transcript
Speaker 1:
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Speaker 2:
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Speaker 3:
[01:21] Hello, welcome back to The Prestige TV Podcast. Meet I'm Joanna Robinson.
Speaker 4:
[01:24] I'm Rob Mahoney.
Speaker 3:
[01:25] It's The Pitt finale. Devastating, Rob, honestly, very sad.
Speaker 4:
[01:29] It's tough.
Speaker 3:
[01:31] We've been hearing from a lot of people that they're gonna quote, miss us when The Pitt is over. Guess what? We'll still be here.
Speaker 4:
[01:39] We're not gonna pass from this mortal coil.
Speaker 3:
[01:41] We're not expiring, we're not going to the roof to watch the fireworks. We will still be here covering other shows. Euphoria is happening. A show that a lot of people are watching.
Speaker 4:
[01:52] Including us.
Speaker 3:
[01:53] Including us.
Speaker 4:
[01:53] I'm having a good time so far.
Speaker 3:
[01:54] I actually really like it, but a lot of people are watching it for other reasons, and that's fine too.
Speaker 4:
[01:58] Seems like a great reason to listen to a podcast of two people bantering about it delightfully.
Speaker 3:
[02:02] Oh, is that what we do?
Speaker 4:
[02:03] I think so.
Speaker 3:
[02:04] Okay. Also, Beef, the Netflix series, season two of Beef, is dropping at a binge drop this week. We will be covering it in three different episodes. So if you wanna hear us talk about Beef, we will be doing that as well. So Euphoria, Beef and many other shows to come. So stick around. We'll be here. We're still here.
Speaker 4:
[02:24] This place needs us and we need it, right?
Speaker 3:
[02:26] Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, absolutely. We're very important. Anything you wanna say before we get into our sort of robust mailbag that we have here for the finale?
Speaker 4:
[02:33] Just that I enjoy this journey as always with you, Jo. And this is our first episode by episode for The Pitt specifically. But every time we wind down one of these shows, it feels like the end of something.
Speaker 3:
[02:42] Yeah, but I guess it would be the longest continuous run we've done on anything together.
Speaker 4:
[02:46] It's true. And because of that, it does feel like we have been doing this since the day I was born. It has felt like a long season, not in a bad way, but this is a run.
Speaker 3:
[02:54] We've been doing this all year.
Speaker 4:
[02:56] Truly.
Speaker 3:
[02:57] Mailbag time. So, Caroline, I'm going to start with some thirst from our listener, Caroline.
Speaker 4:
[03:04] Okay.
Speaker 3:
[03:06] She said, I know we've talked about the various hotness factors, but for the love, what are the casting calls for the mail EMTs? The EMT that brought in Roxy, the EMT that brought in singing, drunk head, gunshot guy. Quote, looking for tall muscled men who fill out their shirt sleeves, look great in blue and can flex their bicep as they hold items at a 90 degree for extended periods of time. Acting experience is a bonus. End quote. Caroline just wanted to appreciate the EMTs. We actually got a couple of emails from like, in a more serious way of people who work as EMTs, who are like, hey man, we wish our characters got a bit more respect on the pit. And here's Caroline respecting them in a certain way, I would say. Absolutely.
Speaker 4:
[03:45] We salute them and their biceps and their physiques.
Speaker 3:
[03:49] And their expertise.
Speaker 4:
[03:50] Absolutely their expertise. But they did, especially last week, become a bit of a punching bag in an unfortunate way.
Speaker 3:
[03:56] I want to, so more broadly, a lot of the emails that we got last week were about Whittaker's badge and a possible Langdon relapse. It was a very popular theory that was going around. Did not wind up being true.
Speaker 4:
[04:07] No.
Speaker 3:
[04:08] We got a couple of great emails that don't have anything to do with that. I kind of want to talk to you more broadly about theories here at the end of the season, right? Okay, so the popular theory that Langdon stole Whittaker's badge and relapsed, and that's why he came out of the bathroom looking sweaty and something, something, something. What is Santos going to do with her stolen scalpel? That was like a question a lot of people were asking. Heat exhaustion mom, are we going to learn something new and complicated about how complicit she was and what happened? And the answer to all of that is nothing, right? So does it change the way you think about theories and this show? Is this a show that sort of teases you with potential mysteries and then like nothing much comes of it? Are there other ways in which theories pan out? What do you think?
