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

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Speaker 6 Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast speed. I'm Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 2 I'm Rob Mahoney.

Speaker 6 And we're here with you for the next 15 hours to cover the first two. No, just kidding.
We're here for the next hour to cover the first two episodes of the HBO Max series, The Pit.

Speaker 6 This is a double premiere, so just in, you know, 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.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 As always, press HTV at spotify.com if you have pit thoughts, you know, we'll repeat it again later.

Speaker 6 What is the pit?

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 6 why

Speaker 6 should or should not people be watching it?

Speaker 2 I mean, the pit itself is, what, hell? Oh, is our just our descent into the underworld?

Speaker 6 The inferno. Okay.
All right.

Speaker 2 The absolute inferno. The pit, for the purposes of this show, I would say specifically the ER portion of the hospital.
Do we know what the broader Pittsburgh general is?

Speaker 6 It's a Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. Thank you.
P-T-M-H.

Speaker 2 It just rolls off the tongue.

Speaker 2 You know, 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.

Speaker 6 This is a 15 episode, 15-ish hours, like 15-minute episodes. So we get a little like 10-minute wiggle room.

Speaker 2 That's the smoking break. Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 6 That's the flashback to COVID.

Speaker 6 This is

Speaker 2 a

Speaker 6 15 hours in the overnight shift, essentially, of

Speaker 6 an ER

Speaker 6 at a trauma medical hospital in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 6 It is from a few of the folks who made ER. So we'll talk about that in a second.

Speaker 6 And it stars Noah Wiley, famously one of the stars of ER. So it is a sort of,

Speaker 6 it is so much a quasi-ER sequel spin-off that Michael Creighton's widow sued HBO.

Speaker 2 You know what? No, it's not ER. It's 100% not ER.

Speaker 6 So, you know, we're definitely, we're in Pittsburgh. We're not in Chicago.

Speaker 2 It's It's definitely different.

Speaker 6 Yep.

Speaker 6 But let's say.

Speaker 2 Noah Wiley has a beard now.

Speaker 2 It could not be the same guy.

Speaker 6 Could not possibly be any

Speaker 6 different than ER. But we are going to talk about a little bit about ER and just sort of

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 producer, Kai Grady, is a good deal younger than us and like is very helpful in reminding me that not everyone uh grew up watching ER. And so I just wanted to like give you a little

Speaker 6 or give anyone who's listening like a little bit of context. So Landman, a show that has been on our minds and in our hearts.

Speaker 2 Near and dear to your hearts across several podcasts.

Speaker 6 Landman is like being touted as this like cultural phenomenon. The monoculture's back, baby, and Landman's at the head of it and all this sort of stuff like that.

Speaker 6 So they are bringing in, as far as I could tell with some light googling, around 15 million households sort of, you know, a streaming era.

Speaker 6 So like over the course of the week, 15 million households are tuning into Landman. And that is just like

Speaker 6 amazing numbers, incredible.

Speaker 6 ER got 30 million households in its first season, and I kind of peaked at 35 million households.

Speaker 6 ER ran for 15 seasons, 331 episodes of ER exist in the world.

Speaker 6 And just in season one, just to like remind people what a phenomenon it was. Season one, it was nominated for 23 Emmys.
Every single cast member was nominated. That's incredible.

Speaker 6 It won directing, it won writing, it won, like Juliana Margulies won. And then it won, you know, best drama in its second season.
It was like,

Speaker 6 it had a grip on everyone.

Speaker 6 From 94 on, and then obviously it like sort of waned a bit as it went on.

Speaker 6 It's obviously not the first medical procedural.

Speaker 6 Those existed before, St. Elsewhere, China Beach, et cetera.
But

Speaker 6 it definitely changed the game and was just this massive,

Speaker 6 in terms of setting something in an ER, which both of these shows are,

Speaker 6 it changes the medical procedure from like a soapy workplace drama, which, you know, oftentimes something like Gray's Anatomy is, to like a constant adrenaline pumping sort of experience.

Speaker 2 ER,

Speaker 6 the pilot, the two-hour pilot of ER was actually a Michael Crichton film script that they just sort of like changed slightly and pending litigation.

Speaker 6 And made, and Michael Crichton was a, you know, was a, was a medical student.

