I've,

Speaker 2 from a, like, sort of dissecting it as a craft point of view, I think it's brilliant the way that they've built these characters up slowly.

Speaker 2 Like when we first start, we felt a bit overwhelmed by the number of characters.

Speaker 2 But again, like I said, now I feel like I understand the storylines for everyone, their complicated relationships, the very complicated characterization of people where you don't have anyone who is a villain or a hero or anything like that, but you, you know, even with someone like Langdon, who had, of course, like a big episode 10, this, I went back and sort of re-watched,

Speaker 2 you know, some of the episodes in this window, or actually all of the episodes in this window.

Speaker 2 And so watching the build up to that Langdon moment and watching like all the wins they give him or all the moments of kindness with Mel or anything like that. Like they're not trying to

Speaker 2 paint someone as, you know, that's the point is like he's flying under the radar uh surely not oh yes it is him or like you know there's wins and losses for everyone there's people who frustrate us and then and then it turns out that they're the person we need in any given moment so all that stuff is is really really good and i think having episode eight which which a lot of people like not only wrote in but sort of like tweeted at us blue sky at us you know whatever about episode eight which has

Speaker 2 um

Speaker 2 the the honor walk for our like sort of our day one case. And then this, you know, this young girl who dies drowning

Speaker 2 absolutely gut-wrenching emotion. And I think it's having it at the almost exact midway point of a 15-episode season is so smart because they really earned, they earned that.

Speaker 2 And we are really feeling for all, not just like, it would be sad no matter what if we had to watch like a parents grieve a little girl who died accidentally but to watch robbie have to navigate that or to watch mel have to navigate the nuances of of talking to the sister with like the little stuffed bear and stuff like that like that's all stuff that is extremely earned deep character stuff for us at this point and then this is the last thing i'll say and i'll wrap up like we i think 11 you were so smart to pick this episode maybe by coincidence but like this is a perfect episode to check in on because it feels like the rest of the season is going to be something else entirely.

Speaker 2 We're going to swing into a stretch of dealing with a mass trauma, a mass shooting.

Speaker 2 And so to think of it sort of broken down that way, and we were making all these jokes at the beginning of the season about like a 15-episode season.

Speaker 2 And I think I even accidentally said 18 episodes, a 15-episode season in this economy. But like, look at all you can do when you have that time to stretch and grow, you know?

Speaker 1 Especially structurally too, not only are you hitting all those emotional beats and those character beats that you mentioned, but we're now at a point in the story where Langdon is out.

Speaker 1 Collins has been sent home. The kids are going to have to step up and play an even bigger role in the treatment of so many patients.

Speaker 1 And Robbie himself is kind of coming apart at the seams and really can't stand still for more than 30 seconds at this point because he's being pulled in all these directions.

Speaker 1 And so, when you have all of these disparate bits of character development, you know, Mel has been acclimating herself really well to figuring out how to regulate and the emotional toll of being in this specific ER.

Speaker 1 Whitaker has been learning how to communicate with patients and the patients' families a lot better. And we've seen kind of the slow-roll development of that and him finally get some wins.

Speaker 1 He also snapped a rat's neck. We're going to move on.

Speaker 1 Santos.

Speaker 2 Before the rat's neck, I really, I'm so sorry to interrupt you in your flow.

Speaker 2 I really need a Rob Mahoney weigh-in on the moment when Whitaker crumbs akimbo at the workstation and Robbie comes out and he's like, we don't eat out here.

Speaker 2 And like Robbie like angrily slaps the crumbs basically on onto the floor. Rob Mahoney,

Speaker 2 crumb take?

Speaker 1 Uh, and we wonder how we got rats.

Speaker 1 You know, it's really not a great mystery.

Speaker 1 And as far as Whitaker's behavior, less concerning than the fact that he has a full-on conversation with the rat when he encounters it in a subsequent episode. So, everyone is coping in their own way.

Speaker 1 Some people will listen to some ocean sounds, some people are calling their kids, some people are talking to rats. Santos is out here

Speaker 1 being right, I think, think, to a degree that we needed her to be right.

Speaker 1 Like, we needed her to have some wins, we needed that character to follow her instincts on some things and turn out correct, not just about Langdon, but like the MDA C MDMA seizure, the person who's like in the ice bath, who she's actually the person who gives like the winning advice basically on how to keep that person alive.

Speaker 1 And even Javati's staying on her feet, you know, she's probably taking the biggest L's of anyone.

Speaker 1 Some big swings and misses on the

Speaker 1 office dating. Yeah, you know, it's day one.
You don't have to swing that hard that fast. She tried.

Speaker 2 She really tried it.

Speaker 1 She really tried it. But she's keeping at it.

Speaker 2 Who can blame her? Mateo is the

Speaker 1 hot commodity.

Speaker 2 Absolute dream boat of the ER. Absolute.

Speaker 1 Ex-husbands are coming in, taking one look at this guy and being like, I have identified the problem.

Speaker 2 Oh, I can't wait to talk about Chad.

Speaker 2 I'm a big, big Chad fan, honestly.

Speaker 1 Chad is, he seems like pretty bad. Pretty, bad dad, seemingly a bad skateboarder.
Oh, yeah. I don't, questionable judge of character and his future partners.
We're going to get into all of that.

Speaker 1 But I think we also, too, in some of these characters, especially the more senior members of the staff, we've reached the point in the patient cycle where they are starting to treat almost like mirror versions of themselves.

Speaker 1 Like Colin's helping to deliver a complicated pregnancy. You have Dr.
Bangs, who's treating this single mom with her, you know, young daughter who's kind of taking care of her.

Speaker 1 And they're having to confront all of these different things about about their own lives. I honestly, I feel like that's kind of true of the show for the viewers, too.

Speaker 1 Like every case is not going to hit you, but good Lord Joe, you put a little girl writing a card to her dead sister in a waiting room, and I'm just going to be torn apart.

Speaker 1 I think there's so many different beats that can really hit you hard emotionally on the pit.

Speaker 1 And for me, I think that one most of all, but I got to say the honor walk too, I also found just tremendously affecting. And a lot of that is because of the production of this specific show.

Speaker 1 It's not just this idea, which I think is elegant and is noble of everyone.

Speaker 1 And it really reflects not just a different mode of TV making, but a different sensibility of the characters on T of the You, this idea that like these are noble people doing their best at their job and taking a moment to honor this patient who died,

Speaker 1 but also the production value of a show that says, we don't need treakly music over the top of this. We don't need an overwrought speech.
Like you're just going to let it ride.

Speaker 1 And you're going to believe that you have built the character and the story enough to that point that all of this is gonna pay off in such a huge way and it really did when

Speaker 2 so okay two things the it's hard not that you asked me it's hard for me to pick my favorite character my favorite performance like noah wiley obviously is like holding the show up on his shoulders but like um i i said this last time i do think that mel taylor dearden is mel there's so many little little choices and little moments and little reactions every time she like asks if she can, you know, uh sit in on a case and she just gets excited about like whatever that's gonna be.