Speaker 4:
[04:56] I think about it differently for patients versus doctors. With patients, I kind of like that the structure of The Pitt almost emulates the doctor's experience, where you see these people for an intense brief period of time and then short of Langdon popping up to a higher floor to check on a patient, you really don't know what happens to them after that. And once they're in another doctor's hands, another department's hands, it's kind of out of your control. So the patients, I kind of fully expect to not get any follow up. The Langdon, Whittaker badge stuff, I just, that would be such a bad plan, even if you are a desperate addict who's trying to get pills. It's so easily traceable back to you that it never really tracked to something that would be possible. The Santos thing, I think, makes sense as someone who is not necessarily even actively engaging in the practice of self harm, but is in a tough moment and sort of considering it and ideating it. And so it also feels truthful to where she's been this season, that she's, for lack of a better phrasing, keeping her options open as far as what self-medicating looks like for her.
Speaker 3:
[05:56] And opting to drink and go to karaoke instead.
Speaker 4:
[05:59] Much healthier.
Speaker 3:
[06:00] We approve of that.
Speaker 4:
[06:00] Alanis, much healthier.
Speaker 3:
[06:02] That's great. Honestly, one of my favorite things that has ever happened on The Pitt. Like, without question. On the badge front, from Andy, who's a psychodynamic therapist, really interesting analysis of Whitaker and the badge as sort of a character beat, which I really loved. So this is what Andy said. Whitaker, I imagine for him, the badge signified his no longer being the farm boy Huckleberry, in addition to it symbolizing his capacity to accomplish things or either honor slash disavow his family. I really don't know much about Whitaker in my opinion, beyond how others engage with and define him or what we are shown happening to him. Who is Whitaker beyond acts of service to others? I think this question that I have about Whitaker is one that Robby is grappling with, except Whitaker being new, hasn't yet reached the point of losing his sense of self and purpose to the role of an ED physician. So I love that idea from Andy of it's not a did Langdon steal the badge or like, because at the end of the day, it's kind of just a punchline where the badge ends up.
Speaker 4:
[06:58] It's also not that kind of show.
Speaker 3:
[07:00] But what, well, that was my question. Is it that kind of show? I don't know. Is it sometimes that kind of show and sometimes not? I never liked it. Again, I say this all the time. I never liked to tell people they're watching TV incorrectly, but I do think it's interesting at the end of a season to sort of sit and say, okay, is this the kind of show that is leaving those kinds of breadcrumbs for theories or not? But like this idea that Whitaker, who in last week's episode in a scene that we didn't love, but who said like, hey, man, don't define me, you know, I'm not the Oshuk's little buddy, Gilligan, et cetera. That for him, the badge would mean something more than it does for some other folks in the ED. And so for him to lose it feels like, oh, I am just a fumbling farm boy, perhaps. I am just the guy who gets, who has to change his scrubs, you know, nine different times in a shift or something like that. So I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 4:
[07:52] I do like it. And I fully buy it for that character that those sorts of status symbols would mean something for him, in addition to the kind of end point we get for him in this season, where Amy pulls up with the truck with baby Theo. And it's like, there's something about that whole moment that I think is very sweet and very, like, it casts, I think, his whole relationship and dynamic and the way it was portrayed this season in a bit of a different light. And some of it is just sort of the comfort with which he is falling into, like, yes, maybe there is a co-dependence there, right? Like, maybe this isn't the healthiest relationship for either of them. But there's something about the like, oh, she's like gonna give up the driver's seat and he's gonna step into it. And he's like assuming a different kind of status in that way with his like surrogate family.
Speaker 3:
[08:33] He's slipping into someone else's spot.
Speaker 4:
[08:36] Trucks, certainly.
Speaker 3:
[08:37] Yeah. We got a great email about this from Anna who said, Amy is clearly showing up in her husband's— Anna had gotten to see the episode early. This is the only email we have that's about this finale because they screened the episode both at PaleyFest and then also for health care workers.
Speaker 4:
[08:54] I've heard of PaleyFest.
Speaker 3:
[08:55] At the Alamo Draft House, they did a screening for health care workers. So Anna attended one of those screenings. But she wrote, Amy is clearly showing up in her husband's old truck and the role Whitaker plays in her life is to show how they immediately switch places so that Whitaker can drive. Clearly, there's a cultural component of Amy's traditional farmhouse lifestyle requiring the man in her life take the front seat. But the fact that her presumably less than one-year-old baby is in the backseat past 10 p.m. indicates that she doesn't have a support system. The fact that Amy picks Whitaker up draws attention to the fact that he likely doesn't have a car with his financial insecurity. I think there's some codependency there. But given both of their upbringings, I can see this resulting in marriage down the line. It's giving ring before spring energy. I really agree, but I'm also like, Robby's so concerned about it. Yeah. But when you see it, you're like, this doesn't look dysfunctional. This looks quite sweet. When Robby's watching it happen, I don't quite know how he's interpreting that moment. But it seems like he's like, oh, that looks like a full life in a way that I don't have. I was judging him for doing that, but he's putting the music on. He's got a relationship with this baby already. Amy's quite fond of him. I don't know, it looks kind of nice.
