‘The Pitt’ Series Premiere: ‘ER’ Is (Kind of) Back!

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I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney.
And we're here with you for the next 15 hours to cover the first two episodes. No, I'm just kidding.
We're here for the next hour to cover the first two episodes of the HBO Max series, The Pit. This is a double premiere.
So if you watched one episode and didn't know that they dropped two, we'll be covering both so that's your spoiler warning for the pit rob mahoney yes as always press chtv at spotify.com if you have pit thoughts uh you know we'll repeat it again later uh what is the pit and and why should or should not people be watching it i I mean, the pit itself is what? Hell? Oh. Our descent into the underworld? The inferno.
Okay. All right.
The absolute inferno. The pit for the purposes of this show, I would say specifically the ER portion of the hospital at, do we know what the broader Pittsburgh general? It's a Pittsburgh trauma medical hospital.
Thank you. PTMH.
Just rolls off the tongue. Rolls.
Thank you. I think it's just a lovely place to spend some time with an assortment of doctors and med students as they deal with just really whatever trauma or issue or general larger societal concern happens to roll through the front door?

This is a 15 episode, 15-ish hours, like 50-minute episode, so we get a little 10-minute wiggle room. That's the smoking break.
Yeah, there you go. That's the flashback to COVID.
Um, this is, uh, a 15 hours in the, in the overnight shift essentially of,, of a, an ER at a trauma medical hospital in Pittsburgh. It is from a few of the folks who made ER.
So we'll talk about that in a second. And it stars Noah Wiley, famously one of the stars of ER.
So it is a sort of, it is as it is so much a quasi er sequel spinoff that michael creighton's widows sued you know what no it's not er it's 100 not er um so you know we're definitely we're in pittsburgh we're not in chicago it's definitely different. Yep.
But let's say Noah Wiley has a beard now. Yeah.

It's definitely not different. Yep.
But let's say... Noah Wiley has a beard now.
It could not be the same guy. Could not possibly be any different than ER.
But we are going to talk a little bit about ER and just sort of in a historical context kind of thing. And it makes me feel like dust in my bones to say historical context in ER.
But our beloved producer, Kai Grady, is a good deal younger than us and is very helpful in reminding me that not everyone grew up watching ER. And so I just wanted to give you a little or give anyone who's listening a little bit of context.
So Landman, a show that has been on our minds and uh in our hearts near and dear to your hearts across several podcasts land man is like

being touted as this like cultural phenomenon the monoculture's back baby and land man's at the head

of it and all this sort of stuff like that so they are bringing in as far as i could tell with some

like googling around 15 million households sort of uh, you know, streaming era. So like over the course of the week, 15 million households are tuning in to Landman.
And that is just like amazing numbers. Incredible.
ER got 30 million households in its first season. And I kind of peaked at 35 million households.
ER ran for 15 seasons, 331 episodes of ER exist in the world. And just in season one, just to remind people what a phenomenon it was, season one, it was nominated for 23 Emmys.
Every single cast member was nominated. That's incredible.
It won directing, it won writing, it won like Julianna Margul's one like it and then like it won you know best drama the in its second season it was like it had a grip on everyone from 94 on and then obviously it like sort of waned a bit as it went on um it's obviously not the first medical procedural those existed before st elsewhere china beach etc but um it definitely changed the game and was just this massive um in terms of setting something in the r which both of these shows are uh it changes the medical procedure from like a soapy workplace drama which you know oftentimes something's Anatomy is, to like a constant adrenaline pumping sort of experience. ER, the two-hour pilot of ER was actually a Michael Crichton film script that they just sort of like changed slightly.
Hence the pending litigation. And Michael Crichton was a medical student.
And so this is based on, so Noah Wiley's playing John Carter in ER. And that is basically the Michael Crichton insert into what it was like to be a brand new scrubbed face, fresh eyed med student coming into a jaded metropolis ER.
which we get in this show. And this time, Noah Wiley is our sort of grizzled head of the department.
Rob Mahoney. Joanna Robinson.
What is your experience of a medical procedural? And how do you feel about a medical procedural of sorts coming to HBO Max? I would say my experience is pretty scant. It's mostly tropey.
It's mostly dropping in occasionally on shows like ER, which I was not a dedicated watcher of by any stretch of the imagination. You can't avoid these things if you have been watching television regularly.
But I would say my enjoyment most of medical-oriented TV has been more on the parody side, more on the children's hospital side of this spectrum. So I'm enjoying getting in the lane in earnest and taking this thing at face value and engaging with it on its terms because this is not a genre that is explicitly for me.
That said, I love a ride. I love a roller coaster.
I do love the adrenaline pumping that you're talking about, not just with the ER, but in this case with the pit. The mechanisms here, I think, can work for a lot of different people.
It's kind of undeniable once you start rolling gurneys into room and shouting a lot that you're just going to be interested in what's happening. It's funny.
I was comparing the medical jargon in this because I rewatched the the er pilot uh and i was i watching the first steps of the pit i was like i feel like they've gotten bolder with the depth of the medical jargon that they're willing to babble at each other inside of this whereas in like er it was just like intubate push several cc's of saline like like there's just like a few things that you would say in ER and I feel like we got like the whole gamut of possibilities inside of this show. But yeah, there are a few sort of signposts of the genre that are existing in ER and this, but once again, for legal purposes, this is not a sequel, but- Definitely not ER.
Definitely not a reboot of VR that was then quickly repurposed into a different show. That didn't happen.
Don't worry. It didn't happen.
Don't worry about it. Uh, John Wells is here, uh, you know, a TV legend, uh, made ER and West Wing and a bunch of other stuff and is also here, but it's not an ER sequel.
Don't worry about it. But, um, there's a few things that are quite helpful inside of a medical procedural like this that are easy to help us understand the world.
The concept of the brand new, it's their first day medical students coming into the department. So they get exposition dumped on them as they're toured around.
Well, they also do a lot of dumping to be fair. Everyone is exposition dumping in this show.
Okay, that's different. The personal life exposition dumping is, I think, actually, by far the weakest part of the show, and we will talk about that in a second.
I don't know. When I walk into a room, I try to tell people one relevant detail about me that will define my entire personality.
That's usually what I lead with. I got a kid, you know what I mean? And as a mother of children, I just wanted to say that to you.
That was the worst one. Okay.
The challenge of the pit faces with its high concept, which is 15 hours inside of a shift, which is different legally and definitely different from ER. Here are some challenges and we haven't watched beyond the first two episodes, but here are some potential challenges here.
Will it feel claustrophobic to be just inside of the hospital? We got to the roof uh in episode one um but we're not like as we are in er uh you know riding the l or you know going across the street for a cup of coffee or whatever else the case may be we're not going home with these people necessarily is my assumption um will it feel claustrophobic to be inside of can how much can a character arc over 15 hours of a shift versus an entire season of television that takes place over weeks months years etc um and then also this flashback device which we get at the very end of the first episode which is you know uh our main character played by no Noah Wiley, has a sort of traumatic flashback to COVID era and what it was like in the ER. And we hear, we get the little drops of information about a colleague who died four years ago.
So what is that story and how will that unfold in flashback as sort of like a pressure valve release potentially for being locked into 15 hours with a group of people. Any thoughts about that, about like this high concept and how you feel, you know, obviously we shows exist like 24 movies exist, like go, you know, like we've been in this sort of like ticking clock environment before in our lives, but how does this work for you?

