‘The Pitt’ Midseason Check-In: The Best Medical Drama on TV

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Speaker 5 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 3 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 5 Rob, if you're watching this on video, Rob is podcasting from the void.

Speaker 3 From the pit.

Speaker 5 How does it feel? How does it feel to be deep in the pit?

Speaker 3 In the depths of the pit, Joe, I'm terrified.

Speaker 5 It's very alarming in here if you're here at at spotify studios please come let me out unlock the door let me out of the pit let oh please please hashtag free rob um listen we're here to talk to you about the pit this is what i'm gonna call i'm gonna call this a a pit stop rob we're taking a brief little uh jaunt over to pittsburgh to talk about uh er medicine we're here to talk about episodes basically episodes one through uh six even though we've already talked about a few of them before If you're not current up through episode six of the pit, then press pause and go watch it.

Speaker 5 If you're not watching, as is the case sometimes, you guys listen to this show without watching the show that we're talking about.

Speaker 5 If you're not watching the pit, here am I, several episodes later, Joanna Robinson, here to tell you, I'm really liking the pit.

Speaker 3 Rob Tony,

Speaker 5 how are you feeling about the pit?

Speaker 3 I'm really enjoying it. Honestly, I was pretty game out of the gate.

Speaker 5 Me too. I would say I was like

Speaker 5 medium high on it. And then I texted you the other day when I was watching episode four and I was like, Rob, I'm crying over the pit.
So things have progressed.

Speaker 3 I am inexplicably welling up at the pit, but it does have that power. It does have the drama.
It does have the kind of like high wire act of managing all these cases at once.

Speaker 3 I find it to just be a very well-constructed show and one that I'm really enjoying spending time with. For me, it's been more of a gradual experience.

Speaker 3 I know some people are saving episodes and binging them. I like parceling this thing out.
I like getting a week-to-week experience. I found it really rewarding with the pit, I have to say.

Speaker 5 Before we get deeper into the pit, I just really want to say quickly here at the top before people wander away if they're not watching the pit. Rob and I are obviously covering severance week to week.

Speaker 5 So if you're listening to this and you didn't know that we're covering severance, we're covering severance. We're having the best time.
We're getting one bajillion emails from you guys about

Speaker 5 severance.

Speaker 3 Also, many, we should say, about the pit to PrestigeTV at spotify.com. You guys have been pouring in your opinions on the show, your on our takes.

Speaker 3 The one thing I've appreciated the most, Joe, is people basically tagging themselves in the show saying, oh, I, as a medical professional, am a little bit of a Dr. Bangs.
I'm a little bit of a Mel.

Speaker 3 No one claiming to be a Santos, but also a Santos would never self-identify as a Santos. So here we are.

Speaker 5 No, certainly not. Santos does not have an accurate reflection of herself.
So press tv at spotify.com is where you can email us about the pit,

Speaker 5 about

Speaker 5 severance, soon white lotus, all kinds of things, or severance specifically, pineapple bobbing at gmail.com. So, all of that, all of those emails are open and available to you.

Speaker 5 And then Rob and I will also be doing a little quick video reaction to the news that there is going to be

Speaker 3 probably

Speaker 5 a new Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.

Speaker 3 Maybe, maybe, maybe we can still talk them out of it.

Speaker 5 We might try. So, I, Duana Robinson, am one of the world's biggest Buffy Vampire Slayer fans.
So, too, is Rob Mahoney, believe it or not.

Speaker 5 Rob has his bona fide. So we'll be talking about Buffy.
So you can check that out on the Ringer TV YouTube channel where we will be talking about Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Speaker 5 Back to the pit, per your sort of commentary about the emails that we got.

Speaker 5 One of my favorite emails we got, we got so many emails from like ER doctors who were like, yes, yes, the pit is the most accurate medical show that's ever been. You love to hear it.
I love that.

Speaker 5 Our listener, Beth, wrote in asking us to cover more of the the pit. And this is how she described it.
She said, she called the pit the, quote, well-made furniture of TV.

Speaker 5 And she says it needs our support.

Speaker 3 Well, Joe, I described it this way in our previous podcast.

Speaker 5 Oh, I'm so sorry. She was quoting you.
She didn't put quotes around it, so I forgot about it.

Speaker 3 She understands the value of my commentary, even if you may not.

Speaker 5 I'm so sorry to devalue you, Rob, but I just want to agree with Beth more Beth than you, because

Speaker 5 I read her more recently. No, I just think that that holds up, that this is a well-made piece of furniture.

Speaker 5 And I did want to talk about sort of the binge versus week to week versus episode count of this show. So we are on episode six and we are only one-third of the way, right, through this show.

Speaker 3 Yeah, more or less.

Speaker 5 So I want to say on the binge front, I have been sort of watching two at a time. Yeah.

Speaker 5 And what do we call that?

Speaker 3 It's not quite a binge. It's not quite a week to week.
Yeah.

Speaker 3 A mini binge.

Speaker 5 I don't know. Yeah.