Speaker 4:
[10:11] It seems like something. And of all the people to take real life advice from at work, Robby's not the guy, right?
Speaker 3:
[10:17] Robby's not the guy. Last thing on the Whittaker badge front is our listener, Larry, identified, before seeing this episode, identified the exact moment Whittaker lost his badge, which is when he collides with a new intern in the last week's episode, when she was freaked out by seeing the dummy. And she's like, what's that? So if he lost his badge, like in the vicinity of the dummy, and that is like where Digby found it, because we see him with the dummy later on, etc. So how are you feeling about the way that Digby's story wrapped up and the way that Whitaker's story wrapped up there?
Speaker 4:
[10:51] I thought the Digby, I mean, it's kind of silly.
Speaker 3:
[10:53] It's just funny.
Speaker 4:
[10:53] It's fine. I kind of would prefer that he would just wheel off with the dummy and the badge. I don't know why we need this like speech about fireworks, other than everyone in the greater Pittsburgh area is an expert on the history of fireworks.
Speaker 3:
[11:04] Listen, Pittsburgh pride, it matters.
Speaker 4:
[11:07] Apparently so.
Speaker 3:
[11:08] On that front, we got a couple, I would say many emails about a couple of things. Do you want to talk about sticks and what we missed about the band Sticks?
Speaker 4:
[11:17] Please. I really don't know a lot about Sticks other than the hits, so I would love to be educated.
Speaker 3:
[11:23] I think every Steelers game, they play Renegade in the fourth quarter. This is like a traditional, so Sticks has a strong association with Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4:
[11:34] I would love the origin of that because it feels more Raiders coded to me.
Speaker 3:
[11:38] Renegade?
Speaker 4:
[11:38] Yeah.
Speaker 3:
[11:39] Okay.
Speaker 4:
[11:39] I don't know. Maybe that's me projecting a little bit too much on the true Raider psychos out there that are like Mad Max style decked out in cosplay.
Speaker 3:
[11:46] Oh, my father, you mean, who is an Oakland Raiders fan?
Speaker 4:
[11:49] Whoa, did not know this. We're going to have to unpack. On the greater Pennsylvania knowledge front, Jo, we did get many, many emails and comments about our raising of Youngling versus Rolling Rock. What would be the accurate beer in this particular occasion? Happy to defer and say we were wrong. You know what? Rolling Rock, more regionally appropriate, it turns out.
Speaker 3:
[12:09] Absolutely. Again, still on the Whitaker front. We got a lot of Whitaker emails.
Speaker 4:
[12:12] The people love Dennis. Feels weird calling him Dennis, but feels very familiar.
Speaker 3:
[12:18] The Gilligan's Island question, right? We were asking whether or not someone his age would be that familiar with Gilligan's Island. We got a lot of email from people saying, hey man, he grew up in rural Nebraska. Perhaps in rural Nebraska, they watch a lot of Gilligan's Island. Here's what I was gonna say.
Speaker 4:
[12:34] Yeah, please.
Speaker 3:
[12:35] So every summer I used to go to Spokane, Washington, which is where my grandpa lives. And right outside Spokane is Sprague, Washington, where we had family who owned a farm. So like super rural Washington, they let me drive the combine, I learned how to ride a horse on this farm, etc. They did have, they could not get normal television out there. So they had like satellites. And then a lot of people wrote in saying, I could see them having a DVD collection of Gilligan's Island. We grew up watching Gilligan's Island on DVD. So is there an aspect of being from rural Nebraska, a wholesome, family-friendly show like Gilligan's Island could perhaps be in Dennis' repertoire a bit more than it might be in your average Gen Z doctor's repertoire?
Speaker 4:
[13:22] I reject the assumption, Baiten. Because the exact thing you mentioned, which is honestly the first people I ever knew who had satellite TV were in extremely rural areas and had the hundreds, if not thousands of channels. So it's like, there are so many ways to get content and TV and shows and movies now.
Speaker 3:
[13:38] But maybe like some people don't even have satellite TV, they just have like their DVD collection.
Speaker 4:
[13:42] I mean, we support physical media on this podcast. We do, we do. Look, it's possible, I just wouldn't assume that just because someone grew up in a rural area, they're watching shows from the 60s.