Speaker 1 Have you ever seen a person so happy as when she finds out she gets to pick thousands of pieces of gravel out of a man's leg?

Speaker 2 Oh my God, after getting hang out with a dog, she's having

Speaker 2 a great time. She's thrilled.
Um, I love her and so to watch her

Speaker 2 her uncertainty, her all of this sort of stuff, and then to watch her with this little girl that, like, because the little girl with the card is sad,

Speaker 2 obviously, the teddy bear, the hotel, like Mel, Mel's whole, like, tell the bear, yeah, and we know that Mel has this relationship with her sister, and it's just like that, absolutely killed me.

Speaker 2 But then, when Robbie was like, we would like to come to the funeral for your son during the honor walk, I was just like,

Speaker 2 I lost it, I absolutely lost it, and I, um,

Speaker 2 I think this, I think this show is phenomenal. Um, and, and, and that's a great, great example.

Speaker 2 We talked about this sort of in earlier coverage, the fentanyl overdose, the son with the, the teenage son with the fentanyl overdose who has now become an organ donor.

Speaker 2 That's a

Speaker 2 what, eight-episode-long arc. And so you don't have to do that.

Speaker 1 And he actually died, I would guess, in episode four or so. Like, it's been a long tale in terms of the parents processing as much as actually treating.

Speaker 2 Right, exactly. And so you don't get, even on like, you know, ER, Gray's Anatomy, or whatever, like, you don't get an eight episode, usually

Speaker 2 an eight episode arc,

Speaker 2 you know, unless it's like a love interest for a character or something like that. This is just like

Speaker 2 these parents going through this inconceivable, terrible thing. And so then to watch the whole hospital kind of come to a standstill for this moment felt right,

Speaker 2 you know, for a character that we had been invested in this long.

Speaker 1 Or

Speaker 2 something like Doug Driscoll punching Dana, like something that we built towards for like five episodes, something like that.

Speaker 2 Like it was, you and I knew last time we talked that this was going to go off in some way.

Speaker 2 This is not how I thought it was going to go off, though, but it was just sort of like they built that and they earned it.

Speaker 2 You know, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 I think all those powder keg elements really work. I think there's a lot of subtle writing in the show that helps you as a viewer understand not just what are the affecting cases to you personally.

Speaker 1 Like you're going to feel what you feel when you watch this show, but you can tell that the doctors and nurses on the floor are asking about the little girl who drowned, are asking about the kid who died from the Fendel overdose and the family.

Speaker 1 Like you can tell the cases and the instances that are really hitting everybody hard, where they want to know, even if they're not working those cases, they want to know a little bit more about them.

Speaker 1 And I think you're right that Noah Wiley is being put in a position to just hit home runs every single time, not with big emotional speeches because there's no time for a big emotional speech,

Speaker 1 but just these

Speaker 1 just interrupt before we can even get started.

Speaker 1 But he gets the moment, he gets the reaction, he gets the bit of tenderness that he's expressing to these families. And there will be a push for him, I am sure, come award season.

Speaker 1 There will be a push for the pit overall as a dramatic series, I would think, come award season. I really hope there is one for Taylor Dearden, too.

Speaker 1 I think I agree with you that not only is Mel such a great, well-conceived character and one that I I think could very easily edge into something overly broad on a different kind of show.

Speaker 1 Overly quirky, overly, exactly, overly quirky. So it's a great character, but that performance is wonderful, even on a really deep ensemble cast.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's, it's very much, that's such a good point. I hadn't thought of it that way, that this could like easily be.

Speaker 2 a sort of monk-esque lead of her own characters welcome kind of medical show and the fact that like

Speaker 2 it's just such a nuanced and again like i said last time like i've seen taylor Dearden in other things, and this is not her usual speed.

Speaker 2 So it's even all the more impressive to see her with her sort of like mousy blonde hair slicked all the way down, the glasses on, and just sort of like fully embodying this character.

Speaker 2 And again, Mel works so well on her own, but then also like her connection with Langdon

Speaker 2 works so well for the overall like symphony that they're trying to craft here because like Langdon butting ahead with Santos or being arrogant about this, that, or the other thing.

Speaker 2 If we send him home and he's just been like Dr. Ken the whole time, then

Speaker 2 it's not as

Speaker 2 we don't feel the betrayal that Robbie feels.

Speaker 2 Robbie feels betrayed and we do too because we were like, we're rooting for you because in all these other edges, you have these softer, rounded moments that really we connect with when he admires the way that

Speaker 2 Mel deals with the patient on the spectrum, you know what I mean? And he's just sort of like, and he seems like someone who's like willing to learn a bit despite all the things he already knows.

Speaker 2 That's a character we want to root for, and we're excited to see how he grows from there. Is this the last we see of him? I don't know.
He's calling a bunch.

Speaker 2 You mentioned Collins and Langdon go home, but does that stay true if it's an all-hands-on-deck mass shooter situation?

Speaker 1 Maybe not.

Speaker 1 And the timing at this point, there's like an hour left in the shift, but obviously more than just one hour of television left so something is going to stretch on here we saw i think at the outset of the season a lot of the previous shifts cases kind of rolling in right like the the mother-daughter abortion plot line there was like a veteran who had passed away that robbie had to meet with their family right so we're at the point where the cases are starting to bleed over into someone else's problem theoretically but yeah there's a mass shooting which it it seems to be and i hate to say joe i hate to take too big a victory lap we called that from jump street pitfest pitfest was not looking good.

Speaker 1 Everyone was

Speaker 1 a little too jazzed at the prospect of going to PitFest.

Speaker 2 Jake was like, can't wait to go to PitFest with my girlfriend. I'm like, oh no.

Speaker 1 Not looking good for Jake. But I agree with you.
It seems like, just based on the frequency and quantity of calls.

Speaker 1 Langdon will be back in some capacity, even if it's just a one-off conversation with Robbie or something at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 Can I ask you, I don't want to spend too much time on like speculating what's to come

Speaker 2 because there's so much to talk about, what has happened. Obviously, we're covering several episodes.
I have this dread

Speaker 2 watching Robbie handle this,

Speaker 2 and they're obviously sort of seeding this. I'm like, is Robbie being set up to be

Speaker 2 not take the fall for like the drugs missing, but like,

Speaker 2 who knows about it right now? Dana knows. Yes.

Speaker 2 Santos, who is like,

Speaker 2 nobody else really likes her sort of character.

Speaker 1 Even Garcia is turning on her.

Speaker 2 Right. And then all season, what have you been hearing? Robbie, Robbie's off today.
Robbie's having a bad day. Don't worry about, you know, don't mess with Robbie today.
Like we've got the

Speaker 2 Princess and Pearla, our beloved Filipino nurses, are like gossiping about it. Like,

Speaker 2 so I'm like, is there a version of this story where

Speaker 2 Robbie isn't believed or however it was that he handled it was, you know, and then we, and then Langdon comes back anyway. I'm just worried about Robbie.
I'm really worried about him, like, you know,

Speaker 2 and I'm worried about a season-long, he's erratic, he's erratic, he's erratic sort of warning bell that's been ringing, you know?