Speaker 5 They're like,

Speaker 5 we will think about that. Prestige TV at spotify.com if you have a new term you'd like to like to coin.
But I kind of like watching them back to back because then I don't lose track of the characters.

Speaker 5 Yes. I feel or the cases or anything like that.
And I actually feel I

Speaker 5 am almost always, and I said this at the beginning of our pit coverage, I am almost always pro week to week.

Speaker 5 But this is a show that I really do feel like, maybe not good for your adrenaline as a binge, but in terms of your being able to feel like you are aware of who all the characters are and what all the cases we're tracking are and what's bubbling away in the background,

Speaker 5 sure to pop up several weeks later as a problem.

Speaker 5 I think this might be a good binge fit. Not for our purposes as podcasters, as podcasters, watch it week to week and listen to our coverage of it.

Speaker 3 Of course, nice.

Speaker 5 But yeah, there's something about this show that I do think fits the binge model in a way that I think most others don't. What do you think?

Speaker 3 I think it's probably because of the format. Like if you were going to binge it, it makes sense because the structure of the show is a binge experience.

Speaker 3 And in that way, I've been impressed by how many of the different cases they've been juggling have been four and five, and in some cases, six episode mini arcs for those individual cases.

Speaker 3 I just kind of went in with the default expectation that, oh, most things would be wrapped up in an episode or two. And we'll get kind of the lesson and move on.

Speaker 3 And they've done a really nice job of balancing out some long, slow-burning cases, usually in which the family members of a patient have to make some excruciating decisions.

Speaker 3 And it's mostly them coming to terms with what is happening than it is actual treatment. You know, there's certainly a lot of delays as we wait for the test results for this or that.

Speaker 3 Like all of that stuff is happening.

Speaker 3 But to have these kind of load-bearing, like lodestar cases that we can structure the show around with all these check-ins, with these random like bits and gags and running jokes.

Speaker 3 And like, honestly, some patients coming in and being played for laughs, like a BBL gone wrong is what I want and need from this show in some ways.

Speaker 3 But I also need like a really tough ethical decision about like an NDR.

Speaker 3 I think

Speaker 3 a DNR.

Speaker 5 I think that

Speaker 5 to your point,

Speaker 5 That's baked into the context of the show as well, right? Because there is this constant stress about turnover. How quickly can we turn these beds over? How quickly can we, what's the push and pull?

Speaker 5 We got into this a bit more inside of this most recent episode where we have

Speaker 5 a contract management company wanting to sort of take over

Speaker 5 the ER, Dr. Robbie being vehemently against that.
So there's this idea of like, not only do we have to churn

Speaker 5 these cases, but we have to make sure that we have patient satisfaction as we do.

Speaker 5 So how do you balance those two things?

Speaker 5 So yeah, I mean, of course, given that the show is one hour per episode, of course, we're not going to have every case be one hour in the R and then you're done.

Speaker 5 There's going to be some that you're there for six hours. And I think the case that you're most, I think the case that most matches what you're talking about is the case of this fentanyl overdose.

Speaker 5 This has like been the main sort of spine of the show and the parents and how that fentanyl overdose relates to another case that came in.

Speaker 5 This is why I wound up crying in episode four, but episode four was also dealing with another long-range case, which was the case of this elderly father and the DNR order and stuff like that.

Speaker 5 So we did get an email from...

Speaker 5 Our listener, Julie. Most of the emails we got were from medical professionals telling us whether or not the show was accurate and whether or not people really wear hoodies in the ER.

Speaker 5 And it's all, it's true.

Speaker 3 Turns out they do. I will say the one thing on that that I found very interesting was the athleisure revolution in medicine being a bit of a COVID side effect.

Speaker 5 That's a good thing, Yeah.

Speaker 3 Which I think has been true broadly across society, also is extremely true, Joe, in my world, where NBA coaches, people who work for NBA teams, have gone from

Speaker 3 dressing in suits for games to much more, much more relaxed dress code overall.

Speaker 5 We call this the Seth Meyers. The like, I don't need to wear a suit to host late night.
I figured that out during COVID.

Speaker 3 It's a valid point.

Speaker 5 But our listener, Julie, wrote in talking about the

Speaker 5 storyline

Speaker 5 about the adult siblings dealing with their father and whether or not to keep him on a machine or not and saying goodbye to him.

Speaker 5 And our listener Julie was just talking about how particularly affecting she found that and how particularly reflective of her experience, not just on the sort of technical medical side, but on the way in which these doctors are

Speaker 5 counselors, guides through these horrific experiences. So I want to talk a bit about a couple of those episode four specific events because they made me cry,

Speaker 5 But how they fit under the umbrella of what this show is doing the best, and you and I have already texted about this a little bit, which is Noah Wiley

Speaker 5 as Dr. Robbie.
Like all of the

Speaker 5 doctors are interesting to varying degrees. We'll maybe talk about favorites and

Speaker 5 lesser favorites on the show, but Noah Wiley,

Speaker 5 who you know,

Speaker 5 did ER, has not done a ton other outside of TNT

Speaker 5 ever since,

Speaker 5 is so good on this show.