Speaker 6 If, uh, and so this is based on, so Noah Wiley is playing John Carter in ER, and that is basically the Michael Crichton like insert into like what it was like to be a brand new scrubbed-faced, fresh-eyed, uh, you know, med student coming into a jaded Metropolis ER, which we get in this

Speaker 6 show.

Speaker 6 And this time, Noah Wiley is our sort of grizzled, you know, head of the department.

Speaker 2 Rob Mahon.

Speaker 2 Joanna Robinson.

Speaker 6 What is your experience of a medical procedural? And how do you feel about a medical procedural of sorts coming to HBO Max?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You can't avoid these things if you have been watching television regularly.

Speaker 2 But I would say my enjoyment most of medical-oriented TV has been more on like the parody side, more on like the children's hospital side of this, of this spectrum.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 I love a ride. I love a roller coaster.
I love, I do love the adrenaline pumping that you're talking about, not just with ER, but in this case with the pit.

Speaker 2 Like the mechanisms here, I think, can work for a lot of different people.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 It's funny. I was comparing the medical jargon in this because I re-watched the ER pilot and I was watching the first steps of the pit.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 Whereas in like ER, it was just like intubate, push several CCs of saline. Like there's just like a few things that you would say in ER.

Speaker 6 And I feel like we got like the whole gamut of possibilities inside of this show. But yeah,

Speaker 6 there are a few sort of signposts of the genre that are existent in ER and this. But once again, for legal purposes, this is not a sequel.
Definitely not ER.

Speaker 2 Definitely not a reboot of ER that was then quickly repurposed into a different show. That didn't happen.

Speaker 6 Don't worry. It didn't happen.
Don't worry about it.

Speaker 6 John Wells is here, you know, a TV legend of 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

Speaker 6 there's a few things that are quite helpful inside of a medical procedural like this that,

Speaker 6 you know, 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,

Speaker 6 you know, exposition dumped on them as they're toured around.

Speaker 2 But they also do a lot of dumping, to be fair. Everyone is exposition dumping in this show.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 the challenge of the pit faces with its high concept, which is 15 hours inside of a shift, which is different

Speaker 6 legally and definitely different from ER.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 We got up to the roof in episode one,

Speaker 6 but we're not like, as we are in ER, 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.

Speaker 6 Will it feel claustrophobic to be inside of,

Speaker 6 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, et cetera?

Speaker 6 And then also

Speaker 6 this flashback device, which we get at the very end of the first episode, which is, you know, our main character played by Noah Wiley Wiley,

Speaker 6 has a sort of traumatic flashback to the COVID era

Speaker 6 and what it was like in the ER.

Speaker 6 And we hear, we get the

Speaker 6 little drops of information about a colleague who died four years ago.

Speaker 6 So what is that story and how will that unfold and 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?

Speaker 6 About like this high concept and how you feel? You know, obviously we shows exist like 24, movies exist like Go.

Speaker 6 You know, like we've been in this sort of like ticking clock environment before in our lives, but like, how does this work for you?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like 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.

Speaker 2 And I think, I think that depressurization is going to be a really important part of the experience of watching this show.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You need some relief from that in terms of the time and space.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I think ultimately the architecture is what drives it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 They're trying to tease things out between these people as they go about making their rounds.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 Okay. Um, on the one hand, yes.
And I see what you're saying.

Speaker 6 And we should note that

Speaker 2 R.

Speaker 6 Scott Gemmel 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we're even dropping some things. Like in the first two episodes, we meet a troubled youth who wants to hurt people.

Speaker 6 And it 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 side consult, essentially. And like, I would not be surprised if

Speaker 6 this sounds so jaded of me, but like, and and I'm not sure that I want it at all. But like, if we got a mass shooting from that character, like, you know,

Speaker 6 they failed to track him down. Right.

Speaker 6 And if 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 We've got a character who's related to an important member of staff in the hospital.

Speaker 2 Two, it sounds like.

Speaker 6 I was texting with CR a little bit about the pit and like asking if he had watched it and what he thought. And like, we didn't talk that much about it, and he will certainly go into it on the watch.

Speaker 6 And we don't want to, you know, double dip on anything. But the one thing he said to me is like, it's missing Doug and Carol, which is George Clooney and Juliana Margulis's characters from ER.