Yeah, I think it's a huge reason why this probably isn't a binge drop and why it doesn't make sense as a binge show. Week to week, you can go out in your real life and come back to the hospital for an hour and feel okay about that.
And I think that depressurization is going to be a really important part of the experience of watching this show. not just because it is in these very confined settings,

which are not even hospital rooms so much as like hospital beds surrounded by... is going to be a really important part of the experience of watching this show.
Not just because it is in these very confined settings,

which are not even hospital rooms

so much as like hospital beds

surrounded by curtains

in which all of these cases

are stacked on top of each other.

You need some relief from that

in terms of the time and space.

As far as the character arcing,

I think my counter to that would be

that this does not seem to be a show

that is terribly interested in character

and maybe shouldn't be. I think ultimately the architecture is what drives it and they are trying and I would say ultimately not succeeding very much to this point in peppering in some character details, some existing relationships, some new relationships.
They're trying to tease things out between these people as they go about making their rounds. I don't think that's what's drawing this show.
I don't think that's what's going to be pulling people in. And certainly not what keeps people watching week to week.
I almost think about it more of like the pit to me in terms of like balancing character and case has a lot more in common with like law and order than it does a character driven drama. Okay.
On the one hand, yes. And i see what you're saying um and we should note that uh uh r scott gemmel is the is the technical showrunner of the show and he worked on er yes but also jag and ncis so he's like very much a procedural guy the difference between the pit and even the difference between the pit and er even is these cases are going to be bleeding.
We're not just a case of the weaking. No, not at all.
These things. And we're even dropping some things.
Like in the first two episodes, we meet a troubled youth who wants to hurt people. And it would not be who's the son of a woman who came in and faked being ill so that she could get her son like a psych consult, essentially.
and like I would not be who's who's the son of a woman who came in and faked being ill so that she could get her son like a psych consult essentially and like i would not be surprised if this sounds so jaded of me but like and and and i'm not sure that i wanted it all but like if we got a mass shooting from that character like you know they failed to track him down right and if we got that as a case later in the season of like his victims come in or something like that, I feel like those are the long arc bridges that they're trying to build. There's certainly like we have a character who is like secretly pregnant.
That is something that is going to be, you know, percolating throughout the season. We've got a character who's related to an important uh member of staff in the hospital two it sounds like i was was texting with cr a little bit about the pit and like asking if he had watched it what he thought and like we didn't talk that much about it and he will certainly go into it on the watch and we don't want to like you know double dip on anything but the one thing he said to me he's like it like, it's missing Doug and Carol, which is George Clooney and Julianna Margulies' characters from ER.
And that's what made me want to rewatch the pilot. Cause I was like, what do they do with Doug and Carol? These two, you know, star-crossed lovers, essentially, in the ER in the first episode.
And like famously, spoilers for ER, Julianna Margulies plays this like, you know, beautiful and popular nurse who's just like sort of the life of the party for the first half of the episode. She goes, she goes home, she attempts suicide.
And so she's brought it. So it's like one of those, like one of our own brought in as the patient for the back half of this two hour pilot.
She was supposed to die in the pilot. Her character was so popular, a real Jesse Pinkman situation that they just like brought her back and she became a co-lead on the show.
But this, the fact that like, this could not be more personal. The ER pilot, this could not be more about it.
The ER pilot opens with Doug Ross is played by George Clooney coming in drunk and they have to like hook him up to like saline and sober him up and all that sort of stuff like that so like our personal lives are so enmeshed in that show in a way that this to your point is much more go go go go case case case case there's way more characters more staff to keep track of. I was having to constantly consult my notes to track all the people that we meet in these first two episodes.
Do you think there's a chance of overwhelm when it comes to all the medical students and residents, etc., etc.?