Speaker 5 He's not just giving John Carter an ER grown up, which is, you know, we talked about ad nauseam when we first covered the pit,

Speaker 5 but almost coach Taylor, sort of like folder of men, kind of spiritual leader of the team. Tell me about your Noah Wiley experience, Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 3 He's just so remarkably good at this.

Speaker 3 And I think, you know, there's a lot of differences in this show between the cases that really work and the ones that maybe don't so well.

Speaker 3 Or the times where the case may be interesting, but the sort of overwrought messaging around the case as to the relevant hospital-based issue is just like a little too on the nose. Sure.

Speaker 3 Usually the difference is Noah Wiley is involved or he's not. Because the ones where he's involved, you feel the beating heart of these things.

Speaker 3 You get the ethical quagmires that we're talking about with something like, you know, a DNR, for example. But you also get the real human stakes of these characters and these people involved.

Speaker 3 And like that, that's the plot line that got me the most. You had your moment in terms of the apology after the fentanyl overdose when Noah Wiley, Dr.

Speaker 3 Robbie, is explaining the sort of like four things that you should say to someone when you have a dying relative or a dying friend or a dying loved one in your life.

Speaker 3 The I love you, thank you, I forgive you, please forgive me.

Speaker 3 Literally him explaining that made me seize up a little bit and and really really struck me in a very deep emotional place and this is a show that can do that this is a show that certainly can do that if you have had anyone in your life who has gone through a serious medical episode if you've experienced any kind of death in a hospital or a kind of an illness or a long-term illness sort of setting i i i find it hard to believe that it wouldn't hit you in some very deep place when the right plot line comes up i i really agree and i think that

Speaker 5 you know a question we asked at the beginning

Speaker 5 the question i had sort of on the on the balance of the cast and on the balance of the show was:

Speaker 5 Would an attending like Dr. Robbie be across all of these cases? And the overwhelming response we got from medical professionals was yes.

Speaker 5 So, knowing that that is the case, that this is this person's job, sometimes there's two attendings, but knowing that it is this person's job to sort of hold everything,

Speaker 3 including his urine. Like, I really thought he was going to piss himself in like episode five.
I really thought we were going there.

Speaker 5 Um, to hold everything together, along with you know um the the charge nurse like that's that's another sort of like key component of all of this but um

Speaker 5 knowing that and then watching him play this character with so much compassion and warmth but also just experience and weariness of not just being physically tired, but just sort of like has had to do this before many times.

Speaker 5 And not just, you know, when it comes to the teen who overdosed on fentanyl,

Speaker 5 there is this personal connection he has, right? This, this Jake, who seems to be his son, maybe, or something like that, he's like, is the same age. There's that personal connection.

Speaker 5 There are moments that are going to hit him harder than others. There are moments that are going to remind him about losing his mentor, Dr.

Speaker 5 Adamson, which is this sort of like long story we're following across this day.

Speaker 5 But there's also, I've started doing this thing.

Speaker 5 We talked about in our coverage of the first couple episodes, how the jargon is flying fast and furious in all of these scenes, and how often it's just absolute gibberish to most of us watching this.

Speaker 5 Though, again, all the medical professionals who wrote in were like, they're crushing this, they're nailing it. What I've started to do is just watch Noah Wiley's face, right?

Speaker 5 And he will tell me whether or not I should be worried or not.

Speaker 5 And sometimes they'll even frame him like in the back.

Speaker 5 You know, there's like a couple of situations where like they, the, the results come in of some test or there, you know, some some stat

Speaker 5 happens and maybe you have the loved ones in the foreground and you've got Dr.

Speaker 5 Robbie sort of in the background and I can read on his face that he knows that he's got like encouraging news to deliver or he's gearing himself up for the devastating news that he has to deliver.

Speaker 5 And again, there's this like

Speaker 5 weariness, but never,

Speaker 5 thus far at least, jadedness that you would think would come with having done this for years and years. Totally.

Speaker 3 I think this is why a hospital workplace drama works at a level that basically no other workplace drama does, because you have the very natural setup of there's a flood of people coming in who don't know what's going on with them, with their bodies, what the treatment methods are, like what different things do.

Speaker 3 It would feel very differently if Dr. Robbie was speaking to a peer and just explaining shit all the time.
But you get to read his emotional reaction.

Speaker 3 You have the natural dynamic of him talking to interns, him talking to student doctors. Like it is a teaching environment.

Speaker 3 And it's one in which the patients patients themselves are desperate for more information and want to know, wait, what, what does that mean? Like, what do I need to do? What's the next step?

Speaker 3 They're so terrified that I think it facilitates the flow of information to the audience in a way where you get the jargon, but you don't feel like you're being explained to all the time.

Speaker 5 Something that we, okay, let's, let's, let's go back to

Speaker 5 the DNR storyline and episode four that really got to you. Do you feel like you covered everything you wanted to talk about with that? Is there anything else you wanted to dig into there?

