The Pitt: Medicine Without Melodrama
by Jasmine Edwards
There are too many medical shows on television. Every single network has its own version of the hospital melodrama with a case of the week and a group of doctors dealing with the most ridiculous, rushed romances. So, when a friend recommended HBO’s The Pitt, I put it off for a week . . . and then promptly binged Season 1 in a weekend.
Actually, the format almost requires this. Rather than showcasing a single, sensational patient per episode, each episode follows one hour in the emergency room over a 15-hour shift. Once the story starts, it doesn’t stop. It barrels through the highs and lows of ER work, combining personal dynamics and drama with injuries and illnesses that are uncomfortably realistic and particularly graphic. Have you ever heard of a floating face? Don’t look it up. And if you did, I’m sorry.
With enough driving force to keep you latched onto every medical malady, though, you’d assume The Pitt is another stock series full of shock value cases and genius treatment plans. Instead, The Pitt is a jarringly intimate look at the inside of a Pittsburgh trauma center that is understaffed and underfunded—with all the ideological weight these settings and circumstances must bear.
What most impresses me about the show is its tackling of identity politics and tough topics without gimmicks or virtue signaling. There are no clunky speeches about believing women or racial biases within medicine. Instead, the doctors approach patients in the ways they know how, limited by their own prejudices, upbringings, or understandings. Then, inevitably, their colleagues course-correct them. We move through cases involving abortion, trafficking, anti-vaxxers, gun violence, and COVID-19 without beating the viewer over the head with moral righteousness. These scenes are all in character and subtle even when the “lesson” of the case is clear.
It helps that The Pitt is brilliantly cast. Where we usually see an overwhelmingly white cast in doctor dramas, this series reverses tropes by putting together an ensemble you’d more likely see in urban Pennsylvania.
And they keep doing that, filling the emergency room with medical residents, patients, parademics, and more who reflect the real world in a spectrum of sexualities, race, disabilities, and age. Jokes about old white guys stealing patients, when performed by these actors, come across as simply how people talk. Nurses gossip in Tagalog, and queer relationships are handled without fanfare or hypersensitivity. The autistic character is not some genius savant, but a smart young woman with strengths and weaknesses just like her coworkers. I cannot emphasize enough how refreshing this is for television in general, not even just a procedural drama.
Fortunately, The Pitt has already been renewed for a second season at HBO. Scheduled to premiere in January 2026, the second season will likely pick up right on the tail end of a harrowing—yet undeniably heartwarming—finale. And I, for one, cannot wait to dive back into all the sorrows and successes alike of this groundbreaking show.