Speaker 6 And that's what made me want to re-watch the pilot because I was like, what do they do with Doug and Carol?

Speaker 6 These two,

Speaker 6 you know, star-crossed lovers, essentially, in the in the ER in the first episode. And like, famously,

Speaker 6 spoilers for ER.

Speaker 6 Juliana Marlus 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 But this, the fact that, like,

Speaker 6 this could not be more personal, um, the ER pilot. This could not be more about it.

Speaker 6 The ER pilot opens with Doug Ross's play 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.

Speaker 6 So, like, our personal lives are so enmeshed in that show in a way that this, to your point, is much more

Speaker 6 go, go, go, go, case, case, case, case. There's way more characters, way more staff to keep track of.

Speaker 6 I was having, you know, 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

Speaker 6 overwhelm when it comes to like all the medical students and residents, et cetera, et cetera?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Ultimately, in the show's defense, I think this is why some of the characterizations are as simple and straightforward as they are.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 This is the single mom. This is the farm boy, right? Like you can put people into these boxes very, very quickly and give them some identifying characteristics.

Speaker 2 And for now, I think that's enough two episodes in. Mostly because I think the cases themselves are really interesting and pretty compelling.

Speaker 2 And I am amazed at how much they have to burn through in a single episode, much less two, and how they are possibly, if 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.

Speaker 2 In these two episodes, here is a semi-complete list of some of the cases that are walking in.

Speaker 6 The classic Rob Mahoney moment.

Speaker 6 Let's have it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And I have to say, as far as

Speaker 2 the gnarly medical part of the show, and I want to circle back to that, the facial reset really, really got me.

Speaker 2 Did not enjoy watching that.

Speaker 2 You have an older man with sepsis. You have a homeless man who is DOA but brings a bunch of rats with him.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You have a dude who woke up with a shot 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.

Speaker 6 I forgot about the shot collar guy.

Speaker 2 Great. Very good.
Great one.

Speaker 6 Great one.

Speaker 6 The advantage.

Speaker 6 Great shout to all of that.

Speaker 6 The medical procedural as like 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

Speaker 6 is

Speaker 6 undeniable, delectable. And especially in the ER when they come in with just like

Speaker 6 strange things that they've ingested or have, you know, impaled themselves on or et cetera, et cetera, whatever the case may be.

Speaker 2 And it makes it sounds 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.

Speaker 2 Like this is literally his job to check in on all of these stories over a short period of time.

Speaker 6 This is one thing. And like, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not a doctor.
But

Speaker 6 I did used to watch ER with my medical professional parents. And they were just like constantly like, what the shit is this? Like they were, they were.

Speaker 6 But a question I have about this

Speaker 6 and pressUCTV 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.

Speaker 6 And it seems wild to me that Noah Wiley's character,

Speaker 2 Dr. Robbie

Speaker 6 Rabinowitz, is across all of these cases. You know what I mean? There's like, there's echelons of,

Speaker 6 you know, there's attendings, there's residents, there's medical students, you know, like blah, blah, blah. There's like layers.

Speaker 6 The fact that he, as head of the unit, is just sort of like across all of it at all times

Speaker 6 in ER, at least, there was like

Speaker 6 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 is great.

Speaker 2 He's quite good in this.

Speaker 6 I think he's really good in this.

Speaker 6 I think

Speaker 6 especially the moments in which he has to like give news to

Speaker 6 people about their loved ones or interact with people about their loved ones.

Speaker 6 He's really conveying like, I've seen it all and yet maintained my humanity.

Speaker 6 I'm not jaded by this yet.

Speaker 6 I thought that worked quite well. But yeah, it was, it just like...

Speaker 6 And again,

Speaker 6 I don't know how the fictional Pittsburgh Medical Trauma Hospital works, but that just seemed like, that's the only thing that stretched, you know, credulity for me.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And he's kind of swooping in mostly when they need help or it gets a little too big for their dealings or need a consultation or need an opinion on these things.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, we get, 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.

Speaker 2 You also get this extended conversation about how understaffed they are, about how there are beds to take.

Speaker 2 It's just they literally won't hire enough nurses to help them manage them and help occupy them at this point in time.

Speaker 2 And so when you open the show with, you know, Sean Haddise makes a brief appearance in the first episode as basically the guy.