I think so.

But I also think it's part of the design of the show

is that everything that's happening, character and otherwise,

is supposed to feel overwhelming.

Ultimately, in the show's defense,

I think this is why some of the characterizations

are as simple and straightforward as they are.

It's just going to be hard, especially in the early episodes,

to internalize four different things about one character. And so it's easy at this point.
It's like, oh, this is the prodigy. This is the single mom.
This is the farm boy, right? You can put people into these boxes very, very quickly and give them some identifying characteristics. And for now, I think that's enough two episodes in.
Mostly because I think the cases themselves are really interesting and pretty compelling. And I am amazed at how much they have to burn through

in a single episode, much less two,

and how they are possibly,

I say this from like a writer's room perspective,

going to be able to keep up with the uncompromising

and unrelenting pace of what it means

to work in one of these specific ERs.

Like in these two episodes,

here is a semi-complete list of some of the cases that are walking in the door. A classic Rob Mahoney moment.
Let's have it. A woman whose foot was run over by a train and the guy who fell and hit his head trying to save her, the teen with the fentanyl overdose, a guy in a bike accident with a broken face, and I have to say, as far as the gnarly medical part of the show, and I want to circle back to that, the facial reset really, really got me.
I did not enjoy watching that. You have an older man with sepsis.
You have a homeless man who is DOA, but brings a bunch of rats with him. You have a mom who made herself sick, as you alluded to, Joe, to get help for her son, psychologically speaking.
You have this dude with a gallstone that's not just a gallstone. You have a workman who cut into a live wire.

You have a four-year-old who ate weed gummies.

You have a triathlete whose heart is giving out.

You have a dude who woke up

with a shock collar gorilla glued to his neck.

And I'm sure that there's more that I'm forgetting.

And this is two episodes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I forgot about the shock collar guy.

Great.

Very good.

Great one, great one. The advantage uh great shout to all of that um the medical procedural as like a way to give us a bunch of little short stories a little look inside the lives of you know the working men and women of pittsburgh uh is unden delectable.
And especially in the ER when they come in with just like strained things that they've ingested or have impaled themselves on or et cetera, et cetera, whatever the case may be. And it makes it so it's like a natural mechanism to juggle all those stories too because you just have like Noah Wiley's character as a chief attending making his rounds.
Like this is literally his job to check in on all of these stories over a short period of time. This is one thing.
And like, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not a doctor. But I did, I did used to watch, I did used to watch ER with my medical professional parents and they were just like constantly like, what the shit is like they were they were but a question i have about this uh and uh press ccv at spotify.com if you

were a medical professional and you have insight into this is like everything i know about an er

i learned from the television show er and it seems wild to me that no wiley's character uh Dr. Robby

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Robby Dr. Robby are and it seems wild to me that noah wiley's character uh dr robbie uh rabinowitz is across all of these cases you know what i mean there's like there's echelons of uh you know there's attendings there's residents there's medical students you're like blah blah there's like layers the fact that he as head of the unit is just sort of like across all of it at all times in er at least there was like a different echelon where there were like a few people at the top and so the fact that he is carrying the show and by the way i think noah wiley's great uh He's quite good in this.
I think he's really good in this. I think especially the moments in which he has to like give news to, you know, people about their loved ones or interact with people about their loved ones.
He's really conveying, like I've seen it all and yet maintained my humanity um i'm not jaded by this yet um i i thought that worked quite well but yeah it was it just like and again i don't i don't know how the fictional pittsburgh uh medical trauma hospital uh works but that just seemed like that's the only thing that stretched you knowity for me. I could accept the rats and everything else, but this is like one thing where I was like, they don't, he has to be across all of it all the time for 15 hours? Is that what's happening? I mean, yes and no, because he does have his senior residents who are kind of, you know, the level of bureaucracy below him in terms of the overall org chart here, who are, yes, also over these cases.
And he's kind of swooping in mostly when they need help or gets a little too big for their dealings or need a consultation or need an opinion on these things. But I do think the show is very much engaging with not just these cases, not just its attempts at the personal dramas of these characters, but also gesturing somewhat at the broader complications of running a hospital in the year 2025.
You know, we get some extended sequences about like the importance of metrics in these spaces and how, you know, in real life hospitals are basically like tailoring the entire way that they operate to satisfy these metrics in lots of different ways. You also get this extended conversation about how understaffed they are, about how there are beds to take.
It's just they literally won't hire enough nurses to help them manage them and help occupy them at this point in time. And so when you open the show with, you know, Sean Hattesey makes a brief appearance in the first episode as basically the guy...
I'm sure he'll be back. I would hope.
Either in flashbacks or he'll clock in like, you know, in the of the season for his I could see it just be premiere finale honestly where he he shows up to spell Noah Wiley at the end and they you know do it they dap it up and he's on his way like good morning Ralph good morning okay well he is a John Wells guy and so if it's like this is calling in a favor for a good working actor