Speaker 3 I don't, I mean, we can can dig into it more if you want. I think of all like the cases that provide some interesting fodder for conversation, that absolutely is one.

Speaker 3 And I think it does speak to to the way some of these, these guest stars are coming in and crushing it as well. And the emotional performances you're getting from them.

Speaker 3 Like this is, this is a show that with a massive cast, as it's turning out. And I'm sure by the end of the season, just the sheer amount of patience that you need to come and incredibly deliver.

Speaker 3 the heaviest day of their life or the weirdest day of their life or the most inexplicable day of their life, That range I find to be very impressive.

Speaker 3 And in this case, in particular, like these, these two siblings, as they are going back and forth here, I found to be really emotionally believable.

Speaker 3 I found the differences in their relationship with their father to be such like a great wrinkle to their willingness and unwillingness to say goodbye.

Speaker 3 And like the reasons why those situations are so thorny is because of how much is unresolved. And every person is going to experience that kind of closure or lack thereof totally differently.

Speaker 5 And I love that slow revelation of like, we've got one, the the the adult woman, the daughter is hanging on and you think it's just sort of like her nervous personality or that or the other thing.

Speaker 5 And that the son is so ready to sort of listen to Dr. Robbie and let go.
And then we find out we get this sort of slow reveal. And that speaks to the 18 episode season.

Speaker 5 Something I'm, I'm, you know, I would have questions about that as we started because we're so unused to a season of that length.

Speaker 5 But what I'm really enjoying now is I see little things pop up that feel like they're little breadcrumbs leaving, leading to some sort of revelation about this main main doctor character or that main doctor character, but we don't need to rush through it.

Speaker 5 We can slow roll these things. And so

Speaker 5 I'm trained by today's shortened

Speaker 5 seasons to be like, okay, well, this is gonna, this has got to come to a head any episode now. And they're like, nope, we can still, we can put this on simmer for a very long time.

Speaker 5 Like Powder Keg, angry guy in the waiting room.

Speaker 3 Oh my God. Is he gonna die or is he gonna murder someone? I go back and forth.

Speaker 5 I don't know, but that's been going on for so long. And I'm not mad about it.
I'm just sort of like,

Speaker 5 I am trained to expect that to pop off inside of the same episode or at least by the next episode. But we are just sort of slow taffy pulling this out in a way that I really like and find refreshing.

Speaker 3 And that's an area too where the real-time aspect of the show really pays off.

Speaker 3 Like this is a man who we have seen sit for six hours in a room, basically only being brought back to check his vitals periodically and has not really gotten any significant medical treatment at all.

Speaker 3 Like, I get why he's upset. I get why everyone in that waiting room would be frustrated with their circumstances.

Speaker 3 And as you look around, it's people with like bleeding limbs, people who are holding their head

Speaker 5 pencil coming out of their head.

Speaker 3 Oh, you know, just incredible, incredible like costuming and makeup work being done with all of the various prosthetics and injuries in the waiting room.

Speaker 5 This Powder K guy is

Speaker 5 the character's Doug Driscoll. Like he, he is someone where, like, when he first was impatient and, like, a little racist, I'm like, this guy sucks.
And he does.

Speaker 5 But, yeah, on hour three or four, I'm like, okay, but also

Speaker 3 the worst person you know just made a great point.

Speaker 5 Can we get Doug seen?

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Speaker 5 Is there, outside of Dr. Robbie,

Speaker 5 Is there

Speaker 5 a member of the medical staff that you are, whose, whose storyline you're most invested in?

Speaker 3 I think the one I'm most invested in is actually one that I'm quite conflicted about. And that is Dr.
Samira Mohan, who they have kind of affectionately dubbed Slow-Mo. Slow-mo, yeah.

Speaker 3 They really want Slow-Mo to happen.

Speaker 3 I applaud them for trying. I applaud them and trying to give a shorthand for all of these doctors.
As you said, if you're watching a week to week, there's a lot going on.

Speaker 3 We need kind of concise ways to understand who everybody is.

Speaker 5 What do you think is better, their Slow-Mo or your Dr. Bangs? Like, which is better, sweet?

Speaker 3 Dr. Bangs is clearly better, but I also understand why she's not being called Dr.
Bangs in the show. And we need to talk about Dr.
Bangs. We do need to talk about Dr.
Bangs.

Speaker 3 There is sharing, there is oversharing, and then there is whatever it is that Dr. Bangs is doing with patients, with her colleagues.
It's a whole thing.

Speaker 3 But Dr. Mohan, her weakness is that she cares too much.
We know this. It's been established over and over and over.
I'm not particularly interested in that.

Speaker 3 What I am interested in is this sort of triangular relationship. that she now has with Dr.
Robbie and Dr.

Speaker 3 Collins, who have given her complete opposite feedback as to how this should play out and the differences in their motivations, especially as Robbie is getting pulled in the direction of appeasing, you know, this sort of like impending consultancy that could now acquire the entire ER.

Speaker 3 And the sort of conflicting motivations of these people who, even though they are good doctors, even though their personal interests are pretty much aligned in which like in a perfect world, Dr.