Speaker 6 I'm sure he'll be back.

Speaker 2 I would hope.

Speaker 6 Either in flashbacks or he'll clock in, like, you know, in the back half of the season for his.

Speaker 2 And I could see it just be. premiere finale, honestly, where he shows up to spell Noah Wiley at the end and they, you know, do dap it up and he's on his way.

Speaker 6 Like, good morning, Ralph. Good morning.

Speaker 2 Okay. Well, he is a John Wells guy.
And so if it's like, this is calling in a favor for

Speaker 2 a good working actor to come play a part that he's maybe like a little overqualified for, I could see that.

Speaker 6 But surely, I mean, like, he's connected to the flashback plot line, which surely we're going to like keep revisiting, right? We have to see him in the flashback, right?

Speaker 2 Well, I don't know if you heard, but it is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson.

Speaker 2 Dr. Adamson's death.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 Tread lightly.

Speaker 6 On the one hand, I agree with you.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It is interesting. I was interested comparing the ER pilot to this one.
Like, how much are we,

Speaker 6 you know, we have such a different relationship to our

Speaker 6 informed state about the healthcare system and its fuck-upness. I'm not saying that it wasn't fucked up in the 90s, but I think

Speaker 6 we as a,

Speaker 6 this is not controversial, 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.

Speaker 6 But re-watching the AR Pilot, they're like, they're listening to the radio and they're talking about like

Speaker 6 health insurance and the uninsured and all this sort of stuff. So,

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 6 It's been a long problem here in the these here United States.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 2 One thing in her defense:

Speaker 2 she seems to be the only person who is appropriately bothered by the number of rats that are now running around the ER.

Speaker 2 From the moment that the four rats pop out of this guy's clothes, I would say Dr. Collins, who's the, you know, the senior resident who's pregnant, she is like, hell no.
She's out.

Speaker 2 I'm not dealing with this. She's out.
Everyone else, Dr. Robbie in particular, is like, yeah, another day in the office.
My guy, you got to get these rats out of here.

Speaker 6 He's seen it all. And I don't know if you know that.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 6 Can I give you a high point, low point of

Speaker 6 leaving Noah Wiley aside, who is the like 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.

Speaker 6 He's a television star. And so he is the anchor of this show.
He's across everything, as we said.

Speaker 6 Do you have a high point, low point of any of the other characters that we met in these first two hours?

Speaker 2 This is tough because 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.

Speaker 6 Aggressive bangs situation.

Speaker 2 Very aggressive bangs. I actually think like Fiona Dura, 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.

Speaker 6 You saying the actor's name just made me realize that she's Brad Dorough's daughter. Brad Duriff, who is the legend Brad Durf, who is many things,

Speaker 6 but also Grievan Wormtongue, but many other things. Yes.

Speaker 2 Billy Babbitts, etc.

Speaker 2 Doc Cochrane, he will always be to me. Of course.
I also learned that Taylor Dearden, who plays Mel

Speaker 2 is Brian Cranston's daughter.

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 very different character on that show.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 this babe is not just a Nepo baby. She has range.
I actually thought she was... the standout.
She's my high point, actually.

Speaker 6 And I like, I understand when you early, I think, referred to her as like the, oh, no, no, she's not the prodigy. The prodigy would be the younger.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The 20-year-old med student, right, right, right.

Speaker 6 Um, but you know, she is very like sort of type A in her own way, etc., etc.

Speaker 6 Uh, I loved her. There was something about like she didn't, she wasn't given more to do than anyone else, but I think she did more with it.

Speaker 2 And she was given more Megan the Stallion lyrics to recite, which I think is powerful and important. Incredible stuff from her, I think.

Speaker 6 I would say a low point for me so far, though I'm not ready to write him off,

Speaker 6 uh, is Dr. Lingdon, who was was referred to as ER Ken at one point.
Um, and also says, uh,

Speaker 6 sorry, I did a fellowship in cynicism,

Speaker 2 and I wrote, that wasn't, that wasn't good, I wrote oh, brother in my notes,

Speaker 6 but on the

Speaker 6 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,

Speaker 6 if you watched ER, John Carter, Dr. Bennett sort of like

Speaker 6 resonant medical student relationship is

Speaker 6 one to potentially watch. Because I like that they're like quite, they're quite oil and water in their own way.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 6 already we're seeing some sort of like interesting bridges being built there.

