On the 12-hour flight back from Israel, I managed to watch 14 of the 15 episodes of the Pitt, a medical show starring Noah Wyle. My brother is an emergency room doctor, and he was actually in medical school back when Noah Wyle played a medical student on ER, so I spent many years following Noah Wyle’s storylines to try to understand what my brother was going through. And now, here’s Noah Wyle again, many years later, running an ER, just like my brother.
The Pitt is set in a trauma center in Pittsburgh (hence the name of the show, referencing both the city and the feeling of being in the pit of hell). The show is set in real time, with each episode covering an hour of a 12-hour shift (spoiler, there are 15 episodes, so, this doesn’t end up being such a normal shift), which allows us to sit with each decision the doctors have to make: when can I pee? Do I believe what the patient is telling me? What do I say to a grieving parent? How do I convince someone to follow my medical advice against their own instincts? What do I do when a colleague disagrees with my decisions?
The show uses a lot of medical jargon that I don’t understand, but the emotional situations are clear and overwhelming, and I sat there wondering how these doctors were still working after two or three hours, when I already needed a nap. The only time we spend outside of the hospital, in the whole series, is at the beginning and the end of the shift, as Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle’s character) listens to music to help him transition from one part of his life to the other; the claustrophobia we feel from staying closed up in the hospital helps us to understand the all-consuming nature of the job.
My brother has never talked much about his work, even though he’s a natural storyteller (with a very dark sense of humor). In fact, he’s always seemed kind of confused by my interest, even suspicious about why I would ask him so many questions (it has been my lot in life, as a little sister, to be told again and again how very annoying I am). So, this marathon viewing of The Pitt felt like a chance to catch up with my brother, and have some conversations with him in my imagination that would never happen in real life.
My flight ended about forty-five minutes too soon, and I didn’t get to see the final episode of the 15, but when I got home, I found out that TNT, one of the basic cable channels, was showing The Pitt in three-episode installments, each Monday night. I spent the next few weeks rewatching all of the episodes I’d seen on the plane, with mom this time, leading up to the final episode neither of us had seen yet.
When I told my brother about my watch party, he didn’t seem as annoyed as usual. He said he’d seen the show, and actually liked it, certainly more than most of the other medical shows on TV. He even told me about a contest at one of his medical conferences, where the winner got the chance to spend a day with Noah Wyle (sadly, he didn’t win). Back when he was in medical school, and I was watching episodes of ER to try to understand him, there was more of a disjunct – yes, Dr. Carter was at a similar point in his career, and the show did a lot of realistic medical stories, with all of the jargon and the latest technology, but there was also a lot of soap opera (not as soapy as Grey’s Anatomy, but enough), so when I’d try to identify my brother in those storylines, and figure out what he would have been thinking, and where he would have struggled, there weren’t a ton of parallels. But with The Pitt, it’s different.
The emotions in the Pitt are kept, almost aggressively, under control. It takes until the 13th hour for Dr. Robby to break, and even then he manages to pull himself back from the brink and get back to work quickly – not because he’s all better, or because he’s learned something, but just because he has to, because it’s his job and people are relying on him. There’s no attempt by the writers to pretend that this kind of resilience is a good thing, just that it’s what he has to do.
The show does an incredible job of showing how impossible these jobs are (doctors, nurses, social workers, EMTs, administrators, and pretty much everyone else in the hospital), and the amount of guessing they have to do, and the lack of adequate resources, and the lack of perfect answers to many of the problems that come up. There’s a sense that the doctors are expected to do the impossible, and not be impacted by the anger or grief or pain of their patients. And they make a point of showing the doctors disagreeing on what to do, on medical interventions and on ethical problems, so that we have to sit with the reality that it isn’t always clear who’s right and what the best course of action might be.
There’s something profound, for me, in the fact that Noah Wyle is now playing a Jewish character, and (spoiler) actually recites the Shma to himself at one point. It’s a small thing – and it’s not like they’re celebrating Chanukah in the middle of the ER – but it makes the show feel that much more connected to my brother, and to me.
Of course, TNT decided to air the first season of The Pitt in November and December for a reason: the second season is now airing on HBO Max (a paid streaming service). It’s a very good marketing technique, because I’m actually considering a subscription, just to see the show’s second season without having to wait for my next trip to Israel.
One reassuring thing has been that, while my brother works in emergency medicine, he doesn’t tend to work in trauma centers like the Pitt, so even if he faces a lot of the same issues as Noah Wyle’s character, it’s not at the same unrelenting pace, or with the same level of chaos. At least, that’s what my mom was telling herself, and me, as we watched the series week by week, and that helped both of us sleep a little easier at night.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 