Speaker 3 Collins and Dr. Robbie would probably treat patients pretty similarly, I think in lots of different ways.

Speaker 3 But here, the fact that they are giving her such different advice and overall, the case that she's addressing with the sickle cell and the idea that not only are you not maximizing hospital profit, not only are you not getting our numbers up, but there is a point at which your care and your attention is actively causing risk and harm to these patients who need to make very quick decisions to service their health.

Speaker 3 Like that's a fascinating place to put a character that otherwise, like from a 10,000 foot perspective, I don't, I'm not particularly captured by the like little personality detail they have assigned her.

Speaker 5 Right. Unlike some other characters, she doesn't have like a big story sort of lurking behind her.
There isn't the like, actually I'm pregnant storyline or whatever else is going on.

Speaker 5 Actually, my mom works here storyline. What I really like about her as a character, and I'm glad you identified this, is that again, inside of an 18-episode season, she's allowed to be both

Speaker 5 really good at her job and not good at her job. Yeah.
Which would be more realistic. All of these doctors are allowed to have wins and losses.

Speaker 5 And, you know, it's not just like, I will say, okay, the one thing, Dr.

Speaker 5 Santos is another thing that I want to talk about in a second, but like the one thing that I really had an oh, brother reaction to inside of all of these episodes is

Speaker 5 Dr. Whitaker, who's our like farm boy.
Yeah. The like the new scrubs

Speaker 5 cycling.

Speaker 3 I'm at five, a five scrub count so far.

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's too many. This is the, It's the comedy rule of threes.
That's where I would have.

Speaker 3 You say that? I'm mostly with you. I think most of them, like, okay, you get a couple bits.
I'm mostly neutral to them. Yeah.
The

Speaker 3 slapstick blood vomit, the projectile blood vomit from the kid who had the tonsil, tonsil removal gone wrong. That's the one where I did actually find great enjoyment.
No, I didn't have to admit.

Speaker 5 The Kraken

Speaker 5 urination one, that was great. Like, again, I think there are three solid scrub change opportunities.
And when we get to five, we've gone too far.

Speaker 3 Okay. So

Speaker 5 that's the only one where I was like, this bit has stopped working for me.

Speaker 3 Actually, while we're on bits that weren't working, what did you make of the overall like stolen ambulance subplot?

Speaker 3 Because I have to say the like constant, oh, let's check in on our betting board, while I understand like the gallows humor, like coping mechanism aspect of that.

Speaker 3 I just thought we got a lot of airtime about this subplot that did not really work for me at all.

Speaker 5 Something that it helped for me is it got it, I felt like we spent more time with like the security staff and the nurses in a way that I thought was really useful.

Speaker 5 And at this point, I feel like, I mean, I can name all of the nurses and

Speaker 5 most of the security staff, you know, and I think that came from checking in with primarily them around the ambulance betting.

Speaker 3 It's a great call.

Speaker 5 And then the comedy of like, you know. PR, like everyone getting it, the social worker gets it involved

Speaker 5 gets involved. So like, I, I

Speaker 5 mostly feel what you're saying there. I think it served a larger purpose that actually worked in the end of the day.

Speaker 5 For me, in terms of like the characters that I feel, it's not even that their storyline is most interested in. I'm having a sort of stereotypical Mallory Rubin protect this person at all cost reaction

Speaker 5 to Dr. King, to Mel.

Speaker 5 I feel

Speaker 5 very tenderly towards

Speaker 5 Mel.

Speaker 3 She just wants a friend so bad. So bad.

Speaker 5 Maybe someone to kiss. Who knows?

Speaker 5 Taylor Dearden, who I called out in like the first couple episodes we covered, is someone that I've really enjoyed in other things. She's playing something completely different in this.

Speaker 5 So it's really fun to see her range. And I just found, I find everything, she does these like little

Speaker 5 non-verbal, and I don't know if it's scripted or not, like little moments of excitement of like, can I look at that chart? Or let me pull my gloves out. I'm really excited to do this sort of thing.

Speaker 5 And just like making a meal out of inside of her performance, out of something that could come out across as like

Speaker 5 very robotic, you know, the comedy is in, but like, how can you not feel tenderly towards someone who watches a lava lamp on her phone to calm down? You know?

Speaker 3 Honestly, will I be doing that after the NBA trade deadline this week?

Speaker 3 Tune back in to find out. That seems very soothing.

Speaker 5 I understand that reference now, Ron.

Speaker 3 The one thing she did as far as the little choices go, I would love to know if this is in the script or not. Yeah.

Speaker 3 When Whitaker changes into his like fourth or fifth set of scrubs, this time from the Lost and Found, and has to wear the scrubs that are too short, someone mentions his ankles, and she just does like a crane to check out his ankles.

Speaker 3 This is a delight. She's great.

Speaker 5 She's wonderful.

Speaker 5 Should we talk about Dr. Santos, which is

Speaker 5 sort of the broadest performance without, and the most definitely abrasive character

Speaker 5 in the show

Speaker 5 outside of Doug Driscoll in the waiting room.