Speaker 2 I also love her place in the show.

Speaker 2 Like, 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.

Speaker 2 And I think Mel Dr. King as a resident, but a transfer is kind of like a nice compliment.

Speaker 2 Cause 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.

Speaker 2 pretty competent and she clearly knows her stuff, but she's new to this space and like this level of intensity and frequency.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, absolutely.

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Speaker 6 This is something that

Speaker 6 ER did really well

Speaker 6 is the nursing staff. And

Speaker 6 so Catherine Lanasa as Nurse Evans, Dana Evans, I thought she was wonderful.

Speaker 6 Even though she's playing a recognizable archetype, I thought she did a great job with it.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 Maybe most especially Dr. Banks herself.
But I think that like.

Speaker 2 Did we mention she has an ankle monitor? Did we even call that out?

Speaker 6 We neglected to mention that she has an ankle monitor.

Speaker 6 And she's

Speaker 6 a returned student. She's like, you know,

Speaker 6 entering the medical profession and quite a bit older than other folks.

Speaker 2 But, you know, 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.

Speaker 6 They make s'mores together and sometimes they eat pizza. Did you know that about that?

Speaker 2 I did hear that. I did hear that.
Just making sure.

Speaker 6 Yeah, but the head nurse. who is sort of like the, you know, the real brains behind the operation of the hospital.
And we meet a few others among the nursing staff.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 This is an important part of the power structure at the hospital in general.

Speaker 2 I think the nurses are also really important, too.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I actually really like that triage is an active plot device in the pit.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 It really does like everything on the 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.

Speaker 2 And so like the threshold for making something feel more important or more urgent, I think is pretty hard.

Speaker 2 But when you do that, when you have a doctor walking through a room and eyeing something that seems weird and be like, oh, no, we need to talk to this person right now,

Speaker 2 I think adds an interesting element to the show.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 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 with Hugh Laurie leading the charge on house.

Speaker 6 But in an ER setting, you're doing that and you have like mere minutes, mere seconds to do all of that work. What do the labs say? What is this symptom presenting, et cetera, et cetera?

Speaker 6 And I think

Speaker 6 a question I have for you is, and not to keep talking about Landman, but I did watch nine episodes.

Speaker 2 I felt it's unbelievable. unbelievable.

Speaker 6 But I did watch nine episodes over a week, so I am going to squeeze as much content out of it as I can.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And it really bothers me when a character is always right.

Speaker 2 You love his politics. You just wish he had a comeuppance once in a while.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm like, climate change, what's that?

Speaker 6 Anyway, Dr. Robbie Rabidovich

Speaker 6 is pretty much always right so far.

Speaker 2 So far. But they're setting him up to be big wrong.

Speaker 6 Well, was he big wrong four years ago? Is that

Speaker 2 the option?

Speaker 6 Like, is he somehow responsible for, let me check my notes, Dr. Adamson's,

Speaker 6 you know, like he's not only grieving him, but was he somehow responsible?

Speaker 2 He seems to have internalized that, whether it's true or not. And yet, that's what I don't know what we're going to get from the flashback.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 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 like presumpt, like preemptive decision to just like inject.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 And it helps this person like saves precious seconds in what could be a dangerous situation. There's going to be a mirror at some point where he fucks up.
I feel like we are destined for that.

Speaker 6 And it was Dr. Collins who was calling him out for it.
So, like,

Speaker 6 you know,

Speaker 6 yes, the question is, well, then is she going to, yeah.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 So, yeah, is he going to be big wrong?

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 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 joe life in the pit another opportunity that uh er or any of these medical procedures uh bring be they chicago med 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.

Speaker 6 But we get a couple inside of these first two episodes where I'm like, oh, it's a, you know, one of my favorite Mike Flanagan players. It's like, you know, this, that, or the other.
We're just like,

Speaker 6 you want, you want, we always want those actors to be working and they should always be able to do a stint on an ER or a pit

Speaker 6 as this.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And same thing happened at Gray's Anatomy. But I prefer when it's this level of actor where it's just someone you like vaguely recognize.

