I must say I am enjoying The Pitt, which is like ER without the soapiness. There’s a little soapiness, but not like ER had with doctors boning in every supply closet.
Things I like:
- Noah Wylie has aged, bless him, and he looks considerably less dewy than he looked on ER.
- I am able to keep the characters straight because each one looks unique. Puffy-face tattletale vs Big-eyed prodigy vs Weary mom vs Rat-Phobic black doctor vs Vaguely Famous administrator. I could go on. Now, their character’s names? I didn’t learn them until the last episode of the season.
- They give Ketamine for EVERYTHING. Last I heard Ketamine was a drug reported in Omni magazine that let you see God. No one’s ever offered me Ketamine, but I haven’t been in an ER since 2011 or something.
Things I don’t like:
- They set it in a teaching hospital and they rely heavily on that excuse for exposition. And sometimes they wheel it out when it’s not needed. I bet I could put in a chest tube just from Grey’s Anatomy alone.
- It doesn’t match the realistic description of life in the ER I got from my friend the nurse. Evidently, in reality, every other case is a heart attack. The rest are gallbladder attacks and overdoses.
- It all takes place in one 12-hour shift, and that means they need to pay careful attention to continuity. I would really have enjoyed it more if they had bothered to add a scene in which this woman on the left straightens her hair clip.
Just one little gesture. Instead, they must have gotten out the calipers and skewed her clip every day that actress was in hair and makeup. And then, just when I accepted we’d be seeing that all season, it went straight in the last episode. Maddening.