to come play a part

that he's maybe like a little overqualified for.

I could see that.

But surely, I mean,

like he's connected to the flashback plotline,

which surely we're going to like keep revisiting, right?

We have to see him in the flashback, right?

Well, I don't know if you heard,

but it is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's death.

Don't talk about it.

If you don't remember, don't worry.

Someone will follow you into the bathroom to remind you that it is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's death.
Don't talk about it. If you don't remember, don't worry.
Someone will follow you into the bathroom to remind you that it is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's death.
So, tread lightly. On the one hand, I agree with you.
On the other hand, I think it's kind of a trope staple of the medical procedural that you have the administrator who's like, I'm here to talk to you about the business of running a hospital. It is interesting.
I was interested comparing the ER pilot to this one. We have such a different relationship to our informed state about the healthcare system and its fuck-up-up-edness.
I'm not saying that it wasn't fucked up in the 90s, but I think we as a... This is we as a country are much angrier much more informed about how fucked up it is and so i was curious how much that would be reflected inside of this show but re-watching er pilot they're like they're listening to the radio and they're talking about like um health insurance and the uninsured and all this sort of stuff.
So, um, I don't's been a long problem here in these here United States. But yeah, I'll be interested to see how much this administrator character and this bureaucracy angle plays a part over the next 13 hours of this particular shift.
One thing in her defense, she seems to be the only person who is appropriately bothered by the number of rats that are now running around the ER. From the moment that the four rats pop out of this guy's clothes, I would say Dr.
Collins, who's the senior resident who's pregnant, she is like, hell no. I'm not dealing with this.
She's out. Everyone else, Dr.
Robby in particular, is like, yeah, another day in the office. My guy, you got to get these rats out of here.
He's seen it all. And I don't know if you know that.
Okay. Can I give you a high point, low point of leaving Noah Wiley aside, who is the star power of the show, whether or not you would say Noah Wiley is a star, he is a star.
If you're making an ER.

He's a television star.

He's a television star.

And so he's the anchor of,

of this show.

He's across everything.

As we said,

do you have a high point,

low point of any of the other characters that we met in these first two

hours?

This is tough.

Cause it's like low point as a character,

Dr.

McKay,

who is the single mom,

who I just call Dr. Bangs as I'm watching this show.

Aggressive bang situation.

Very aggressive bangs.

I actually think like Fiona Durif, who's playing that part,

is doing her damnedest to make this a human being in some respect.

But this part is not a person.

You saying the actor's name just made me realize

that she's Brad Durif's daughter.

Brad Durif.

The legend, Brad Durif.

Thank you. is not a person.
You saying the actor's name just made me realize that she's Brad Dourif's daughter. Brad Dourif.
The legend, Brad Dourif. Who is many things, but also Grieve a Wormtongue, but many other things.
Yes. Billy Babbitt, et cetera, et cetera.
Doc Cochran, he'll always be to me. Of course.
I also learned that Taylor Dearden, who plays Mel, is Bryan Cranston's daughter. This was a high point for me.
So Taylor Dearden was on an MTV show called Sweet Vicious that was canceled after one season. And I loved her on that show.
And she played a very, very, very different character on that show. So this babe is not just a Nebo baby.
She has range. I actually thought she was the standout.
She's my high point, actually.

And I understand when you early, I think,

referred to her as the... Oh, no, no, she's not the prodigy.

The prodigy would be the younger...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The 20-year-old med student.

Right, right, right.

But she is very type A in her own way,

et cetera, et cetera.

I loved her.

There was something about...

She wasn't given more to do than anyone else, but I think she did more with it than anyone else. Well, she was given more Megan Thee Stallion lyrics to recite, which I think is powerful and important.
Incredible stuff from her, I think. I would say a low point for me so far, though I'm not ready to write him off, is Dr.
Linden, who was referred to er ken at one point um and also says uh sorry i did a fellowship in cynicism and i wrote that wasn't that wasn't good i wrote oh brother in my notes but on the he's paired with my favorite who is taylor taylor jordan as dr king and so um you know to go back to this is definitely not an er reboot or er sequel that sort of like uh if you watched er john carter dr bennett sort of like um a resident medical student relationship is is one to potentially watch because i like that they're like quite they're quite oil and water in their own way. Definitely.
But already we're seeing some sort of interesting bridges being built there. I also love her place in the show.
As you said, a lot of characters, I think, depending on your level of familiarity with how hospitals work, and I am not professing to be an expert by any means just like a wide range of rankings relative to other people and levels of experience at play and I think Mel Dr. King as a resident but a transfer is kind of like a nice compliment because it's like everyone else who's new is also a pretty young med student and is like learning very much on the fly she's put into a space where she gets to be pretty competent and she clearly knows her stuff, but she's new to this space and like this level of intensity and frequency.
And so it's cool to see, you know, doctors of varying kinds of backgrounds and med students of varying kinds of backgrounds, including ones that are just like, not just in over their head because the cases are weird and hard, but because of the sheer volume of what's coming through the door. Yeah, absolutely.
Hi, here's your report. Thanks, Jane.
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Visit the website for full terms and conditions. This is something that ER did