Speaker 5 I have sort of a theory about this, but I'm curious how this character is working for you and what you think of that.

Speaker 3 It's the character I enjoy watching the least.

Speaker 3 I understand the need in especially a 15 episode season that somebody's got to arc somewhere. And this is a day of work and nobody's going to be a fully transformed person.

Speaker 3 So it's going to be baby steps. And so she is a natural sort of character to be at a different point by the end of the season.
And And I'm sure we're going to get there.

Speaker 3 I also think for as much as I don't really enjoy spending time with that character, I think she is of a really important archetype that many of our new medical professional friends can speak to, which is that hospitals, in my experience, and this is knowing many people who work in them, no offense to any of those people, are full.

Speaker 3 of overconfident know-it-alls, especially student doctors and interns, right? There's a lot of confidence.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of bravado, especially these people who are like trying to get into very competitive subfields and on the surgery track.

Speaker 3 And like, this is is a person who looks very familiar to me and feels very familiar to me. Do I like all of her plot lines? Often no, maybe universally no.

Speaker 3 But the representation of that sort of personality type is pretty important, I think, in this setting.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you mentioned that archetype, and I would say we can identify it in someone like if you're a Gray's Anatomy watcher, Sandra O's, Christina Yang, like someone who's just like very confident and very competitive and all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 5 And this this is just a much more sort of dialed-up version of that. I think Christine Yang is one of my favorite TV characters that ever existed.

Speaker 5 I have to wonder, we're getting sort of the beginning of a story about her,

Speaker 5 I don't know, noticing something funky with the drugs and vials that she's questioning.

Speaker 5 Here's my question about that:

Speaker 5 Are they setting her up as someone that people are like unlikely to

Speaker 5 want to listen to or take seriously because her personality is so abrasive. But perhaps she is able to see something that other people aren't able to see or something like that.
Do you know?

Speaker 3 That does seem possible. I mean, not only are we getting this set up with the vials, we're also getting this set up of her sort of investigating what happens if I disagree with my resident.
Like

Speaker 3 at what point do I need to go over their head? And right now that feels like a liability, right? Right now, that feels like a big problem within the context of this ER.

Speaker 3 But by the end of the season, season, you're right. Like there may be something that she sees that other people don't, or just a perspective that she has that other people don't for whatever reason.

Speaker 3 You know, like these people are all flying around managing so many cases at once.

Speaker 3 It's not implausible that the student doctor, because they are managing a little bit less at a given point in time, might see a detail that would be more pertinent.

Speaker 5 Or she's just being set up to have an inappropriate relationship with Dr. Garcia, who

Speaker 5 should be fired, should be aggressively fired from.

Speaker 3 What's going on?

Speaker 5 let's talk about uh

Speaker 5 dana evans the charge nurse uh catherine lanassa who we called out in our previous episode as someone we sort of really enjoyed this is a tremendously good performance very good this is just incredibly good similar to dr robbie whenever she zooms into whatever storyline she's going to zoom in i'm always happy to see her yeah She also feels like a very familiar archetype, like someone who has just been there, seen everything,

Speaker 5 able to have a smile on her face, this very like wry, knowing smile, some

Speaker 5 like a nice word for people without being chipper or bubbly. She's not sort of like an effervescent person, but she's just a sort of like,

Speaker 5 listen, I've seen the weirdest things I could possibly see. I've seen it all.
You can't surprise me. I'm here to support you.

Speaker 5 I am concerned about this.

Speaker 3 Not like she doesn't care, but it's just like a very interesting flavor of person and one that i also feel like i recognize so yeah and one that in the context of a hospital doing this much triage is just so essential to the architecture of it like you need someone who's going to hear you out and make sure that this isn't a bigger thing that needs to be addressed immediately but also knows this is probably more of a you problem this is not that big of a deal in the context of an er like this like her perspective really is invaluable and i'm totally with you like that performance that character is so well pitched i think overall the representations representations of that, of people who know what they're doing and have seen a lot, but aren't so worn down by the experience that they're cynical or that they're rude, or even to the, you know, the student doctors and the interns who are like so learning on the fly and have what might be stupid questions in the context of a place like this.

Speaker 3 Like she will entertain them in a non-judgmental way, but also isn't really going out of her way to baby them either.

Speaker 5 There's also the, you know, the staff of nurses, your Mateos, your Perlas, your Jesse's, you're all these people um

Speaker 5 and how

Speaker 5 how well oiled their machine runs we're hearing comments here and there about we could use more money absolutely like that's that's a that's an ongoing thing from the nursing staff but the but the contrast and and every

Speaker 5 Actually, I think ER and this show do it better than Gray's ever did. And those are like my main three medical shows that I've ever watched.
But like that constant push and pull of

Speaker 5 the interns and the student doctors and the nurses who know way more than they do.

Speaker 3 Right. So much more.
Yeah.

Speaker 5 And that's just like, that's an excellent, juicy dynamic at play there.

