‘The Pitt’ Season 2, Episode 8 Recap – Doing It the Old-Fashioned Way

The Pitt always causes me some degree of anxiety, and Season 2 has taken great pleasure in doing that so far. But I must confess to being unusually susceptible to Episode 8, since “2:00 P.M.” marks the start of an analogue stint that might last up to 24 hours. After the recent revelation that PTMC might be susceptible to a cyberattack, all of the hospital’s IT systems are shut down, which immediately makes everything much more complicated — and it wasn’t exactly going swimmingly before this point.

I’m not averse to doing things the old-fashioned way, obviously. The hospital is set up for it, and a good number of the staff remember the system from their time as interns. But the sheer overload of information at the top of this hour is intentional. It’s completely discombobulating, and there are recurring beats all the way through of every minor error with the new processes having to be highlighted. It’s impressive how quickly everyone adapts — helped along by Joy’s photographic memory, allowing the patient board to be filled in — but still worrying how much might go wrong; to what extent every minor task is more difficult than it might have been.

It’s a level of stress neither we nor Princess needs. Since Dana is still carrying out Ilana’s sexual assault examination and can’t leave the room until it’s finished, it’s up to Princess to play charge nurse in the interim — and at the worst possible time. She does really well, though it’s still a relief — for her and us — when Dana returns to her post and starts running things again.

Speaking of Dana: I love her. She’s my favourite character by far, and her scenes with Ilana are lovely once again, showing her patience and empathy but also her forthrightness, especially when she discovers evidence collected from previous cases has been left in the fridge for two weeks when it is supposed to be collected by the authorities within 72 hours. She’s slightly terrifying, but she’s extremely good at her job, and you can tell she cares. I’d love to work with her.

Anyway, we have some new patients this week. My favourite is an extremely overweight guy who is just the nicest dude in the world — it honestly brought a tear to my eye when he apologised for being inconveniently fat. Ogilvie has a real villain arc here, constantly making mocking, passive-aggressive comments and trying to lecture the guy on his size instead of showing him respect and trying to help him. He has to be intubated while awake, which is harrowing, and after he’s weighed — with the help of a hoist — he turns out to be so heavy that he’d break PTMC’s CT scanner. So, he has to be transferred to Presbyterian Hospital. Even in the midst of all this, he keeps cracking jokes. Nice guy; I sincerely hope nothing bad happens to him.

Also new in is Brooke and her wife, Wendy. Brooke is experiencing sudden-onset blindness in one eye, and the prognosis isn’t looking good. Al-Hashimi suggests a risky treatment that has a 20% chance of solving the problem but a 1% chance of causing serious disability or death. Brooke elects for the treatment, so we’ll have to keep an eye on how that goes. No pun intended, obviously.

The third of the new arrivals is Jackie and Jacqui, two BFF party girls, the former of whom has bitten almost all the way through her tongue. The gnarliest practical effects of the episode are here, with Santos and Langdon — the former is super hostile to the latter — having to drag her tongue out of her skull and suture the wound. She’s also possibly an alcoholic, news to which Langdon visibly bristles. But one day at a time. McKay also privately tells him that she has been sober for nine years, so if he’s looking for a role model, at least there’s one close by.

Oh, there’s also a dude with an insane rash who looks like he has some sort of plague, but it turns out he has just been squeezing limes in the sun.

In terms of our regulars, Santos is finally able to communicate with Harlow through an interpreter, but her issue doesn’t seem to be an especially big deal. A specialist arrives to speak to Jackson’s parents, since he might have developed bipolar or schizophrenia, so that could end up being pretty difficult to navigate. The mysterious baby is fine, but has to stay in the ER until some foster care can be sorted out, since it just wouldn’t do for hospital logistics to give a free bed to a child who is otherwise fine. Digby also turns up, having spent an hour with Louie’s body, which is one of those totally unexpected little gut-punch moments The Pitt specialises in.

A brief closing moment for Roxie. Someone in the comments last week suggested she was going to ask for MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying), which is illegal in Pennsylvania. But it was a good guess, since we seem to be moving in a similar direction. When McKay mentions to Robby that she’s still in considerable pain, he suggests upping her dose, despite that posing some risks. It’s called the Doctrine of Double Effect. The general idea is that if a positive action (such as giving pain relief) has a potential negative consequence (such as increased risk of complications and possibly even death), then the action is nonetheless ethically acceptable as long as the intention of it is to reduce suffering.

In other words, it’s more humane to treat Roxie’s pain even at the risk of killing her than it is to allow her to suffer. Who’d want to be a doctor?