really well,

is the nursing staff.

And so

Catherine Lanasa

as Nurse Evans, Dana Evans,

I thought she was wonderful.

Even though she's

playing a recognizable archetype,

I thought she did a great job with it.

Well, let's be real. Everyone on this show is playing a recognizable archetype.
I thought she did a great job with it. Well, let's be real.

Everyone on this show is playing a recognizable

archetype. That's true.

It's not even a criticism. I think it's just

an acknowledgement that we have to make. Maybe most

especially Dr. Banks herself, but I

think that like...

Did we mention she has an ankle monitor? Do we even

call that out?

We neglected to mention that she has an ankle

monitor. And she's

a return student. She's like,

you know, entering the medical

Thank you. Call that out.
We neglected to mention that she has an ankle monitor. And she's a return student.
She's entering the medical profession and quite a bit older than other folks. But as gratifying as the med school experience was for her, Joe, it just wasn't as important as having her son.
It just wasn't as big for her. They make s'mores together and sometimes they eat pizza.
Did you know that about them? I did hear that. I did hear that.
Just making sure. Yeah, but the head nurse, who is sort of like the real brains behind the operation of the hospital, and we meet a few others among the nursing staff.
And this show, much like ER, has the consistent message of like, listen to the nurses. The nurses know what they're talking about.
Don't disrespect the nurses. Don't cross the nurses.
This is an important part of the power structure at the hospital in general. I think the nurses are also really important too to one of my favorite parts about this being an ER versus a hospital show, as you said.
If you're in more of a leisurely, normal hospital pace,

you can have the soapy elements,

you can have all this other stuff going on. I actually really like that triage

is an active plot device in the pit.

It's like for these doctors going through the waiting room

and identifying something that looks especially fishy

or looks especially urgent,

and they are pulling those people into rooms and trying to help them immediately. It really does.
like everything on this show,

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this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, looks especially fishy or looks especially urgent and they are pulling those people into rooms and trying to help them immediately it really like everything on this show the stakes feel pretty high like these are life and death cases a lot of the times or at least ones of mortal peril yeah and so like the threshold for making something feel more important or more urgent i think is pretty hard but when you do that when you have a doctor walking through a room and eyeing something that seems weird

and being like, oh no,

we need to talk to this person right now,

I think adds an interesting element to the show.

And it creates an urgency of like,

not just how do you treat these people,

but in what order are you supposed to treat them

given the limited resources that are available?

We are living in a post house world

where like this idea of like the medical mystery,

let's diagnose the

medical mystery has been explored again at a much more leisurely pace uh with hugh lori leading the charge on house but in in an er setting you're doing that and you have like mere minutes mere seconds to do all of that work what would the lab say what is this symptom presenting etc etc And I think

A question I have for you

Is What would the lab say? What is this symptom presenting? Et cetera, et cetera. And I think a question I have for you is,

and not to keep talking about Landman,

but I did watch nine episodes.

You're so Landman-filled, it's unbelievable.

I know, but I did watch nine episodes over a week,

so I am going to squeeze as much content out of it as I can.

A thing that irritates me so much about that show,

I don't need to spend this episode of Prestige burying it, is that Billy Bob Thornton's character on that show is always right. And it really bothers me when a character is always right.
You love his politics. You just wish he had a comeuppance once in a while.
Yeah, I'm like, climate change, what's that? Anyway, Dr. Robbie Rabinovich is pretty much always right so far.
So far. But they're setting him up to be big wrong.
Well, was he big wrong four years ago? Is that the question? Like, is he somehow responsible for, let me check my notes, Dr. Adamson's, you know, like he's not only grieving him, but was he somehow responsible? He seems to have internalized that, whether it's true or not.
And yeah, that's what I don't know what we're going to get from the flashback. Is it where he makes the wrong call and it results in actual damage or his death? Or is it the kind of thing where he just thinks he made the wrong call, but actually did right by everybody? I think what sets it up to me is we get this early case where he has a situation where he can either act quickly or wait for the labs.
And he makes the preemptive decision to just inject, I don't even know what he's giving somebody. It's like something into their IV to help treat them on the presumption that he's right.
And in that moment he is. And it helps this person, saves precious seconds in what could be a dangerous situation there's gonna

be a mirror at some point where he fucks up i feel like we are we are destined for that and it was dr collins who was calling him out for it so like uh you know yes the question is well then is she gonna yeah it's interesting to me i just need i just need everyone to be fallible on tv that's important to me you can't always be right all the time it's not interesting dramatically um So yeah, is he going to be big wrong?

