Summary
Terribly moving in its typical, uniquely understated way, “12:00 P.M.” delivers moments of profound empathy, unexpected humour, and subtle mystery like it’s all in a day’s work. Another tour de force hour.
I know I’m always singing the praises of The Pitt in a way that might border on hyperbolic, but then an episode like “12:00 P.M.” comes along and vindicates me entirely. Season 2 has already had its share of bangers, starting with the premiere, but Episode 6 is its stand-out hour thus far, a brilliantly understated but emotionally resonant chapter that is painful from the very beginning but saves its cruellest revelation for the very end.
We have to talk about Louie. Look, I knew from the end of the previous episode that he wasn’t going to make it, but I didn’t expect his death to be so… sordid, I suppose. But that’s what this show does. It shows the messy side of healthcare, where chest compressions come with buckets of blood. It lingers with the corpse, which doesn’t just wink out of existence but has to be wiped down and moved and made amenable for potential visitors, one arm left out from under the sheet so that loved ones can hold the corpse’s hand. Dana showing Emma how this process works is the excuse “12:00 P.M.” uses to walk us through the sad mundanity of it all.
There’s a bit of speculation about what might happen to Louie. Langdon finds a photo in his belongings, presumably of his wife, and an emergency contact number that turns out to be for the ER. How sad is this? Louie’s life was so bleak that it only made sense to have doctors as his first point of contact. He knew he’d need them again. He knew he was on a downward spiral. That’s perhaps what makes Ogilvie’s dismissive summary of his passing so offensive. It has no thought for the man behind the condition.
That comes later — right at the end, actually. When the crew finally manages to find time for a debrief, Robby shares that Louie was married once. His wife and child died in a car crash, and he never recovered. That’s why he drank. And that’s why he died. It’s an awful but oddly sweet moment; Emma reflexively clutches the hand she and Dana left exposed for his loved ones.
In terms of our ongoing cases, Jackson finally wakes up, but doesn’t quite know where he is. His brief session with a psychiatrist reveals he has been suffering from paranoid delusions and auditory hallucinations for months, and his sister had no idea. And there’s definitely something going on with Roxie Hamler and her seemingly angelic husband, Paul. The Pitt is keeping its cards close to its chest here, but is Roxie looking at her husband with fear? Or is she feeling like the end is coming, and he deserves to be spared from it in some way? Perhaps I’m just cynical, but I’m leaning more towards the former.
Then there’s Gus, the prisoner who came in after being jumped and turned out to be malnourished. This is an odd one, too. Al-Hashimi is particularly adamant that Gus remain at PTMC, since the prison evidently isn’t feeding him enough to make his recovery there very feasible. I feel like there’s got to be something else at play here, since if the prison was solely at fault, wouldn’t all the prisoners be malnourished? Either way, Robby disagrees and wants to send Gus back to prison as soon as possible, for the safety of the staff and other patients, if nothing else, but his hand is forced by Dana, who seems to create a fake emergency to keep him in place after briefly bonding with him over their similar backgrounds.
Things are getting very frayed between Robby and Al-Hashimi here in The Pitt Season 2, Episode 6. As well as the Gus issue, they also continue to disagree about AI, especially since Santos is using it to help her charting, causing some errors. Al-Hashimi is technically right that she was pretty clear proofreading was still necessary, and Santos is visibly half asleep, but it doesn’t seem mysterious which side of this debate the show is coming down on.
I’ll end with more bad news — the foreshadowing about Robby’s potential demise on his sabbatical is becoming much too obvious to ignore. There’s another accident victim brought in, this time a motorcycle acrobat, and he and Robby bond over their shared love of bikes and how great his trip sounds, while everyone else lectures them about helmets and safety. This isn’t exactly subtle, and it doesn’t bode especially well. In this show, nothing ever does. We probably have a lot more trauma to come.