Speaker 1 I could see that outcome. I could also see, you know, we see him hesitate to flush the pills.

Speaker 1 We see him try to basically give them back to the patient that the pills were stolen from in the first place. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's obviously such a bleeding heart, compassionate part of Dr. Robbie, where I think he's going to draw the hard line on Langdon can't come back here.

Speaker 1 But in terms of this is the kind of information that would sink a doctor's career, right? That would cause huge professional response. Lose your license, I think.
Lose your license. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so, will Dr. Robbie draw the line at you can't be here and you need to go to rehab or you need to seek some kind of treatment, but I don't want to torpedo everything that you've been building.

Speaker 1 I have such professional respect for you to this point. And part of the reason I wonder if we're headed in that direction is this show is not ER.
Legally speaking, the pit is not ER.

Speaker 1 We must reiterate for all purposes.

Speaker 2 If Bob Crayton's widow is listening, this is a lot of people.

Speaker 1 Which we know she is.

Speaker 1 Some spoilers here for ER, because I know a lot of people have started watching it as a result of the pit. So if you don't want to hear spoilers,

Speaker 1 please, please jump significantly ahead here as I drop a little bit. But there's a big ER storyline where Noah Wiley's character, John Carter, gets hooked on painkillers.
Correct.

Speaker 1 And if you conceive of this show, which is not ER, as something that was perhaps written to be a sequel to ER, it would make sense that an older John Carter would want to be compassionate to another addict going through a similar situation and maybe try to help Langdon in some way that we haven't seen Dr.

Speaker 1 Robbie help him so far.

Speaker 2 It's so funny.

Speaker 2 We're still talking about that ER spoiler in case you skipped ahead here and you're wondering.

Speaker 2 It happens deep into the show

Speaker 2 to John Carter. Well, deep-ish.
That show ran for a long time.

Speaker 1 I mean, six-ish seasons of network-length television then is quite deep.

Speaker 2 There's a moment in this stretch of episodes when Robbie sort of twinges his back. And I was like, is there a version of this show where Robbie has the baggie of pills in his pocket and he takes one?

Speaker 2 And I was like,

Speaker 2 they can't do that again.

Speaker 1 They can't convince John Carter 2.0.

Speaker 2 I can't do it. But I did think I was like, oh, no, Chekhov's back muscle.
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 Look, back pain is no joke. Does not fuck around.
Very sympathetic to anyone who needs to take drugs for back pain. It will absolutely mess you up.

Speaker 1 But in a closing the loop way, it was really cool to see Noah Wiley on the other side of a very similar confrontation. Like you can go back and watch these scenes on YouTube from ER.

Speaker 1 Did you watch them? I did watch them. There's some like very beat-for-beat similarities as far as the kinds of excuses that addicts try to make in these situations, the ways they try to evade.

Speaker 1 To give Noah Wiley that opportunity and to come at it with such uncompromising emotional heft. Like there is not a moment of hesitation for him.
It is a black and white issue.

Speaker 1 If these drugs are in your locker, you are fucking out of here. And he's right to do it.

Speaker 1 And I don't think at this point you could ask for a better, like a better medical-oriented actor to deliver that sort of moment in a show like this than Noah Wiley.

Speaker 2 I love that you're toe-dipping, ER. That's really exciting to me.
I think that, like,

Speaker 2 I'm curious to hear, again, as you mentioned, we've gotten so many great emails from medical professionals. Press THTV at Spotify.com if you have insight into this.
I'm curious about the

Speaker 2 caution. This is, it's a legal issue.
It's also a reputation issue.

Speaker 1 I did get an email from Kieran who mentioned that not only is this sort of a moral issue for someone like Dr.

Speaker 1 Robbie, but Robbie himself would be legally responsible for anything that Langdon did as a resident who's like under his umbrella.

Speaker 2 I'm curious about the secrecy around it.

Speaker 2 You know, him asking asking Dana to look into this,

Speaker 2 him saying to Santos, like, please don't talk to anyone about this. Her talking to Garcia.
Garcia saying, I want nothing to do with this. Also, your trouble, like, fuck you, Garcia.

Speaker 1 But, like,

Speaker 2 like, I want nothing to do with this. So, like,

Speaker 2 yeah, is this a, um,

Speaker 2 I don't want to be called into court to testify?

Speaker 2 I, like, or sort of circling the wagons around one's, your own, you know, sort of like, I feel, I don't feel like I remember this from medical procedurals, but definitely from like a police procedural or something like i don't want to know about this misconduct because we have a strict policy of like protect our own or turn a blind eye or whatever and once you say it then we have to act on it yes like i was it was giving that for me i'm very curious to see how that all

Speaker 1 pans out in the next four hours question mark or is this a season two plot i don't know it's true yeah i mean these things could definitely stretch on and to the extent we've not seen the end of langdon it could be in a season two return in some capacity or another.

Speaker 2 Season two is a court case.

Speaker 1 Honestly, would not hate it.

Speaker 1 And frankly, given how many of these medical cases are bumping up against the law at this point, there's so many like legal and police implications of so many of these cases they're trying to work out.

Speaker 1 A real missed opportunity, Joe, on a Chicago med style branching out spin-off. Like, where's our pit PD? Like, where.
Pit law. We're just leaving money on the table.

Speaker 2 I mean, don't threaten HBO with a good time. They're They're in the IP business these days, bro.
You never know.

Speaker 1 Would watch. But how did you feel about the Langdon reveal in general? You mentioned you revisited some of the episodes.

Speaker 1 Like now that you know where things end up for him, did you see enough clues and breadcrumbs and indications to think, okay, this makes sense?

Speaker 2 Well, we had talked about this because the previous episode we covered did have Santos being like asking,

Speaker 2 like, asking questions. Yes.
And we were talking about Santos as a kind of character where it's so easy for us, the audience, to not believe believe her because she's so abrasive.

Speaker 2 And so, the way in which the show is sort of testing us on that front, but watching her ask Mel, for example, Langdon's pet, his favorite,

Speaker 1 all of our favorite, if we're being really honest about it,

Speaker 2 if Mel had noticed anything about Dr. Langdon, and she was like, no.

Speaker 2 And she's like, well, he sweats a lot, but I don't know. That might be genetic.
And I was like, I mean, or an addict might sweat a lot if they're like in between doses or whatever.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Like, I was like, that's interesting. But yeah, the progression of data showing her sort of the system of how to enter the drugs and take them out.

Speaker 2 The essentially my understanding is that he was resealing the containers with medical adhesive. It's his purple adhesive.

Speaker 2 And so I think essentially when Santos sees the purple adhesive used elsewhere, she's like, oh, that's what this is.