Big wrong in the span of a show that takes like 15 hours. So how do you recover? Is that the last thing you are? You're big wrong at the end? Are you big wrong at the middle and you have to work another seven hours of your shift? Like what's...
Them's the breaks. That's the job.
That's the pit, you know? That's life in the pit pit you know that's life in the pit another opportunity that uh er or any of these medical procedures uh bring be they chicago meds squid game med whatever you want uh is a roster a level of that guy actor cycling in and out usually as the not necessarily the patient but the loved one

um but we we get a couple inside of uh these first two episodes where i'm like oh it's a uh you know one of my favorite mike flanagan uh players it's like you know this that or the other we're just like you want you we always want those actors to be working and they should always be able to do a stint on an ER or a pit,

um,

as this grieving mother or this unsure son or whatever,

uh,

the case may be.

And then as ER progressed,

they kind of got like starrier and starrier with those appearances.

And same thing happened at Grey's Anatomy,

but I prefer when it's this level of actor where it's just someone you like

vaguely recognize.

You can maybe name a couple of their projects,

Thank you. appearances and same thing happened at Grey's Anatomy.
But I prefer when it's this level of actor where it's just someone you vaguely recognize, you can maybe name a couple of their projects, but you don't necessarily know their name off the top of your head and you're just happy to see them get to do something high drama inside of an episode of television. Well, and it doesn't tip off which of them are going to be that important, right? Who's going to be given the big speech or the big dilemma? Like if everyone is kind of a that guy, then the cases could turn in any conceivable direction.
And we've already seen some of these, some of these cases have already wrapped up and

people are shipped out. They're out of the hospital already.
They got shot. They're dismissed.

They've done whatever. They've been treated quickly.
They're out the door. Some of these

are spilling over episode into episode. And I have to say, I want to, I want to make this very

clear because we're having our fun.

I think the show is what it is.

Yeah.

Which is more successful on the medical side

of the medical drama

than the drama side of the medical drama.

That's fine.

But the pit to me, Joe,

is good engrossing television.

And I had to stop myself from just like,

I'm ready to roll into the next one.

I'm ready to keep going.

This is a show that I'm looking forward

to keeping up with.

Some people are going to be into the next one. I'm ready to keep going.
This is a show that I'm looking forward to keeping up with, somewhat despite myself, mostly because of all of these engrossing cases and kind of quandaries that the show is putting itself in. So before we started recording, you sort of invoked this idea.
We don't have to mention Landman again, but you mentioned Yellowstone, something in the tale of the sheridan oeuvre that is a i don't have to think too hard about this yes um i can just sort of guzzle it down but it has the sheen of prestige uh and so that i can feel like i'm not watching like trash television but I am watching something that I can sort of just turn my mind off.

And we all deserve to watch something that can help us turn our mind off.

So my question is, you were pondering,

perhaps this could be a Yellowstone-esque mass appeal. Those are big shoes to fill.

Big boots to fill?