Speaker 3:
[13:51] Hashtag not all farmers, Rob said. But shout out.
Speaker 4:
[13:54] Someone has to stand up for him.
Speaker 3:
[13:55] Shout out to Patton Willard, who taught me how to play Crippage. Oh, on what the spice of life is, which is a question we asked last week. A game I don't think you played very well, Rob.
Speaker 4:
[14:05] I think I answered it quite literally.
Speaker 3:
[14:07] But is literal a fun way to play a game?
Speaker 4:
[14:10] It's not. Look, the non-literal way is-
Speaker 3:
[14:12] That was like a real no-but, not a yes-and for you. No, but it's literally salt, Joanna.
Speaker 4:
[14:17] There's literally one answer to this question, unfortunately. I think the actual answer for me is paprika. That would be my spice of life if I were to pick one that is not salt or black pepper.
Speaker 3:
[14:26] Thank you for playing this game. Greg wrote in to-
Speaker 4:
[14:28] Actually, hold on. I need to commentate the podcast once again. I did see some commentary calling me basic for picking salt and pepper. Let me tell you, you're wrong. Ultimately-
Speaker 3:
[14:38] I mean, S&P is important.
Speaker 4:
[14:39] S&P is not only important, but the baseline of a lot of modern, at least western cooking. Most importantly, if you can't make good food with just salt and pepper, you're not a very good cook. I'm sorry to say.
Speaker 3:
[14:48] Tough. It's still cardamom or cumin. But Greg wrote in to talk about a thing that landed his wife in the ED, which was having too much nutmeg. That she was, I think she was making yogurt, was meant to sprinkle some nutmeg on, instead dumped nutmeg and was like, oh, well, I guess I'll just go with it.
Speaker 4:
[15:07] I love pumpkin pie. Why not?
Speaker 3:
[15:08] Let's do it. Struggled through it. And then it made her high, essentially. The nutmeg gave her like, She doomed it. Yeah, she did. She spiced it. So she had to go to the ED and they said their only solution was ride it out, baby. Ride the nutmeg high all the way. I didn't know the nutmeg could do that.
Speaker 4:
[15:26] I didn't know it could do that. I mean, it is a spice that you obviously use in pretty sparing amounts, but I will say, Jo, I don't know what your experience is with grating your own nutmeg, a real game changer. Really elevates the whole thing.
Speaker 3:
[15:38] I agree, but for some reason, there's something about the experience of grating nutmeg versus, let's say, garlic, microplaning nutmeg versus garlic or gingers and like that, where I'm more inclined to fuck up my own fingers or nails. Because the round nutmeg, it's tough.
Speaker 4:
[15:54] It's just the cost of doing business if you want the most aromatic possible Thanksgiving desserts.
Speaker 3:
[16:00] Okay, guess what? I'm almost done.
Speaker 4:
[16:03] What is this podcast about again?
Speaker 3:
[16:05] Nutmeg, Rolling Rock, Furries. Shane, okay, Shane wrote in, I didn't prep you for this, so it's okay if you don't have an answer. But Shane wrote in saying, can we get a final ranking of our biggest enemies this season? Did Ogilvy successfully cry his way off the list? Shane offers up this list, Boba Guy, Golf Douche, ICE, Maga Monica, ICE as a monolith. Maga Monica, Power Trip Security Guard, General of AI, the hospital CEO, the hackers, the entire US healthcare system, and the EMTs that were afraid of boobs. Who's number one? You think it might be ICE?
Speaker 4:
[16:46] Here's the thing, ICE is gonna be number one on the list, I'm sorry to say. Maga Monica doesn't even make the list when you have these points of comparison.
Speaker 3:
[16:54] I agree, I kind of agree.
Speaker 4:
[16:56] Like what, she called someone a snowflake?
Speaker 3:
[16:57] Yeah.
Speaker 4:
[16:58] There's so much, someone literally held hospitals for ransom, I just think there are worse villains.
Speaker 3:
[17:04] Okay, so Ogilvy and Maga Monica Innocent, your favorite characters this season, I think is what you're saying.
Speaker 4:
[17:07] I did not say that. Sorry, did we get on the list the security guard who tased Jackson?
Speaker 3:
[17:12] Yes, power trip security guards.
Speaker 4:
[17:13] Power trip security guard, gotta be pretty high on the list as well.
Speaker 3:
[17:16] I agree. Email us, PrestigeTV at spotify.com, or for the last time this season, drsidebangs.gmail.com if you have other enemies. I would just like to know if we missed anyone.