Speaker 6 You can maybe name a couple of their projects, but like you don't necessarily know their name off the top of your head. And you're just like happy to see them get to do something high drama

Speaker 6 inside of an episode of television.

Speaker 2 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,

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Some of these are spilling over episode into episode. And I have to say,

Speaker 2 I want to make this very clear because we're having our fun. I think this show is what it is,

Speaker 2 which is more successful on the medical side of the medical drama than the drama side of the medical drama. Correct.
That's fine. But

Speaker 2 the pit to me, Joe, is good, engrossing television. And

Speaker 2 I had to stop myself from just,

Speaker 2 I was like, I'm ready to roll into the next one. I'm ready to keep going.

Speaker 2 Like, 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 quoundaries that the show is putting itself in.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 before we started recording, you sort of invoked this idea. We don't have to mention Landman again, but

Speaker 6 you mentioned Yellowstone, something in the Tale of the Sheridan Oeuvre that is a, I don't have to think too hard about this.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 I can just sort of guzzle it down, but it has the sheen of prestige.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 And we all deserve to watch something that can help us turn our mind off. So my question is, like, you were pondering, perhaps this could be

Speaker 6 a Yellowstone-esque

Speaker 6 massive. Those are massive.

Speaker 2 Those are big shows, big shoes to feel. Big boots,

Speaker 2 big boots.

Speaker 2 Incredible boots to fill. That's a little bit.
A 10-gallon hat to fill. Does the pit have 10 gallons in it? I don't really know.

Speaker 6 They operate on a CC level, I think.

Speaker 2 Three CCs is enough, I've been told.

Speaker 6 But I think that,

Speaker 6 but I'm curious about that because

Speaker 6 is this an easy show to watch with so many characters?

Speaker 6 It's not something you can second screen, right? Because things are happening at all times.

Speaker 6 It's a very like adrenaline pumping kind of show. And there is a lot of technical jargon being thrown around.
So like,

Speaker 6 on the one hand, it's not something that's making me,

Speaker 6 as you mentioned, everyone's a walking archetype. We're not thinking that deeply about story or character.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 2 So I think it does require that level of engagement and investment.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 You know, 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.

Speaker 2 But like the John Wells project to me is not prestige.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Like they churn it out. He's such like a pros pro operator in this sort of way.
Like I'm getting

Speaker 2 like very well-made piece of furniture out of the pit. And it's like, 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.

Speaker 2 This feels competently made and structured. And that in itself in 2025 is a lot.
No part of it. No particle board.
No particle board involved. No Allen wrenches required.

Speaker 2 Like this thing is just built and makes sense to me. Okay.

Speaker 6 All the, all the, uh, all the joints are secure. Okay.
That's interesting to me. I,

Speaker 6 on the one hand, I don't, I can't disagree with you about sort of like getting things that work and stay and just

Speaker 2 go when you think about so ER. So you concur, you would say.

Speaker 6 Yes, doctor. I concur.

Speaker 2 Do you concur, doctor? I concur. Um,

Speaker 6 West Wing, ER, Shameless.

Speaker 6 But I would also argue all three of those shows have like a, they're not Chicago colon something.

Speaker 6 You know what I mean? Like, there is that sort of extra level of like thinking man's, even Shameless, which is like

Speaker 6 the guiltiest of pleasures in some way. Um,

Speaker 6 has

Speaker 6 I think maybe just by dint of William H.

Speaker 6 Macy being there, I don't know what to tell you, but like, or the fact that it's a remake of a British television show, I couldn't tell you, but like, there is something elevated.

Speaker 6 Is it like elevated procedural, elevated something? West Wing, you would call prestige TV.

Speaker 2 Late period West Wing, would you?

Speaker 2 And I say this as a relative defender of late period West Wing, but would you?

Speaker 6 You know, it's an important question to ask, and I don't have all the answers for you.

Speaker 6 But I just genuinely genuinely don't know. And this is something we have to think about as we figure out what to cover on the Prestige TV feed.
What's going to be a hit and what's not?

Speaker 6 Is it worth checking with the pit? Because ER, this is essentially a kind of IP in that like

Speaker 6 legally not ER, but is kind of ER colon the pit.