Incredible boots to fill. A 10-gallon hat to fill? Does the pit have 10 gallons in it? I don't really know.
They operate on a CC level, I think. Three CCs is enough, I've been told.
But I'm curious about that because is this an easy show to watch with so many characters? It's not something you can second screen, right? Because things are happening at all times. It's a very like adrenaline pumping kind of show.
And there is a lot of technical jargon being thrown around. So like on the one hand, it's not something that's making me, as you mentioned, everyone's a walking archetype.
We're not thinking that deeply about story or character. But in order to not feel lost, I do feel like I need to pay close attention to it.
So where does it sit in that sort of like turn your brain off or engage brain kind of TV viewing? So I think it does require that level of engagement and investment. But I think you're isolating something really important, which is it's not asking you to think a lot, but it's also not treating you like you're dumb.
And there just aren't many things in that space right now. And so I would argue it almost has no prestige sheen to it at all.
This is a show that's on a platform with other prestigious shows. This is like the return of some of these names in this setting is in itself like a prestigious kind of premise but like the john wells project to me is not prestige it's a lot of like making and shepherding and in some cases executive producing and in some cases just kind of shepherding things along that are good successful shows that get on the air and fucking stay on the air like they churn it out he's such like a pros pro operator in this sort of way like i'm getting very well-made piece of furniture out of the air.
They churn it out. He's such a pro's pro operator in this sort of way.
I'm getting a very well-made piece of furniture out of the pit. We live in a world now where when I want to go buy furniture, everything feels like it's falling apart by the time I get it home.
This feels competently made and structured. And that in itself in 2025 is a lot.
No particle board. No particle board.
No particle board involved. No Allen wrenches required like this thing is just built and makes sense to me okay all the all the uh all the joints are secure okay that's interesting to me i on the one hand i don't i can't disagree with you uh about sort of like getting things that work and stay and just uh go when you think about er so you concur, you would say.
Yes, doctor. I concur.
Do you concur, doctor? I concur. West Wing, ER, Shameless.
But I would also argue all three of those shows have like a, they're not Chicago colon something. You know what I mean? Like there is that sort of extra level of like thinking man's even shameless which is like um the guiltiest of pleasures in some way um it has i think maybe just by dint of william h macy being there i don't know what to tell you but like uh or the fact that it's a remake of a british television show i couldn't tell you but like there is something elevated is it it elevated procedural? Elevated something? West Wing, you would call Prestige TV.
Late period West Wing, would you? And I say this as a relative defender of late period West Wing, but would you? You know, it's an important question to ask, and I don't have all the answers for you. But I just genuinely don't know.
And this is something we have to think about as we figure out what to cover on the PressHTV feed, what's going to be a hit and what's not. Is it worth checking with the pit because ER, this is essentially a kind of IP in that like, allegedly, legally, not ER, but is kind of ER colon the pit um like uh it's worth checking in but it's not something we're immediately going to do do week by week a because i'm not sure it's the kind of show that can endure that kind of scrutiny uh or has enough meat on the bone or enough cc's in the bag to like make that worth it and also we don't know how popular it's gonna be i don't i cannot tell you if this is going to be a popular show or if it's going to feel like it doesn't exist i actually don't know the answer to that question um you know the the er nostalgia varies and whether or not people are actually aware that this is a kind of spiritual er successor i mean noah wiley does a lot of work for you in that regard but like um i'm curious to find out i could see it being a slow burn kind of hit too where we'll see what the opening numbers are if this is a show that catches fire out of the gate or or whatever ends up happening yeah but it feels like the kind of show that you could be talking to somebody four months from now they're like have you seen the pit like i just turned that on because it was in my max queue or whatever, like, my recommendations and they gave it a shot and it's like, oh, actually, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would or more than I thought I would for a show that in a crowded landscape, I didn't even hear when it was premiering.
Yeah, it's a good question. And also, this is kind of like, this is a very intensive year of content, especially for, like, House of R, you know, the shows that I cover on

House of R, there's a lot of heavy hitters coming out in, but right at the top of the year is usually kind of empty. So it is an opportunity for a show sort of just get in there and dig in.
It is hilarious to me, especially given that like, you know, seasons of ER were like 22 episodes that you and Kai and I were all like,

this is 15 episodes.

This show is still going to be on in April. We're not built for this stuff anymore.
Unheard of. We are weak and soft and canon.
But like, that is wild to me that we are going to still be if the pit catches on, we're still going to be talking about the pit in April. That doesn't happen anymore.
And it's just, I'm so curious to see if it works. And I'm curious whose insistence, was that a John Wells thing where he's like, you got to give me at least 15 episodes.
And, you know, something like that. I don't know.
The structure is cool, though. I'm not immune to the 15 hourhour shift kind of conceit.
I think it works really well. It certainly plays in when you're seeing the exchange of the shifts at the outset of like, why one of these men is standing on the roof contemplating his existence, if this is what the first two hours of a shift like this looks like, or at least looks like on this show.
I think it sets us up to go to some pretty interesting and probably some pretty dark places. Did you also do a fellowship in cynicism? I think at this point we all have.
Oh brother. Okay.
Alright, so yeah. We will see how much we'll be checking back in on the pit.
Anything else you want to say about these first two episodes? Or the pit in general or do you want to hear more of my er pilot thoughts perhaps by any chance i would love to hear more of your er pilot thoughts as far as points of division between the pit and a show like er or the pit and a show like graze or you know any other medical drama that's on specifically network tv uh there's some gnarly stuff in here yes uh is it the Is it degloving time? Is that what we're here to talk about? The deglove has to be mentioned because I think a lot of us reacted the way that our second year med student did, which is I basically fainted as soon as that happened. Degloving as a concept, it's one of the most disgustingly evocative terms.
And in case people don't know, de-gloving is what you refer to when the skin has come off of... It's what it sounds like.
Something. Like taking off a glove except it's your skin.
Like that one Robbie Williams music video. So like I, that was horrifying.

Anything else you want to shout out

that's particularly gnarly and disgusting?

Well, I would love to hear

what is really hitting people

in the visceral way.

So if you want to email us

at prestigetv at spotify.com,

whether it is the degloving,

which yes,

and I think it was coupled by somebody saying,

and I thought my heels were painful

as they saw this injured foot.

That's not, that's not called for. That's not good banter at all.
Not even Buffy Summers would banter like that in the face of the degloving. Absolutely not.
The adjustment of the dude's broken face definitely got a squirm out of me. That was not it.
He was just sort of feeling around his mouth. We didn't really know why.
Then all of a sudden it was just like crack. And his whole face moved.
But I do want to give honorable mention to the workman who had his whole arm electrocuted when he cut into a live wire or something. And they're trying to relieve, I think, the blood pressure in his arm by cutting into it.
And I would describe the way his electrocuted arm opens up as if it were like an alien egg. It just like unfurls

at the seams.

Is that the one where his hand is like

almost unattached or was that someone else?

I think that, believe it or not,

I think that was somebody else. Yeah, there's a hand that's almost

completely detached

and it's like just a

different shade than the rest of the body.

