The Pitt is an intentional throwback. The new medical drama, which premiered on Max last week, is created by ER veteran R. Scott Gemmill, executive produced by former ER showrunner John Wells, and led by actor Noah Wyle, who became a household name playing John Carter on — you guessed it — ER. The series is such an obvious attempt at replicating the success of ER, which debuted on NBC in 1994 and ran until 2009, that the estate of ER creator Michael Crichton is suing Wells, Wyle, Gemmill, and Warner Bros. Television for unofficially rebooting ER without paying the estate or giving Crichton the creator credit such an act would demand.
Putting its behind-the-scenes legal battle aside for the time being, one could be forgiven for wondering why a studio like Warner Bros. would even be interested in the year 2025 in trying to make a new ER for a still-fledgling streaming service like Max. But all it takes is one glancing look at some of the TV trends of the past few years to make The Pitt seem less like a surprising gambit and more like an inevitability. The past two years have seen long-running, straightforward network shows like Suits find renewed success on Netflix and new broadcast comedies like ABC’s High Potential rake in impressive viewership numbers. Viewers, meanwhile, have grown increasingly disillusioned about the frustratingly short lifespans of so many streaming originals.
The people, to put it simply, are craving the kind of reliable pleasures that once defined television. Those pleasures have been eroded over the past 20 years. Throughout that time, episode counts have shrunk from 22 to 13 to 8 to 6, and it’s become more common for a hit TV show to end prematurely than it is for one to outstay its welcome and run, like ER did, for 15 seasons. Hollywood has come very close to forgetting the very aspects of TV that made it such a beloved form of entertainment in the first place. The Pitt is an attempt to remind us, and it’s a very good one at that.
A familiar formula, barely updated
The Pitt follows a team of doctors and medical interns working at an understaffed, overcrowded trauma room in a Pittsburgh hospital. The show’s cast is led by Wyle, who plays Dr. Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch, the senior doctor and floor leader of “The Pitt,” as he and his colleagues refer to their ground-level ER. The series’ setting, characters, and pace will all be immediately familiar to anyone who’s ever watched an episode of ER, Grey’s Anatomy, or any of the other medical dramas that have come and gone over the past 30 years. In fact, the only thing separating The Pitt from its many TV predecessors is the fact that it unfolds more or less in real-time. Its 15-episode first season spans just a single, day-long shift at the Pitt, and every installment covers one hour each.
This sole differentiating trait is easy to forget once The Pitt gets into its groove, which it quickly does. The series’ first episode is a marvel in how breathlessly it introduces its characters, setting, and structure. Before long, The Pitt is dancing its way from one hospital bed to another — employing the same kinetic, roving Steadicam style that made ER hit like a lightning bolt when it first premiered in 1994. Its first two episodes are, by no means, astonishing or groundbreaking. While it isn’t much of a stretch to believe that an emergency room would get an overwhelming number of patients in a single day, one can already feel, near the end of its second episode, that The Pitt‘s asking you to forget just how much death, trauma, character development, and plotting it’s going to pack into just one 15-hour period.
Fortunately, The Pitt is so confident and so comfortable in its own skin that you’re more than willing to just, well, go with it. Even the series’ somewhat wonky real-time format is easy to look past because of how modestly inventive it is. It’s the kind of structural twist that one used to see all the time on network television. Nary a single fall season used to come along without NBC or ABC or CBS boasting at least one new, 24-esque time-twisting drama. The Pitt‘s format, thankfully, isn’t as restrictive or distracting as others that have been thought up in the past, especially considering how well the show is able, at least across its first two hours, to balance all of its many subplots. Seeds have already been planted, too, for a number of overarching stories to unfold across The Pitt‘s first season, including Robby’s guilt over the death of an old mentor.
Comfortably old-school
The Pitt has the well-drawn, immediately striking characterizations of Grey’s Anatomy‘s first season and an ensemble of actors that all feel well-suited to their roles. There is, of course, Wyle, who so comfortably slots into the role of The Pitt‘s head doctor that his presence here emerges as the rare bit of pitch-perfect stunt casting. The Pitt also surrounds him with actors like Fiona Dourif, Tracy Ifeachor, Patrick Ball, and Taylor Dearden, all of whom have the potential to be performers that viewers actually want to spend week after week with. Thanks to its first season’s longer-than-is-currently-usual 15-episode count, The Pitt has the chance to make the most out of its actors and characters, too. Its weekly release schedule ensures that viewers can look forward to spending several months with them right off the bat as well.
These details, from its release schedule to its longer episode count, feel designed to not only work in The Pitt‘s favor, but also bring our current era of streaming TV to one that more closely resembles television’s earlier decades. That may seem, on paper, like a regression. But to anyone who has been an avid TV watcher for any sizable portion of their lives, it will likely feel more like a return to a cozier and more reliable time. What immediately separated television from movies and other forms of media was its ability to let viewers spend weeks, months, and years with the same characters. Dramas like ER did that, and they also offered the added pleasure of letting you watch extremely capable people be good at their jobs week in and week out.
There is something comforting about that and something deeply human about craving it. Maybe that’s why The Pitt feels like an actual response to a collective — if unspoken — demand. Viewers, it seems, are hungering for reliable, procedural TV dramas and comedies that they can count on returning every year. We shouldn’t be surprised then if more shows like The Pitt really do start to appear in the coming months and years and more experimental, boundary-pushing titles begin, conversely, to feel like the exception again, rather than the rule.
The days of the limited series may indeed be over. If so, it’s not hard to see why. Whether it be a bar, a prestigious law firm, or a Pittsburgh emergency room, sometimes you just want to go where you know everybody’s name.
The first two episodes of The Pitt are streaming now on Max. New episodes premiere weekly every Thursday on the streaming service.
