‘The Pitt’ is the hottest medical show at the moment, premiering on HBO Max in January of 2025. Season two started airing in January of this year, and as of writing this article, there are twelve of fifteen episodes out. It takes place in an emergency department in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it has been acclaimed by doctors, nurses, and other medical workers as the most accurate portrayal of healthcare in media.
It also recently won a Golden Globe for Best TV Drama, and won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 2025.
The inital thing that sets this show aside from most others is its episode formats. The entirely of season one takes place on September 5th, 2025, and second two being on July 4th, 2026. Each episode is an hour of the day shift. Each character has their own cases and story arcs that I feel have a proper amount of time to unfold as they’re given the entire fifteen hours of their shift, while other shows may have to rush or simplify plot points in a single episode.
I also firmly believe that the characters within the show are more complex and human with this type of episode format. Two of the most hated characters in the show, Dr. Frank Langdon and Dr. Trinity Santos, are arguably the most complex as well.
Frank is introduced as a senior resident, leading the interns and medical students really well and being extremely kind and understanding with all his patients. When it’s revealed that he had been stealing drugs from the hospital and that he had an addiction to painkillers, that almost instantly turned a good chunk of the audience against him. Knowing about his drug addiction flipped his seemingly innocent behavior into manipulative and validation-seeking actions.
Trinity had a completely opposite arc, initially being seen as abrasive and rude on her first day as a first year resident. She seemed to be looking for malicious things in hamless behaviors and sticking her neck out when she didn’t need to. When she accused Langdon of stealing medication and she turned out to be right, I was shocked because they had built Santos up to be this unlikable character, and I was sure she was going to be wrong. After that, she is revealed to be a really compassionate doctor. She advocates for her patients, and is becoming more relatable to the audience as the second season goes on.
Noah Wyle, an actor who is well known for playing Dr. John Carter in the medical drama ‘ER’, is an executive producer and one of the creators of ‘The Pitt’, and Dr. Michael ‘Robby’ Robinavitch, the main character of the show. He has spoken many times about wanting to ‘create the most accurate medical TV show yet’, and that’s what he’s doing. The show’s directors work closely with medical consultants, like Dr. Jacob Lentz and Dr. Sylvia Owusu-Ansah.
When filming scenes of procedures, directors step out and the consultants step in, leading the entire process for directors to approve later on. Some of the actors on the show have also spoken about a medical boot camp they attended before shooting, a two week process where basics like CPR and intubation are taught.
Additionally, there are several cast members with real medical experience. Ned Browser, who plays Nurse Jesse Van Horn on the show, is a registered emergency nurse, and also used to work as an EMT.
Supriyah Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan, was on the path to become a doctor when she began acting. She studied neuroscience at Colombia, and scored in the 99th percentile for the MCATS, a test required to attend medical school. She decided to put med school on hold to begin her acting career, and instead became an MCAT tutor – until ‘The Pitt’ blew up and she had to quit.
A lot of medical professionals have praised ‘The Pitt’ for it’s level of medical accuracy. Not shocking asystole is one of the things that stood out the most to me, and many other people who don’t know much about medicine other then what was shown on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or ‘House’. Asystole is is when the heart stops all electrical and mechanic activity, or flatlines. In every medical show made ever, the doctors will charge up the paddles in a panic when someone flatlines, but in reality, CPR is done and epinephrine is pushed through an IV until a pulse is regained, and that’s when you shock.
Another thing that stood out was the large amount of roles in a hospital potrayed in the show. A large critique of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is that since the show follows surgeons, surgeons do everything in the hospital, including jobs and tasks that in real life would be left up to nurses or technicians.
Within the first few minutes of ‘The Pitt’s pilot episode, there are nurses, surgeons, a social worker, hospital administration, medical students, and emergency medicine attendings and residents. The show emphasizes specializing in emergency medicine instead of being portrayed as just ‘a doctor’, which makes the show all the more realistic. There’s also doctors and student doctors at different levels in their residency or med school education, and the individual struggles with each step. There’s so much depth about working in healthcare and in an emergency department that is shown so well on this show, which is why it’s being praised. 
Something else that contrasts ‘The Pitt’ from every other medical drama is the societal issues within the healthcare system. When Dr. Robinavitch gives a quick run down of the emergency room to the new residents and med students, he mentions boarding. Boarding is an ongoing problem in ERs across the country – when patients are referred to an inpatient unit within the hospital, such as the ICU, surgery, or psychiatry, but when there’s no bed available in the unit, the patient is stuck in the ER until space opens up, meaning that more beds are taken in the emergency room and less patients are able to be seen quickly. Obviously this causes frustration to people waiting to be seen.
Later on in the first season, a patient with chest pains is shown occasionally in the waiting room getting increasingly frustrated until he eventually punches Dana Evans, the charge nurse, and leaves. After this, a discussion between nurses reveals that they’d all been assaulted by patients at one point in their careers, touching on a real problem that healthcare workers face every day. The Bureau of Labor statistics show a 63% increase in incidents of violence against medical personnel from 2011 to 2018, and hospitals from all over are putting new procedures in place to prevent workplace violence.
This was hinted as a storyline again at the end of season 2, episode 11. Emma Nolan, a freshly graduated nurse, is checking a patient’s vitals when he wakes up, and attacks her, ending the episode with a cliffhanger. The preview for episode 12 suggests that Emma will not be returning for future episodes.
‘The Pitt’ is honestly one of my favorite shows at the moment. The plot and writing is complex and creative, and like nothing I’ve watched before. If you’ve been thinking about watching, I highly recommend.