It's just like, okay, anyway.

ER is gnarly.

Places to be.

Speaking of gnarly, let me just tell you.

The shock of a lifetime I had when I rewatched the ER pilot and realized that Anthony Edwards, of Top Gun fame, Goose himself, who is the lead of, before George Clooney became.

De facto lead. Bonafide movie star.

Anthony Edwards, Dr. Mark Green is the lead of ER.

He's 32.

32 years old. And when I was a child watching ER, I was like, that's an old man.

And now I'm like, he's 32.

His whole life ahead of him.

32. And Noah Wiley is in his 50s.
Looks great. Looks wonderful.
But I was just like, wow. Anthony Edwards was 32 in the first season of ER.
And Noah Wiley is in his 50s. That's a lot to process.
You know what? I would go as far as to say Noah Wiley looks better than ever. I think thisggard look yeah actually plays pretty well for him and in terms of character and portrayal i find myself liking this version of noah wiley a lot more than like dorky earnest noah wiley which is i think what he played you know a lot in early in his career in his defense or the any of the librarians uh we've not seen any of his library work.
Not yet. But we are interested.
This dude just got sucked into a portal and wound up playing a librarian for like 10 years. Anything else you want to say before I wrap it up here? We've covered rats.
We've covered degloving. What else could we possibly...
You know, ankle monitors. We not mentioned uh the excellent hoodie work i would say on robbie dr abinovitz uh it's a great it's a great look you're right the beard the hair the hoodie you know the world weary expression uh but the tenderness as well it's great it's a great i'm in I'm in, I'm into it.
Yeah. I'm very into it.

I just was not aware of the level of athleisure that people working in the ER were allowed to wear,

permitted to wear.

I just kind of figured it was,

you know,

scrubs or maybe a doctor's coat,

but we're just rolling in in hoodies.

I would say Dr.

King is maybe like,

she looks like she's going for a jog.

Yeah.

That's a great, that's a great point. i wonder if like standards have slipped because my memory thinking about er yes we're often in scrubs but also like yeah if we're wearing the the white coat or wearing it over like business casual we're wearing a tie for a woman we're wearing like heels and a skirt or something like that so uh yeah standards have slipped is is what you're saying.
Or we're just increasingly practical. You know, it's all about comfortable footwear.
You're on your feet all day. You're going through these things.
Like let's, let's put our professionals in a position to succeed. I love that.
I love that. I do know that like a scrub, scrub couture has definitely changed.
And I know that from like some of the nurses I know in my life that like there's designer scrubs that you can get, you get your scrubs tailored. There was this big, there was this, the introduction to Noah Wiley's character in the ER pilot is they're like, is that a tailored lab coat? I've never seen one of those.
They're just like absolutely trashing him. Cause he just looks like an out of place, rich boy.
uh now i know that nurses like get like very expensive tailored scrubs because like yeah you don't need to be like you know if you're you want to look nice at your job and so if you don't want to be in baggy scrubs i would choose baggy scrubs personally because it's basically your your gym jams at work and that sounds great to me but you know not everyone you want to look your finest when you're watching a grown man shit into a bedpan all right the pit two episodes down 13 more episodes to go we may or may not be back and that depends on you if you're watching the pit let us know if it's a huge success we'll be back to check in on it before we go back to the pit though we will be definitely covering severance week to week and we are really excited about that severed hands maybe not severed existence yes we didn't sever enough in the pit that was our problem with it more severance please so we will be back uh we may or may not we have not decided yet we may or may not do like a season one recap um but we will be here for season two episode one of severance starting next week this is a theory show so you're definitely going to be wanting to email us prestige tv at spotify.com We love Severance. We're big fans of it.

We will come up with a Severance-specific

email

to BD.

Will it be livestock-related? Who knows?

Possibly. Probably.

Maybe.

I still like Waffle Party.

Or what is it?

I need to do my season one rewatch.

Is it like the egg cart or something like that?

The egg?

Don't even remember anymore.

We'll be here week to week with Severance.

And then we'll also be checking back in with Agency,

a bunch of other stuff on the horizon.

So stay tuned.

You can listen to us as you are currently.

You can watch us often on the Ringer TV YouTube channel. I forget to promo that every week, and I should do that more often.
Remind me next time, Rob, if you remember. We're on YouTube.
You can stare into our eyes lovingly if you so choose. However you want.
Honestly, I'm not here to judge how you stare at us. With anger.
Sure. Resentment.
Complete resentment. Whatever it is.
You can concur or not concur. Honestly, however you want to fall.
Mocking derision. In your listening of this.
We'll take it. Eyeballs are eyeballs.
We love it. Those views count the same.
Exactly. Thanks to Kai Grady, who is the very best.
And we're happy to be reunited with him here in the new year. And thanks to Justin Sales for his work across the feed.
He's just wonderful

keeping everything in line.

Our Dr. Robbie, I like to think.

Oh, yeah.

He's got the scruff.

He's got the good scruff going on.

All right.

Love that for sales.

All right, so we will be back soon next week

and we'll see you then.

Bye.