Speaker 2 I thought that, I don't know, I thought it was really brilliantly rolled out and and like right before the reveal reveal you have collins accusing langdon of being a an adrenaline junkie and he's like

Speaker 1 what'd you call me you know he does he does react very strangely i will say this is the one bit of it that did not work for me because i agree with you i actually think it was quite quite deftly threaded in terms of very small markers that you would easily gloss over until the adrenaline junkie remark because yes him reacting that way to someone calling him any kind of junkie makes sense under the circumstances.

Speaker 1 The reason she's calling him an adrenaline junkie is because he's talking about, can I make it to the grocery store to buy some salmon after work?

Speaker 1 So it felt like they really wanted to get to the adrenaline junkie and they just like, okay, salmon. Or here we go, Rob.

Speaker 2 Yes. As a person who on this very podcast feed has asked for fishmonger advice,

Speaker 2 did you feel personally attacked by this

Speaker 2 question?

Speaker 1 Look, I think, look, you're not going to make it to a fishmonger after work. Fishmongers are very much like a 6 a.m.
to 2 p.m. kind of endeavor.

Speaker 1 So you're not going to get the highest quality product, but can he make it to a reasonably good grocery store to get a piece of salmon?

Speaker 1 I think he can, and I don't think that makes him an adrenaline junkie.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I don't think adrenaline junkie is the word I would use, but I did kind of like her point of like, you always have to do the most.

Speaker 1 Yes. That's not the same thing.
You're getting the dog for the family.

Speaker 1 He does seem like he's just impulsive in chasing after things in a way that contrasts with how we see him as a doctor, right?

Speaker 1 And this is sort of the idea of someone who can be sort of competent to a point in their professional lives so they can obscure what's going on underneath, obscure their addiction.

Speaker 1 But when you really look under the hood, they're just doing erratic things all over the place for themselves and the families, for everyone around them.

Speaker 1 It's tough scenes for Dr. Langdon.

Speaker 2 As I mentioned, I don't really need the nicknames anymore. I know who Langdon is, but I did change his name in my notes from Dr.
Ken to Dr. Benzo, just so he knows that that's his new updated name.

Speaker 1 It is updated. Dr.
Baines is eternal.

Speaker 2 That's a you, that's a, that's a mahonyism. We're never moving past Dr.

Speaker 1 Benzo.

Speaker 2 But I'm adding Dr. Benzo into the mix.

Speaker 1 There was a point in this section of episodes two where Myrna, who's the woman in the wheelchair in the waiting room perpetually, just sort of like snoozing, snacking, chopping it up with the doctors.

Speaker 1 Yeah. She tries to nickname, re-nickname Whitaker turned Huckleberry as Pussycat.
Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm not in favor of it. And this was all pre-rat.
So, you know, like, it really was like a, it was nominative determinism at the end of the day. I think she really willed the rat thing into happening.

Speaker 2 Wow. I love that.

Speaker 1 How do you feel about the other side of the Langdon issue, Joe, which is to say we have been talking all season about Santos, about how we feel about this character?

Speaker 1 You're right that we identified her to be wrong early, to be right about something big later. That just seemed like where the narrative thrust of the show was going.

Speaker 1 But where does all this leave us with Santos? Because we learn a lot about her in these episodes and the way she navigates. Do you feel like it changes the way you look at her as a character?

Speaker 2 I think not only the Langdon issue, but also the storyline where the father was potentially molesting his daughter and his wife was putting progesterone in his coffee.

Speaker 2 I think that

Speaker 1 Her,

Speaker 2 I mean, the moment there where she has, you know, security stand outside the door and sort of is posturing, that's like a big dramatic moment.

Speaker 2 But what it reveals about her as someone who is like hyper-vigilant to the misdeeds of

Speaker 2 perhaps men specifically and perhaps men that other people admire, I think that all works together of a piece, that she is

Speaker 2 her abrasiveness is hand in hand because her abrasiveness, perhaps due to whatever terrible shit she clearly has gone through in her life, goes hand in hand with her ability to see through facades

Speaker 2 quite easily or easier than some other people can or not fall for charm, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think I really love those as sort of like interlocking pieces of information we get about her.

Speaker 2 And I also think that like even with the, you know,

Speaker 2 with

Speaker 2 Mel

Speaker 2 or Javati or Witaker, see, I know everyone's name now.

Speaker 1 Like that.

Speaker 1 Sorry, it's Pussycat.

Speaker 2 Crash, you know, et cetera.

Speaker 2 She's not being as shitty with them.

Speaker 1 But she's still being kind of shitty. Yeah, she's still being shitty.
I honestly appreciate it. Like, I'm really glad that post-Langdon, she is not warm and fuzzy Santos all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 Like she, she still is abrasive. She still is who she is.
And I like that before the big reveal with Langdon, we get so much messy context between them. Like when Langdon blows up at her

Speaker 1 in the one time where she she tries to do something to benefit the team and not herself like the timing of that is so perfect because isn't that when she's giving dr.

Speaker 2 Mohan cover basically for actually saving the MDMA patient yes but I wasn't sure if that's what she was if she was if she did it altruistically to give Mohan cover or if she did it intentionally because she was trying to

Speaker 2 antagonize him into revealing his true colors. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 I do know what you mean. I mean, I would think that'd be very deft of her, Dr.
to say.

Speaker 2 Her explanation was, hey, he's mad at me anyway, so might as well be me. But given her, she doesn't seem like a nice person who would cover for people for no good reason.
So I kind of,

Speaker 2 and this is just my interpretation, but I kind of like the idea that she was like, I know how to, I know how to set someone like this off.

Speaker 2 And if I set him off in front of other people, they'll see what I see in him. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Very well observed. I think that's absolutely in the cards.

Speaker 1 And I think the fact that we get those sorts of scenes, that we get Santos continuing to be, you know, I think especially with her fellow, like the fellow residents and the federal and the med students, like she still is puffing her chest out a bit.

Speaker 1 She still is a transactional operator at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 And I think even with Langdon, okay, she's right. And I, you know, all of that.
But I do think she also kind of likes being the one to tell other people, like, oh, Langdon went home. Oh,

Speaker 1 100%. She can't wait to tell Garcia.
And it's under the guise of, oh, can you please not talk about this to anybody else? But I feel like she really just wants to tell someone that she was right.

Speaker 2 I think that's part of it. And again, that's part of

Speaker 2 what's

Speaker 2 done really well about the show, giving us these characters who

Speaker 2 are, Santos is right. She is in the right over Langdon in this particular circumstance, but also is still going to challenge us in terms of rooting for her.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so yeah.

Speaker 2 So good, so good, so good.

Speaker 2 New markdowns markdowns are on at your Nordstrom Rack store. Save even more, up to 70%, on dresses, tops, boots, and handbags to give and get.
Because I always find something amazing.

Speaker 2 Just so many good brands. I get an extra 5% off with my Nordstrom credit card.

Speaker 1 Total queen treatment.

Speaker 2 Join the Nordy Club at Nordstrom Rack to unlock our best deals. Big gifts, big perks.
That's why you rack.

Speaker 2 This fall, explore California in a brand new Toyota hybrid. From the stylish Camry to the adventure-ready RAV4 or the spacious Grand Highlander.