Speaker 5 Of the, of the sort of

Speaker 5 checkoffs, whatever, what are some of the storylines that are lingering in the background

Speaker 5 and that you have your eye on? And is it what is going to happen at PitFest?

Speaker 3 Look, it is what's going to happen at PitFest. I was trying to think of just based on the name PitFest alone, which

Speaker 3 sure is Pittsburgh, but also is quite evocative in its own way. And it's in a circle the pit kind of way.
Oh, sure.

Speaker 3 But I don't see PitFest as being just based off of this kid who's going necessarily a metal or metal adjacent affair. It feels very

Speaker 3 alt-rock,

Speaker 3 slightly vintage act, a little allapalooza. Yeah.
But I could see like a Green Day headliner at PitFest. I could see an incubus appearance at PitFest.

Speaker 3 I could see a wild card like Cheryl Crowe at PitFest.

Speaker 5 Cheryl loves to play PitFest.

Speaker 3 I could see, in light of recent events, maybe a Benson Boone, like if he can stop backflipping for three seconds,

Speaker 3 being on a B stage at PitFest. Congratulations to him for his new booking.

Speaker 3 I wish we would get PitFest. And we get the sort of PitFest expanded universe because one of the roadies who was like setting up for it comes in because he fell off a ladder or something like that.

Speaker 3 I can't remember what his intention is.

Speaker 5 People have mentioned PitFest. We've gotten mentioned from like

Speaker 5 roadies. We've got students who need to get to PitFest.
You know, there's like it, it just really feels like this is building to some sort of massive event.

Speaker 5 Bad, something bad's going to happen at PitFest, is what it is.

Speaker 3 That makes me very concerned that we're going to get a collision of PitFest and Incel Kids plot lines.

Speaker 5 Incel shooter, because we thought maybe, given the like sort of hours in the day

Speaker 3 that we were going to get like a school shooting, but do you feel like we might get like a pit fest shooting we might get a pit fest and that would give dr robbie like a very personal stake in what's happening in addition to the trauma of you know patients rolling in i also want to say you know we get some little flashbacks to dr adamson yes uh robbie's mentor and like maybe what happened that day and cook there's a moment where robbie locks eyes with a cartoon fox on the wall of the of one of the the patient rooms

Speaker 3 of the family room and this is like clearly where dr adamson was being treated. And we see kind of in the background, there's another, what looks like it might be a child in a bed alongside Dr.

Speaker 3 Adamson. And so I kind of wonder if maybe it's maybe both Dr.
Adamson and one of Dr. Adamson's children both died.

Speaker 3 You know, maybe there is a larger thing that is now going to be evoked when Robbie's own son or stepson or whatever they're, it's hard to say what their relationship is. It seems like it's his son.

Speaker 3 If he's suddenly put in peril by a shooter at PitFest, hypothetically.

Speaker 5 It feels like that's,

Speaker 5 it just feels sorry. I don't know about inevitable, but like.

Speaker 3 Some things have surprised. I did not expect a prosthetic penis spraying urine everywhere.
Like, I didn't think that was going to happen on this show, but here we are.

Speaker 5 But here we are in the pit together.

Speaker 3 Here we are with the kraken.

Speaker 5 Okay, before we leave the pit, you and I,

Speaker 5 let's circle back to Dr. Bangs.
What do you want to say about Dr. Bangs before we go?

Speaker 3 I just think we need to know less about each other. And Dr.
Bangs needs to stop telling everyone in her life.

Speaker 3 It's one thing to tell your long held treasured colleagues who you have an established relationship with. Right.

Speaker 3 Very personal information.

Speaker 3 She is telling this mom who is struggling to make ends meet, a patient who has come into the hospital so much about her own life that this patient is freaked out by the level of intimacy that is being displayed.

Speaker 3 And I'm all for people sharing their feelings. Given what Dr.
Banks has gone through, which is, as we are told, addiction, this like rock bottom moment. She's losing custody of her kids.

Speaker 3 She's now getting it back. She's trying to get this ankle monitor off.
She may have murdered several people or maybe just made a joke about it or both.

Speaker 3 I just feel like she didn't murder several people.

Speaker 5 That's what I feel like is.

Speaker 3 You don't think she shot a man in Reno just to watch him die? You don't think that's a thing she's done?

Speaker 5 I don't think so. I don't think so.

Speaker 5 I really like this about Dr. Banks because Dr.
Banks,

Speaker 5 it really is catchy, Rob. You should be proud of yourself.

Speaker 3 It's the well-made furniture of nicknames to the future

Speaker 5 TV character.

Speaker 5 Dr. Bangs

Speaker 5 is,

Speaker 5 again, both great and bad at her job. Yep.
She's extremely good. She's extremely canny at sort of diagnosing what's going on with people.
But like, when it comes to then handling that. You're right.

Speaker 5 The sort of the line between professional and personal gets really blurry. And

Speaker 5 who knows when the rest of those rats are going to show up? That's my other question.

Speaker 3 There is one person who understands and it's Dr. Collins.
Everyone else, just moving on. Not worried about the rats.
Exactly. Well, on the Dr.

