After becoming a critical darling and winning five Emmys, HBO Max’s “The Pitt” returns for a second season, which delivers more incredible television. Instead of just another day in the emergency room, we now follow Dr. Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) on his last day before a three-month sabbatical, which also happens to be the fourth of July. The first three episodes take us from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m., roughly ten months after the first season ended. Like every second season, we return to the old characters while also meeting some new ones.
In addition to the incoming attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), the three additional characters are aloof third-year medical student Joy Kwon (Irene Choi), boy genius fourth-year medical student James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) and recently graduated registered nurse Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard). Even though we have only known these characters for three episodes, I find all their performances intriguing, particularly Hollard: She plays the naive, freshly registered nurse who faces several rude awakenings, which made me chuckle several times.
These early episodes really do a lot of character work while letting the production team flex their practical effects skills, showing the real blood and guts in the ER. As someone who’s incredibly squeamish at the sight of blood, I can still appreciate the artistry in it. Much like the first season, this season refuses to sugarcoat any of the blood and guts of the ER, including a prolonged erection that made me wince. If you are planning to watch this while eating, I would think twice about it.
The 10-month time jump also affected our original group of residents, and it is exciting to see how mature most of them have become. However, the native farm boy Dennis Whittaker (Gerran Howell) seems to have gotten worse. He brings a dementia patient into the morgue to see that her husband passed, which seems unnecessarily cruel and even a bit out of character. They are positioning him as the heir apparent to the emergency room. But the switch from native newbie to jagged veteran is pretty jarring, and I hope they refine this shift more before he becomes my least favorite character. Other than that, the characterization this season is as strong as ever, and I can see the setup of several storylines that seem very compelling, in addition to some interesting patients, who create some much-needed levity to a show about the horrors experienced in hospital.
This season also adds a more Pittsburgh-specific episode 3, which delivers a touching tribute to the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting that happened in 2018. However, it felt more like the show pausing and turning to the camera to let the audience know that the Muslim community of Pittsburgh came together to support the synagogue (which is true). Moments like that are pretty par for the course for this show, so I don’t judge it too harshly now. It was a pretty sweet moment despite the clumsy writing.
Though the whole season has yet to be released, “The Pitt” Season 2 proves itself as a tight, character-driven show sure to capture audiences in the same way the first season did. If you never tuned into the first season or just have not gotten around to the second yet, it’s a good time to start. New episodes will continue to drop on HBO Max on Thursdays at 9 p.m. until April 15. It’s a perfect study break, though don’t expect it to make you any less stressed than before.