Speaker 2 Every new Toyota comes with Toyota Care, a two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance plan, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 2 Visit your local Toyota dealer for a test drive. Toyota, let's go places.
See your local Toyota dealer for hybrid battery warranty details.

Speaker 1 Are there any cases in particular you want to talk about? You know, we mentioned Chad the skateboarder. We talked about the dad, possibly abusive dad who's being dosed with progesterone.

Speaker 1 I'm open to those. I'm open to any way you want to take it.
What stuck out for you in terms of the caseload?

Speaker 2 The Ringer is a sports

Speaker 2 network, Ethereum.

Speaker 1 So I've heard, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I know you're a basketball guy, but do you want to talk about our teenage baseball player with the eye?

Speaker 2 Because that's one of the gnarliest things I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 1 Big, gnarly alert alarms in my notes.

Speaker 1 Watching a scalpel that close to an eye is an incredibly uncomfortable experience. And I will say, this, this, basically, this exact thing is the reason I never made it past Little League Baseball.

Speaker 1 There comes a point where the pitches and the line drives are just coming a little too fast for what I'm comfortable with. And now you see why.
This was, this was tough.

Speaker 2 That was nasty. Like, great makeup job on the eye.
And then, like, yeah, watching. I mean, we see, we see

Speaker 2 digging around in an eye.

Speaker 2 And also, like, the crowning of a baby. Like, there's a lot of great body part prosthetic work going on on this

Speaker 2 show.

Speaker 2 But yeah, the eye. And then the way that the eye storyline

Speaker 2 with the father in the room and how Javati is sort of like over-identifying and how Dr. Bangs is clocking all of this and Robbie is consulting.

Speaker 2 I just thought that was just sort of like a perfect brew of like, here's to your point, uh, a case that mirrors a doctor

Speaker 2 and another doctor learning a bit more about, you know, their fellow employee and all of that.

Speaker 2 And I think what's interesting, something that we had talked about in terms of the challenges of the concept of the show, let's set it in ER over, I guess, 15 hours of a shift.

Speaker 2 Something that I was pointing out, a difference from ER, if Michael Crichton's widow is listening, is like we are not going home with our doctors the way that we did on ER.

Speaker 2 But the way in which they found ways to bring home into the ER, I mean, our guide Chad, obviously your favorite character, Chad, is here

Speaker 2 with Harrison.

Speaker 2 So Dr. Bangs' home life is represented.
Jake swings by for the passes, right? Javati's mom obviously works there.

Speaker 2 We get Santos's like abuse background. We get Mel FaceTiming her sister.

Speaker 2 We know that Langdon's got to get salmon on the table for his wife and kids. So there's ways in which home life is making its way, as it would in a workplace.

Speaker 2 But I think just sort of like clever ways to sort of bring all of that in without some of the clumsy exposition stuff we had sort of flagged in the first couple episodes, like with I think Dr.

Speaker 2 Bays especially, like just some stuff that felt a little bit like,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 2 blatantly expositional. This is more sort of like, let's weave certain home life stuff into

Speaker 2 the main plot. I thought, oh, that's really smart.

Speaker 1 I think Mel is at least my favorite. It sounds like you're a favorite too.
Dr. Bangs, though, may be the most improved player as the season has gone on.

Speaker 1 I've really come to appreciate her place in the show and even some of her bedside manner, which I thought she maybe shared a bit too much to some earlier patients.

Speaker 1 But at this point in the season, you can really understand and feel her frustrations with trying to help people specifically who are not prepared to help themselves.

Speaker 2 Like the sex trafficking case.

Speaker 1 The woman who's being sex trafficked.

Speaker 1 And I mean, really thinking like really light on her feet with Dana too in terms of, oh, we're going to whisk this woman away to the CT scan room so we can have a private conversation with her.

Speaker 1 Like she's doing everything right and just cannot get this woman to admit what is happening.

Speaker 1 And I think that's such a relatable instinct and frustration to have, to be the person who's like lining everything up just so, and then it still goes to shit.

Speaker 2 No wonder Chad is like still really into her. No wonder, I don't know, Mateo is into her.

Speaker 2 Dr. Banks, she's got something.

Speaker 2 For me, most improved player is either Javati or Mohan.

Speaker 1 You're saying Javati, even though she whiffed on the date offer so badly.

Speaker 2 That was just like so humanizing to watch her do that.

Speaker 1 It's again, though, it's day.

Speaker 1 There are two things in the show that have stuck out to me as like, you're really doing this in the same day. One is her asking him out on her first day of work.

Speaker 1 The other one is Robbie and Gloria having the same administrative conversation on the hospital floor eight times over the first six hours of this shift. We got a crazy,

Speaker 2 Jake and Steve and several other people emailed us about the Gloria because that's that's what strange credulity of the 15-hour shift concept is like how many times Gloria is down there.

Speaker 2 Now, if Gloria comes down for a mass shooting, that makes a ton of sense, like that she would be down there. But like how many times a day can you be like, improve your

Speaker 2 turnaround time or improve your patient scores or whatever, or else, or else

Speaker 2 it was a bit silly.

Speaker 1 especially. I feel like in episode one or episode two of the show, you could have him have one meeting with Gloria in which the stakes are established.

Speaker 1 Like, you've got to get your patient satisfaction scores up, you've got to move people in and out of here quickly, and then it informs the way you look at the action over the course of the whole season.

Speaker 1 But she doesn't need to keep coming down with various venture capitalists being like, We're going to buy your hospital.

Speaker 2 Listen, she put that sharp blazer on that morning, she's really feeling herself, and she is a lot to

Speaker 2 I can't blame her. Um, but for Mohan, like you know aka aka Slow-Mo like I think that like

Speaker 2 watching her have these wins have these wins in her way watching her be right sometimes and wrong sometimes

Speaker 2 she she I think has the most

Speaker 2 like it's never easy to say

Speaker 2 oh her way is the right way because sometimes her way is the wrong way and so watching Robbie get exasperated with her but then defend her you know what I mean watch him watch him with with the uh the the drug-seeking patient the the guy who's in town for his daughter's wedding uh watching robbie chew her out

Speaker 2 but then be on her side in front of uh the patient um

Speaker 2 i find to her a really fascinating aspect of all that and then watching her interact with the other the residents and the and the med students too i think is really interesting yes yeah i think there's a bunch of little miniature crises of confidence happening with all these characters, right?

Speaker 1 You see that with Mel sometimes, where she's wondering, like, do I have the special thing that these, the special sauce that these other doctors have? Do I have my thing?

Speaker 2 How could she think that so soon after she like walked into this guy on the spectrum's room and like turned off all the lights and closed all the doors and was like, Let me go get a little model of an ankle bone for you so you can understand what's going on?

Speaker 2 Like, Mel, you are made of special sauce, you're the best.

Speaker 1 But then she met Patch Adams, and she's like, Well, we got we have bits now.

Speaker 1 I'm not equipped for that.

Speaker 2 No, not all of us can do bits. That's true.

