Why "The Pitt" Works Best When It Stays Small

HBO’s hit show, "The Pitt", is back for its second season after an extremely strong start. It won 5 Emmy Awards in its first season, as well as 2 Golden Globes, including Best Drama Series and Best Actor in a Drama Series (Noah Wyle).

It did all of this, but wait, it’s a show that’s been done before, right? We’ve seen so many different medical dramas over the years -- "St. Elsewhere", "ER", "Grey’s Anatomy", "The Good Doctor", "Chicago Med", "House", etc.  A show filmed in a hospital is not a new concept. Where "The Pitt" is different is that it has become big by basically refusing to go big.

As opposed to making every operating room scene or diagnosis a life or death situation – which many times they can be – the real drama comes from the reactions and the specificity in the characters. There are, of course, many highly intense and stressful situations; someone is on the verge of bleeding out or at risk of having their heart stop beating, etc. But where this show excels is that it doesn’t make those scenes the lifeblood, if you will, of the show.

The show’s pacing and continuous heart rate monitor of sorts basically keeps ticking because it doesn’t slow down for anything. A man walks into the hospital covered in dirt to the point where people are asking for him to jump the line because of his smell.  A mystery baby gets left in one of the restrooms. An intensely hard-to-forget priapism case which has a lot of viewers talking. There are so many moments to cover, and this show shines when it doesn’t hold any of the moments in competition with one another. They’re just quickly-moving, rapidly-developing, truthful instances that raise the stakes. Some of these waves, of course, ripple while others crash; however, the way everything is clipped and edited together drastically raises the tension and charges the overall pacing.

When we are about to get a resolution towards a problem, we are already being swept away into another occurrence. And through all of this, "The Pitt" shows emotion, but through restraint. It doesn’t let the emotional moments boil over or go off the handles. When someone has a speech, it’s usually brief, functional, and interrupted, because there is an entire beehive of activity happening around them.

One could think that this would make performances even trickier, or hard to navigate, but really, once performers understand the tempo and musicality to this show, it actually has the power to add to the acting. It’s a challenge for these actors to stay disciplined, intimate, fast, and always adapting and yet remain full of emotion and holding onto a rich backstory, because this show requires that these performances stay contained. Small stuff like silences, glances, and passing conversations between nurses is where this show shines.

This show has been talked about as a larger commentary on American healthcare, but really at its core, it’s about people coming together to try to help, dealing with each other, and navigating this ever-changing world through a rhythm that changes as much as each of the patient’s stories. And where this show truly is in a league of its own is in its continual respect paid to and for the real healthcare workers. Creator R. Scott Gemmill dedicated the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy to real healthcare workers with the message, “Respect them, protect them, trust them.”

And this show certainly does that. It’s a masterclass in the small moments; whether that’s seen in passing glances, the irregular beats on the heart rate monitor, or the intricate, quiet decision-making of the characters, "The Pitt" doesn’t need to widen its lens -- it needs to stay compact, fast, and deliberate.  

Catch new episodes of "The Pitt" every Thursday on HBO Max!