Speaker 6 Like

Speaker 6 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

Speaker 6 or has enough meat on the bone or enough CCs in the bag to like make that worth it. And also, we don't know how popular it's going to be.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You know, 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,

Speaker 6 I'm curious to find out.

Speaker 2 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 whatever ends up happening.

Speaker 2 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?

Speaker 2 Like, I just turned that on because it was in my max queue or whatever, like recommendations, and they gave it a shot.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's, it's a, it's a good question. And also, this is kind of like,

Speaker 6 this is a very intensive year of content, especially for like House of R,

Speaker 6 you know, the shows that I cover on House of R. There's a lot of heavy hitters coming out.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 It is hilarious to me, especially given that like, you know, Seasons of the R were like 22 episodes, that you and Kai and I were all like, this is 15 episodes.

Speaker 6 This show is still going to be on in April.

Speaker 2 Like, we're not built for this stuff anymore.

Speaker 2 Unheard of.

Speaker 6 We are weak and soft and canned, 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.

Speaker 6 That doesn't happen anymore. And it's just,

Speaker 6 I'm so curious to see if it, if it works. And I'm curious

Speaker 6 whose, I like whose insistence, like, 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.

Speaker 2 I don't know.

Speaker 2 The structure is cool, though. I'm not immune to the 15-hour shift kind of conceit.
I think, I think it works really well.

Speaker 2 It certainly plays in when you're 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.

Speaker 2 If this is what the first two hours of a shift like this looks like, or at least looks like on this show.

Speaker 2 I think it sets us up to go to some pretty interesting and probably some pretty dark places.

Speaker 6 Did you also do a fellowship in cynicism, Rob?

Speaker 2 I think at this point we all have. Oh, brother.
Okay.

Speaker 6 All right. So, yeah.
So

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Or do you want to hear more of my ER pilot thoughts, perhaps, by any chance?

Speaker 2 I would love to hear more of your ER pilot thoughts.

Speaker 2 As far as points of division between the pit and a show like ER or the pit and a a show like Grey's, or you know, any other medical drama that's on specifically network TV,

Speaker 2 there's some gnarly stuff in here.

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 6 Is it the degree? Is it de-gloving time? Is that what we're here to talk about?

Speaker 2 The de-glove 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.

Speaker 6 Degloving as a concept,

Speaker 6 it's one of the most disgustingly evocative terms.

Speaker 6 And in case people don't know, de-gloving is what you refer to when like the skin has come off of

Speaker 2 something,

Speaker 6 like taking off a glove, except it's your skin.

Speaker 6 Like that one Robbie Williams music video. So like I,

Speaker 6 that was horrifying. Anything else you want to shout out as particularly gnarly and disgusting?

Speaker 2 Well, I would love to hear what is really hitting people in the visceral way. So if you want to email us at prestige TV at spotify.com, whether it is the de-gloving,

Speaker 2 which, yes, I think it was coupled by somebody saying, and I thought my heels were painful as they saw this injured foot.

Speaker 2 That's not called that.

Speaker 6 That's not good banter at all. Not even at all.
Not even Buffy Summers would banter it like that in the face of the sky.

Speaker 2 Absolutely not.

Speaker 2 The adjustment of the dude's broken face definitely got a squirm out of me. That was not, that was not it.

Speaker 6 He was just sort of feeling around in his mouth. We didn't really know why.
Then all of a sudden it was just like

Speaker 2 crack and uh his whole face moved but i do want to give honorable mention to the the workman who had his whole arm electrocuted when he like cut into a live wire or something and they are 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?

Speaker 2 I think that was, believe it or not, I think that was someone someone else.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's a hand that's almost uh completely detached, uh, and it's like a just a different shade than the rest of the body, and it's just like, okay, anyway, um, ER is gnarly, uh, of places to be.

Speaker 6 Speaking of gnarly, let me just tell you the shock of a lifetime I had when I re-watched the ER pilot and realized that Anthony Edwards of Top Gun fame, Goose himself, who is who is the lead of before George Cluody became uh

Speaker 2 de facto lead

Speaker 6 bona fide movie star Anthony Edwards is Dr. Marguerite is the lead of ER he's 32

Speaker 6 32 years old and when I was like a child watching ER I was like that's an old man and now I'm like he's 32

Speaker 2 his whole life ahead of him

Speaker 2 32

Speaker 6 um and Noah Wiley is in his 50s looks great looks wonderful but I was just like wow Anthony Edwards was 32 in the uh in the first season of ER and Noah Wiley is in his 50s. That's a lot to process.