Speaker 1 That's true. But, but, Dr.
Mohan, to your point, like, her, her case and her results are so complex and are so complex in ways that even when she is successful, as you said, it's not what Dr.

Speaker 1 Robbie wants and in the way that he, as a doctor, would treat those patients.

Speaker 1 And that's such a fascinating idea, this concept of you can be very right, and also this other doctor can be right in their way and still be disappointed in you, despite the fact that you helped treat this patient.

Speaker 1 It puts her in such an impossible place, especially as she is overcoming this sort of like empathy hump of wanting to spend so much time with people and wanting to over-diagnose and over-care.

Speaker 1 And she's having to do things a little faster and learn on the fly. And she's having to give herself pep talks along the way, as many of these doctors are.

Speaker 2 The old empathy hump. Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Where are you? We talked about the baseball injury. As far as gnarly watch goes, I think there are a couple key candidates.
Tell me.

Speaker 1 one,

Speaker 1 yes, the high school baseball player with the swollen eye who has to have the blood drained out of it.

Speaker 1 Two, the burn victim who has to get full up sliced and diced to relieve the pressure in his abdomen

Speaker 1 in a very like

Speaker 1 alien egg hatching kind of way. Yeah, like 90% death probability, according to Langdon.
That's a lot. That's a lot to put him through.

Speaker 2 Two,

Speaker 2 they put all these resources

Speaker 2 into something that they know is probably not going to go any, you know, like all the time they spent trying to revive that little girl, all the time they spent trying to help this burn victim, knowing that he, it's unlikely, or all the moments, we talked about this at the beginning of the season, this idea of like how much the jargon's flying fast and furious.

Speaker 2 But the way in which they use it to

Speaker 2 like you have something, I think it was

Speaker 2 our guy, Nurse Jesse,

Speaker 2 you know, Silver Fox Nurse Jesse on the phone, like gets off and he has like a, I don't know, a potassium read or something, whatever it is, on the little girl. And the way he just says it,

Speaker 2 like, I don't know what that means, but I know what that means, which is like, it's curtains, right?

Speaker 1 It's not good, you know,

Speaker 2 and so they're, you know, they'll say something that means nothing to me about stats and, and, and what this reading is.

Speaker 2 And so then I have to rely on their reactions, they're just sort of micro reactions sometimes, especially when they're trying not to have like a big reaction in front of the loved ones.

Speaker 2 I think that's like a really, a really brilliant thing.

Speaker 1 I'm so impressed too, by the way that the more senior members of the staff communicate so directly and succinctly with the families of the victims as they are treating them, right? It's like we are.

Speaker 1 it's it all alarms are going off they're trying to get someone's heartbeat up they're trying to get them to breathe again and they're also conveying all this information to their loved ones who are panicking in the room trying to figure out what's happening and that's where you see some of the younger members of the staff like trying to figure out how to do that how do you multitask in a way where you're giving chest compressions and briefing the patient's family as to what needs to happen for them to get their breath back?

Speaker 2 There's also these little moments of, especially with, again, senior staff,

Speaker 2 where they will communicate to someone like, this person's not going to make it, but we're not going to say that out loud right now. You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 So like when Dana comes up and there's the sister of the little girl and she gets just like one look and she's like, should we go color? You know what I mean? Like this is what's needed here.

Speaker 2 Or when they go in

Speaker 2 and Kiara, the social worker, is in with a little girl and her grandmother and they just like walk in and give her a look, like it, it's, it's no, it's a no, you know?

Speaker 1 Um, there is a lot of that shorthand. I will say there is still at this stage in the season a little bit of very special episode sauce on top.

Speaker 1 And I think, I think Kiara gets burdened with a lot of it because she's always brought in late in the game and she has to explain the social issue that they're talking about.

Speaker 1 The one that jumped out so badly, I thought, in this set of episodes, is after Dana gets hit, after she gets punched in the face, and you can tell how revered that character is.

Speaker 1 By the way, everyone is doting on her absolutely by us. Like, it's a great performance, it's a great character.

Speaker 1 And then you get this actual line of dialogue from this otherwise very good show: violence against healthcare workers is a national problem, and it's only getting worse. Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's a bad line inside of a great moment where they start talking about strikes, and then like Robbie

Speaker 2 like voiced them off on Gloria like that's a that's a great moment. Did we I'm sorry did I interrupt your your narlow meter? Are there other

Speaker 1 news? I'm gonna put the miracle of childbirth off to the side. That's kind of its own thing.

Speaker 1 The other one that registered for me was the guy who came in with the partially de-gloved finger that has the bone has to be sanded down. And as this is happening, he's taken a pass at Dr.
Collins.

Speaker 1 Find you a guy who can do both.

Speaker 2 Who among us? But like,

Speaker 2 it's an always no for me when it comes to a degloving.

Speaker 2 That's that's just like an automatic absolute but even relative to an eye swelling and scalpeling degloving i just think the fact that we've come up with this word for it which is so evocative if there were like a similar word for eyeball swelling then then yeah but degloving um we haven't talked much about collins among all the other uh is that

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 do we feel like that says something about the impression that the character is making or the way she i mean obviously watching her miscarry inside of this batch of episodes, having to then,

Speaker 2 you know, having just helped a young woman with,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 abortion and delivering this baby, and her reactions to all of this.

Speaker 2 But I think chiefly for me, it's that conversation that she has with Robbie in the ambulance is like the real, you know, like Dana's with her, all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 2 But the Robbie Collins stuff, which again is something we clocked right at the beginning of like, they seem like they have a history. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But once again, having our beloved Princess and Pearla like be like, those two definitely fucked. And then to have that conversation in the ambulance where,

Speaker 2 you know, she tells him basically that she aborted their child. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he has that reaction of like

Speaker 2 wanting to support her through what she's currently going through, wanting not to like want to support her in the decision she previously made, while also grappling this guy who like

Speaker 2 has Jake, but doesn't have like kids of his own, like this other future,

Speaker 2 you know, of like, what would that have been? You know, he says inside of that conversation, like, I had it coming, like, you know, I, I wasn't, I wasn't showing up inside of that relationship.

Speaker 2 That's before he hears this part, but like, so I don't know that Robbie would have been a great father material in that moment, but I thought that was just like he's hospital daddy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 Oh, delightful. But

Speaker 2 because Scrub Daddy is trademarked and already taken by those sponges.

Speaker 1 It's a great point. I honestly didn't think about Scrub Daddy, but he is that too.

Speaker 2 But that scene I thought was so well written and so well performed.

Speaker 1 Yep. I thought that was easily the standout of the Colin stuff so far, which I don't love saying because the things that that character is going through are so heavy and emotional.

Speaker 1 And look, we, Joe, you and I have found ourselves spoilers for other shows we're covering on the Prestige TV podcast, talking about miscarriage a lot lately.

Speaker 1 And it's something that I feel like TV taps into very often as this identifiable, understandable pain point for so many characters who are pregnant, for so many characters who are trying to get pregnant, who are desperate to be parents, who are like trying to embrace that life change for themselves.