Speaker 3 Bangs front, I was pleasantly surprised by, you know, with this mother who is dealing with all this and trying to take care of her kids and coming in for the Sterno burn and has been kind of further burdened by the details of Dr.

Speaker 3 Bangs' life.

Speaker 3 I actually was pleasantly surprised, pleasantly surprised by when Javati comes in and sort of oversteps and freaks her out and causes this patient to leave abruptly, that we didn't get the sort of big, explosive, frustrated moment from Dr.

Speaker 3 Bangs. It was very much mother of a young child who has learned how to swallow a thing down that she's really feeling.

Speaker 3 But her turning it, turning like hours of work. And a day, you know, this whole day's worth of investment waiting for this mother to come back.

Speaker 3 And she finally has her in a receptive place, at least something resembling one.

Speaker 3 And for it to get blown in a second because of a thoughtless moment from basically a literal child, Dookie Hauser type who is being a doctor who has no life experience and turning it into the teachable moment of, and I think we're kind of circling this overall with everything that's happening with Javati so far is like, it helps you to be a doctor if you have lived, right?

Speaker 3 If you have some context and experience for what people are going through. And she doesn't have that yet.

Speaker 3 She clearly has had her nose in a book for a really long time and is precocious and smart and qualified to be here in some ways. But also

Speaker 5 like 19?

Speaker 3 I think 17.

Speaker 5 17, yeah.

Speaker 3 I think it could be. No, I think that's right.
If you're deep on the Javati lore, please email us at prestige TV at spotify.com as to her exact age. But

Speaker 3 she has a lot to learn and she has a lot to learn just as a person navigating the world and how you should speak to other people and what might set them off in a setting like this.

Speaker 5 I think we did the pit. I think we excavated to the very bottom of the pit.
I had a great time. I'm really enjoying the show.
I think this is

Speaker 5 an excellent. If you had to pick what piece of well-made furniture, let's expand on this.

Speaker 3 Oh, yes, yes.

Speaker 5 Pick what piece of well-made furniture this is. What would you say it is?

Speaker 3 I'm trying to think of the biggest contrast point because all furniture these days, most of it, is quite poorly made. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so what would be the most meaningful to you if it was suddenly well-made?

Speaker 5 I have my answer. Easy.

Speaker 3 Couch, couch feels spot on to me.

Speaker 3 Well-worn, comfortable you're gonna spend look if you're if you're in our line of work a lot of a lot of your life a lot of couch time yeah a lot of quality couch time it's like it's one of those things that you don't want to have a big slump in the middle it's one of those things that you you want to feel structurally sound that's true i'm going to go bookcase um also you would i would but

Speaker 5 but like

Speaker 5 With love and respect to the Billy bookcase from Ikea, those things lean, like, especially if you move a lot, which I do, like those things lean, they get so rickety, you can't like trust it's going to hold up your books or whatever.

Speaker 5 But a well-made bookcase that's going to stay yard, that's going to stay true and hold up the stories, the various stories they're watching here, interweave and intermingle in the pit.

Speaker 3 I actually was just lamenting, Joe, in the process of one of my past moves from one apartment to the other across the country.

Speaker 3 Moved into a smaller space, did not have room for the size of bookcase that I had originally, which were these these giant, beautiful, like oak bookcases. Oh my God.

Speaker 3 And I made the difficult decision to part with them and, you know, to try to sell them before the move. Just I literally didn't have the space for it.
And now I'm looking around.

Speaker 3 I'm like, I don't even know where I would buy a piece of furniture like that anymore or how much money it would surely cost me.

Speaker 3 I fucked up really bad parting with those bookcases.

Speaker 5 Wood-like substance.

Speaker 3 Clearly, that's what I meant, whether I knew it or not.

Speaker 3 So if you do have beautiful bookcases out there, there, treasure them, hold on to them tightly, you know, just as we will with the pit for the rest of the season.

Speaker 3 You know, this is a joy to have in our lives.

Speaker 5 What a joy. What a treasure.
We will be back for at least one more pit stop

Speaker 5 here as we track

Speaker 5 the 12 more episodes of the pit that we get to cover.

Speaker 5 And we will be back with more Severance.

Speaker 5 And White Lotus is starting up, and that's going to be covered in a very significant way on this feed. Oh, yeah.
So get all of your, you know, tropical drinks ready for that.

Speaker 5 And Rob and I, if you have not seen it, Rob and I will be talking about Buffy Vampire Slayer. So that is on the Ringer TV YouTube feed.
PressETV at spotify.com. We love to hear from you.

Speaker 5 Whether you're a medical professional or not, I will leave you with this. Thanks, of course, to John Richter today for helping Rob Podcast from the Void.
Thanks to Kai Grady,

Speaker 5 as always. Thanks to Justin Sales for his work on everything.
And thanks to my dad

Speaker 5 who texted me a review of the pit.

Speaker 5 Thanks, Dad.

Speaker 3 You're the best.

Speaker 3 Bye.