Speaker 6 You know what?

Speaker 2 I would go as far as say Noah Wiley looks better than ever. I think this haggard look actually plays pretty well for him.

Speaker 2 And in terms of character and portrayal, I find myself liking this version of Noah Wiley a lot more than like dorky Ernest Noah Wiley, which is, I think, what he played

Speaker 2 a lot early in his career in his defense.

Speaker 6 Or any of the librarians.

Speaker 6 We've not seen any of his library work, but we are interested.

Speaker 2 This dude just got sucked into a portal and wound up playing a librarian for like 10 years.

Speaker 6 Anything else you want to say before we wrap it up here? We've covered rats. We've covered de-gloving.
What else could we possibly,

Speaker 6 you know, ankle monitors?

Speaker 6 We have not mentioned the excellent hoodie work, I would say, on Bobby, Dr. Rubinovic.
It's a great, it's a great look. You're right.

Speaker 6 The beard, the hair, the hoodie, you know, the world-weary expression, but the tenderness as well. It's great.
It's a great, I'm in. I'm into it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 I just kind of figured it was, you know, scrubs or maybe a doctor's coat. But we're just rolling it in hoodies.
I would say Dr. King is maybe like, she looks like she's going for a jog.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 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 we're wearing it over like business casual

Speaker 2 we're wearing a tie if we're a woman we're wearing like heels and a skirt or something like that so uh yeah standards have slipped 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.

Speaker 6 I love that. I do know that like a scrub,

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 There was this big, there was this

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 They're just like absolutely trashing him because he just looks like an out-of-place rich boy.

Speaker 6 And now I know that nurses like

Speaker 6 get

Speaker 6 very expensive tailored scrubs. Cause, like, yeah, you don't need to be like, you know, if you're want to look nice at your job.

Speaker 6 And so, if you don't want to be in baggy scrubs, I would choose baggy scrubs personally because it's basically your

Speaker 6 gym jams at work. And that sounds great to me, but you know, not everyone.

Speaker 2 You want to look your finest when you're watching a grown man shit into a bedpan.

Speaker 6 All right, the pit.

Speaker 6 Two episodes down, 13 more episodes to go. We may or may not be back.
And that depends on you.

Speaker 6 If you're watching the pit. And if it's a huge success, we'll be back to check in on it.

Speaker 6 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?

Speaker 6 Yes.

Speaker 2 We didn't sever enough in the pit. That was our problem with it.

Speaker 6 More severance, please. So we will be back.

Speaker 6 We may or may not, we have not decided yet. We may or may not do like a season one recap.

Speaker 6 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, PrestigeTV, at spotify.com.

Speaker 6 We love Severance. We're big fans of it.

Speaker 6 We will come up with a Severance-specific email to BD.

Speaker 2 Will it be livestock related? Who knows? Possibly.

Speaker 6 Probably. Maybe.
I'm still, I still like Waffle Party.

Speaker 6 But,

Speaker 6 or what is it? Was it like, I need to do my season one re-watch. Is it like the egg cart or something like that?

Speaker 2 The egg.

Speaker 2 Don't even remember anymore.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 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.

Speaker 6 You can stare into our eyes lovingly if you so choose.

Speaker 6 However you want.

Speaker 2 Honestly, I'm not here to judge how you stare at us. Anger.
Sure. Resentment.
Complete resentment. Whatever it is.
You can concur or not concur. Honestly, however you want to fall.

Speaker 2 Mocking to rigorous.

Speaker 2 We'll take it.

Speaker 6 Eyeballs are eyeballs. We love that.
Those views count the same.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 6 Thanks to Kai Grady, who is the the very best. And we're happy to be reunited with him here in the new year.

Speaker 6 And thanks to Justin Sales for his work across the feed. He's just wonderful, keeping everything in line.

Speaker 2 Our Dr. Robbie, I like to talk to him.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 6 He's got the scruff.

Speaker 2 He's got the good scruff going on. All right.

Speaker 6 Love that for sales. All right.
So we will be back soon next week.

Speaker 2 And we'll see you then. Bye.