Speaker 1 I don't know what it is about the Collins presentation in the earlier episodes of this season or that character or that performance. None of it is bad, but

Speaker 1 I don't think it ever popped for me until this conversation with Robbie. And maybe that's as simple as the circumstances of the show didn't really allow for it.

Speaker 1 Like she is keeping everything so buttoned up that she doesn't have her moment to kind of let emotionally win. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that's a good point. I think her serenity throughout the season has been like an important ingredient in the mix here, but her relative serenity, but like, um,

Speaker 2 yeah, giving her that moment, that conversation with him, I thought was so good. Him sending her home.
I hope that's not the last we see of her

Speaker 2 for the season. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I hope so, too. Well, as far as what we have still in the air, you know, there's some still, some cases still in process.

Speaker 1 We obviously have the shooting at PitFest, which I guess we'll see if Jake and or his girlfriend are among the people rolled in, and certainly hope not.

Speaker 1 Robbie, it really does feel like he's kind of coming apart a little bit. He's shorter to anger.

Speaker 1 He has less help than he did at the start of the shift, to say the least. He's already having a rough day, as you said.
He's been very off from the start.

Speaker 1 Don't feel like he's going to be dealing with everything super well over this last part of the season.

Speaker 2 What do you feel like we

Speaker 2 have gleaned from the flashbacks? You know, we got a little bit more flashback information

Speaker 2 since the last batch of episodes. Like, what is your understanding of what happened on that day

Speaker 2 that we lost Dr. Adamson?

Speaker 1 I think we got this sense. So there's this bit of explanation about, I think it's called the ECMO machine.

Speaker 1 About how basically at a certain point, Dr.

Speaker 1 Adamson had to be taken off the machine, that they basically kept him on it as long as they possibly could, but there came a point where other patients needed it.

Speaker 1 And so to me, it was, it is, of course, about, you know, Dr. Robbie having to deal and treat.

Speaker 1 deal with and treat his mentor in this incredibly difficult circumstance, right? High anxiety environment of kind of a COVID hospital setting, but also the

Speaker 1 agonizing give and take of the resources in a hospital setting when a bunch of things are happening at once.

Speaker 1 And I would assume we're about to get a bunch of people rolled into the ER coming from PitFest.

Speaker 1 Difficult decisions are going to have to be made as far as who do you keep on these life support systems, which patients that are in the hospital now are going to have to be moved or relocated or taken off those systems in order to prioritize people coming in with real and immediate trauma.

Speaker 1 And so I kind of feel like that's what we're heating up as much as anything is this idea that you have to make split-second medical decisions that almost necessarily put other people's life in jeopardy.

Speaker 2 The ECMO machine is an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, and yeah, it essentially like keeps, we, we, yeah, they explained it.

Speaker 1 Where can you, where do you get one of those? Can you like eBay that shit?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 I think it's you call the same number you call to get Interpol to come

Speaker 2 to a white lotus.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, okay, so that's my understanding is like it was COVID times. It was rough anyway.
Adamson's all in this machine.

Speaker 2 Resources are thin as they constantly talk about and another patient needed it. So it's not just that his beloved mentor, which inside another very special episode plotline, which is the

Speaker 2 you know the ambient like the origin of the EMTs and all that sort of stuff like that, which is really cool history that I didn't know about.

Speaker 2 So I loved learning about it, but it was in a slightly very special episode kind of way.

Speaker 2 But inside of that, we have that the dementia patient with the pacemaker knew Adamson and so could like talk about him

Speaker 1 as well.

Speaker 2 I thought that was really effective.

Speaker 2 But yeah, to think about Robbie as someone who had to like make the call to take his mentor off this life-saving machine because resources were stretched so thin inside of a national health emergency

Speaker 2 is

Speaker 2 yeah, something something that that surely will pop uh in the final episodes. Are we

Speaker 2 Are we going to see?

Speaker 2 So, will Langdon and Collins come back on shift?

Speaker 2 How much of other doctors are going to come on shift to help with a mass shooting or the other shift that's due to come in, you know, the next shift that's due to relieve them?

Speaker 2 Like, are we going to add a bunch of new characters?

Speaker 2 uh in in the back section of the season are we emotionally prepared for that how much capacity do we have? I just learned everyone's name, Rob.

Speaker 1 I don't think it's going to be that many more.

Speaker 1 I would love a Sean Haddase return, right? Maybe he's coming in for the next shift. He can help kind of ease some of the load on Robbie.

Speaker 1 It's just, it's, he had a nothing part for 10 minutes of one episode. I would have to think he's going to be back in the mix at some point.
And maybe that will be enough.

Speaker 1 I think Collins might be back helping and actually treating patients, and Langdon will come back, but not be allowed to help.

Speaker 1 You know, maybe some conversations, maybe some closure on some of that plot line, but ultimately, he made his bed.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Sean Haddissey is what I'm like sort of most looking forward to because if you go back to that original conversation they had,

Speaker 2 I was expecting more of him. Like, it's been so not that he was going to come back on shift because he was at the end of a long shift when we saw him at the beginning of the season.

Speaker 1 He was on the roof

Speaker 1 staring down the edge, Joe. I think he needed a minute.

Speaker 2 It wasn't great, but I was like, are we going to, I assumed we would like see him in flashbacks or something like that. But no, I am eagerly awaiting.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like,

Speaker 2 all of our shows are bleeding together, but I'm just sort of like, where's Patricia Arquette and where's Sean Havise at? The 90s person in me wants to know. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 But what else jumped out to you from these episodes? Is there anything else you want to hit before we close out?

Speaker 2 Great question. Thanks so much for asking.
Okay, so.

Speaker 2 We got an email from Lauren. I don't want to, I know you're, you're just toe dipping on ER.

Speaker 2 You're not an ER expert, so I don't want to like strain you on this, but like Lauren emailed to ask us if we could pick an ER actor to make a cameo in the pit. Who would it be and why?

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm not going to necessarily ask you that question, though, if you have an answer, because I know you know some people are on ER, but like

Speaker 2 my question is more, do you want an ER cameo? Or do you feel like not only just would that give

Speaker 2 Michael Crane's widow more potter for a legal case, but would feel like a little gimmicky inside of a show that's not very gimmicky, you know?

Speaker 1 It's tough because it's not gimmicky, but also it's a Noah Wiley medical drama. So by definition, it sort of is.

Speaker 1 I can't pretend that this isn't what we're doing here. Yeah.
That said, as someone who is not that familiar with ER, other than the core cast and the history and overall, like the

Speaker 1 indelible impression left by that show, I'm not super eager for it. I like the cast that we've established.
I like this group of characters.

Speaker 1 Do I need more Tierney rolling in as the mom of one of the shooting victims? Like, I don't, but I'm not going to be mad about it. Okay.

Speaker 1 Did you have an answer for this? Who do you want to see?

