Summary
The Pitt Season 2 continues to pile on gnarly injuries, but “1:00 P.M.” is full of fantastic depth and nuance in its smaller moments.
When you think of The Pitt, it’s easy to think of horrific injuries. Season 2 has had its fair share already, and there are plenty in Episode 7, including a displaced trachea and a propeller wound that looks like something you could hold a velociraptor responsible for. But the reason The Pitt works so well is that it’s a show of remarkable nuance and subtlety, about the power of communication and empathy and understanding. To me, that feeling felt especially vivid here in “1:00 P.M.,” which, if the ending is anything to go by, is going to be a major turning point in the season.
There are new cases and continuing old ones in this hour, but threading them all together are the quiet moments of interaction between doctors and patients as they navigate symptoms, diagnoses, and sometimes highly dramatic outcomes. It’s full of small, quietly tragic beats – the self-harm scars on Santos’s thighs; Dana holding back tears when a sexual assault victim has to take a break – that colour between the lines of the medical mysteries. I keep saying this is remarkable television, and I sometimes think people don’t quite believe me. But an episode like this one only strengthens my case.
Look at something like Santos’s efforts to communicate with Harlow, her deaf patient whose symptoms are still mysterious on account of an ASL-shaped language barrier. There’s so much bundled up here. You’ve got a malfunctioning video relay interpreter system, and how long it takes to repair it, speaking to the overburdened logistics of a functioning hospital. You’ve got Santos having literally no time to waste waiting, constantly having to leave the room to attend to something else before Harlow can begin to explain what’s wrong. That’s tied to an overrun ER in general, and Santos’s personality specifically, and how her backlog of charting relates to the ongoing AI disagreements between Robby and Al-Hashimi.
These scenes take up a couple of minutes in total, so you can see how dense the storytelling is. That feeling of overwhelming chaos is part of The Pitt’s USP, but every time it slows down, it puts the focus to wonderful use. The standout section of “1:00 P.M.” explores Dana’s role as a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE), a specialised qualification – sadly under-pursued, by the sounds of it – whose patient, Alana, has been raped by a drunk “friend”. It’s brutal, but tender stuff, acknowledging the harsh and invasive realities of collecting a rape kit from a survivor, but emphasising Dana’s remarkable tact and empathy in continually reassuring Alana through each step of the process.
The Pitt Season 2, Episode 7 also reintroduces Dr. Abbot, who has now taken up a job working as a SWAT physician since his therapist told him he needed a hobby. It’s a slightly odd return, probably deserving of a bit more explanation than we get, but Abbot is very compelling, and his GSW victim has the gnarliest case of the week by far. There are a couple of small moments involving Abbot worthy of a bit more consideration. In one, he blithely says he’ll pay for an Uber to get all the life-saving diabetes supplies Samira has collected to Mr Diaz, who has fled the hospital in fear of incurring any more medical bills he can’t pay. In another, he bonds with Al-Hashimi over their respective time spent overseas; she was with Médecins Sans Frontières in Kabul, and was at the maternity hospital in Dashte Barchi, where a suicide bombing killed 16 mothers and 8 children. It’s another instance of The Pitt folding real-life tragedy – the Tree of Life thing earlier in the season was the first – into what is already a highly stressful environment.
It’s about time The Pitt humanised Al-Hashimi, since she has sometimes felt a little antagonistic for the sake of it. But between this and a small moment where she has quite a visceral reaction to Jackson’s parents, who reveal his uncle took his own life, there’s some depth being built around her that is revealing more contours. I’m looking forward to seeing this develop and perhaps further inform her relationship with Robby, which is still a bit testy. Then again, Robby’s prone to being testy with anyone if he gets the urge. He’s still refusing to make amends with Langdon, even though he shows a lot of sensitivity with Roxie, the cancer patient who doesn’t want to return home to her husband and kids (I still think there’s something else going on here).
This episode ends with the big news that the hospital may be vulnerable to a cyberattack, and as a preventative measure, all the computer systems are being shut down. That means that next week’s episode will be entirely analogue. “This should be fun,” Abbot quips. I’m not so sure about that.