Speaker 2 I will say for the ER diehards who are listening, or the, or the newcomers, I won't spoil anything with this character, but the actress Kelly Martin

Speaker 2 played a character called Lucy Knight on ER, and she and John had like a

Speaker 2 like a friendship and whatever else ship and she was involved in like a very important storyline in ER.

Speaker 2 I think that would be really fun because there's other actors, like, I mean, if Clooney were on, or

Speaker 1 you know, et cetera, et cetera, if Juliana Margulies wanted to show up, uh, if and Clooney is shown, he will show up for the check, whether it's Nespresso or DC or otherwise. Like, he will show up.

Speaker 2 It's true, Eric LaSalle, who played Dr. Benton, who was who was Carter's like mentor.

Speaker 2 Um, like, you know, there are other things, but like,

Speaker 2 Kelly Martin would be a great one because she's not,

Speaker 2 she's done a lot of like lifetime adjacent stuff, but she hasn't done like a ton, a ton, a ton of stuff recently that people will be like, oh my God, it's George Clooney. That's distracting.

Speaker 2 Right, right, right. But, oh, it's Kelly Martin.
I remember her from, I don't know, I think it's like two seasons of ER.

Speaker 2 That could be, that could be kind of fun. But yeah, I don't, I don't want anything gimmicky.
And I kind of like

Speaker 2 the level of actor we've seen come through. I don't, I'm not distracted.
I recognize a few of the sort of like, hey, it's that guy, sort of.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 1 this was one of the prompts I had for you, Joe, which was which of the that guy guest stars did you enjoy the most? Were you the most excited to see?

Speaker 1 You know, we've had so many patients and patients' families roll through. Who, who stuck out to you in that regard? Okay,

Speaker 2 I don't mean to be like

Speaker 2 weird about this.

Speaker 2 Chad is played by Rob Heaps, who is a British actor, who was in this show called Imposters that was on for like a season.

Speaker 2 He's done a couple other things, but he's in the show called Imposters that was about like a female con artist, which is just like catnip to me. Love that.

Speaker 2 That was such a good show, and it was just like completely ignored and canceled.

Speaker 2 And sort of like in the heyday of FX and these other networks having these just like really fun shows that no one's watching.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 so I love, as soon as he showed up, I was like, oh my god, it's the guy from Imposters. I got really excited.
And I just think I think he's doing such a good Chad, like the chattiest Chad.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 extremely Chad vibes from this guy. And it sounds like you're endorsing all of that character's decisions and just general demeanor as well.

Speaker 2 Dad,

Speaker 2 love his girlfriend.

Speaker 2 She seems great.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we do learn that apparently the reason Dr. Bangs has the ankle monitor on is because of, it seems, a restraining order from the girlfriend.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 2 What prompted that in the first place?

Speaker 1 We don't know. I'm going to guess smashed windshields.
That's what it sounds like to me.

Speaker 2 I'm on Dr. Bangs' side, honestly.

Speaker 1 We're full Dr. Bangs around here.

Speaker 2 What is it? Like a bonus mom t-shirt?

Speaker 1 Bonus mom. It does not go well.
I hated it.

Speaker 2 I hated it. So, yeah.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, Rob Heaps is, as Chad, is my, is my that guy. How about you?

Speaker 1 Who's your that guy? Well, since I am hosting, I am going to do a classic House of R smug. Oh, hell yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And I'm going to do Marguerite Moreau, who plays the mother of the girl who's seeking an abortion, or I guess the aunt, the actual aunt of the girl who's seeking an abortion, who I know from What Hot American Summer, one of the greatest comedies ever made.

Speaker 1 You may know from The Mighty Ducks or various other properties if you prefer.

Speaker 1 But she's bringing in her daughter, sorry, her niece, who's played by Abby Ryder-Fortson, who I thought was just amazing in Are You There, Goddess Me, Margaret.

Speaker 1 And I had totally forgotten until it clicked for me about halfway through her appearance in the show that, oh my God, this is the titular Margaret. Here she is again, crushing it.

Speaker 1 I was delighted to see them both. So much, it's so like these kids went up so quickly.

Speaker 1 From puberty to seeking an abortion, just like that.

Speaker 2 In a blink of an eye. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 That's a great, that's a great smuggle. Great one.

Speaker 1 There's so many great ones, though.

Speaker 1 And it's really one of the delights of this kind of show that you can have a cast as big as this, that you can have as big of a medical cast as this, and everyone can sort of have their moments.

Speaker 1 And yet, I don't think there's any doubt that this is Noah Wiley's show. You know,

Speaker 1 it's never really in danger of being swept out from under him.

Speaker 1 And I think his feel for how to navigate these spaces as an actor, much less that character's feel as a doctor, is a huge part of the reason it works.

Speaker 2 I'm trying to think who he's going to be up against at the Emmys, and it's going to be, I mean, like Jason Isaacs and Adam Scott are going to be in the mix with him.

Speaker 1 For sure.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Interesting.

Speaker 1 We got a long year of TV ahead. We also had a very important.
public service announcement from Dr.

Speaker 1 Robbie in this episode about, you know, the podcasts that are, that are radicalizing the young men of this country the youth of this country joe and i i am just here to say yeah that we here at the prestige tv podcast we are here to teach your children we are here to to raise them yeah to give them the values that you want them to have so long as those values i would say are walton goggins propaganda and severance theories if those are important to you then we are here for you at the end of the day you know rob it's so nice to meet uh a like-minded individual is here to uh promote certain agendas for the youth follow-up question for you on that front um

Speaker 2 do Do you think the shooter at PitFest is

Speaker 2 our

Speaker 2 teen with a list? Or is that a bit tidy?

Speaker 1 It feels like a big old red herring to me. Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm, I think if that happened, Dr.

Speaker 1 Robbie would be in such a bad spot as the person who basically delayed the process of calling the police delayed, delayed, delayed, for the sake of what is admittedly an incredibly thorny situation to navigate, right?

Speaker 2 But the fact that they made him say the line about like he's a young man with a future in front of him, and it had to be Dr.

Speaker 1 Bangs being like, it's not good. Dr.

Speaker 2 Bangs being like, what about the girls on the list, though? I mean, at least you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 This is what got us on Dr. Bangs' side at the end of the day.
Like, somebody needed to call the cops on Incel Kid, Her Words, Not Mine, Paige, Dr. Bangs, with all of your concerns about the language.

Speaker 1 Correct.

Speaker 1 I think the police probably needed to be called in that instance. And in this case, it may have been called too late whether he's the shooter or not.
It's true. But that is it for us this week, Joe.

Speaker 1 We will be back for the finale. Thank you to Donnie Beacham.
Thank you to you, Joe. Thank you to John Richter and CT and Justin Sales.

Speaker 1 Thank you to you for all of your emails about the pit to prestige TV at spotify.com. Keep them coming.

Speaker 1 What you think about Dr. Bangs, what you think about the rat problem in the hospital.
What do you think about the, you know, the Kraken getting his moment of dignity?

Speaker 1 You know, really, these episodes did have everything. It was beautiful.
Really a beautiful thing. Thank you for listening.
See you soon. Bye.