Speaker 4:
[17:27] I also want to say if you're catching this podcast late, we will still receive the emails from drsidebangs.gmail.com. Will we have a means to respond to them on a podcast? Who knows?
Speaker 3:
[17:38] There are several weeks behind the UK. I think they're only on episode three, so we did get a couple of maggot emails this week from people who are just catching up with the season, so I look forward to those continuing to roll in. Last but not least, several members of the cast were at PaleyFest at an event this weekend with the finale. I did get to moderate the panel. That was very cool. Thank you so much for smirking at me, Rob.
Speaker 4:
[18:06] It's a huge deal. I don't know why we're not celebrating this. Very cool.
Speaker 3:
[18:10] I just wanted to shout out that my favorite thing that happened on the panel was Taylor Dearden. This has been clipped, but Taylor Dearden was talking about how... I was asking them the question of what is something your character has been very wrong about this season? Because it's something we like about The Pitt. Definitely. When these characters are behaving badly and it's very human. It's very well-rounded. Taylor Dearden was talking about how she had her answer. It was about Becca, of course, etc. But she said, what I like is all of these missteps from these people feel very much in character. There's always a reason for it. She's always in line with something. She's like, so Robby's really bad with women. Oh, his mom abandoned him. Okay. So that was a great Taylor Dearden moment, I thought, from the panel. And I would suggest people check it out. Her delivery was better than mine. But yeah.
Speaker 4:
[18:57] You know what my highlight of the panel was? Seeing the very warm reception to our own Joanna Robinson and the work you did on said panel. I mean, this is just a highlight for me personally.
Speaker 3:
[19:06] Okay.
Speaker 4:
[19:07] I had a great time.
Speaker 3:
[19:08] I don't really want to go beat by beat in this episode. I kind of want to just check in on our favorite characters. I think we've already covered Whitaker end to end, but check in with our favorite characters and see how they're doing at the end of this day, how we feel about their arc this season, and how it all panned out. I want to start with Dr. McKay, Dr. Sidebanks herself. We got some eels from folks saying they really felt like she got sidelined for a lot of the season. I think other than being heavily flirted with, which is good for her. And then the Roxy case was her big story this season. And then the last couple of episodes really just hanging around, she gets drawn into the wild pregnancy emergency case here at the end, she's with the baby, the infant, et cetera. But in general, how do you feel like McKay's story wrapped up this season? It's hard to top the ankle monitor, ex-husband, child, dad, all the other stuff that she had going on last season.
Speaker 4:
[20:08] I think there was a bit of a handoff and look, this is just going to be one of the realities of a show with this kind of ensemble, right? Not every season is going to be a heavy McKay season. And so I feel like we got a bit of a handoff from some McKay heavy stuff in season one to more Samir Mohan heavy stuff in season two. Your mileage may vary on how all of that landed in the finale, but that to me is some of the trade off in terms of screen time. I do think as far as cases go, Roxy turned out to be one of the signature cases of the season.
Speaker 3:
[20:34] I agree.
Speaker 4:
[20:35] In terms of patients rolling through the door and also lasted five, six episodes. Like it was quite an ordeal emotionally in terms of screen time, in terms of the effect on all the people in the room. So she was at the center of a kind of action. It's just not drilling an ankle monitor.
Speaker 3:
[20:49] I agree. On the one hand, I agree with you that there will be trade offs. On the other hand, I do think season one did a slightly better job of evenly distributing the stories. I think this season Langdon's admittedly quite dramatic sort of returned to the ED. And then Robby's whole thing took up a lot of space. For sure. This season. And so yeah, we'll talk about Samira, of course. But I think characters like Mel and characters like McKay suffered as a result. Santos a little bit too. We're just kind of backgrounded a bit this season.
Speaker 4:
[21:25] I think that speaks to the season overall and the finale in particular, which was, this was a good enough season. I thought it was a pretty solid finale. But I do think The Pitt in season two struggled with that misallocation of resources. The most crucial of which is being screen time for some of these people and some of these stories where if you're paying so much attention to Langdon, what does that come at a cost of? If you're paying so much attention to Dr. Al-Hashimi, which I just think that story completely flopped here in the finale.
Speaker 3:
[21:51] I really agree.
Speaker 4:
[21:53] What are you trading off to do that?
Speaker 3:
[21:54] Dr. Al-Hashimi, let's talk about her. I want to, again, we're recording this a little early, so we don't get to see all the post-mortem interviews that the various cast members have given. I did get to moderate this panel. I did ask them about Dr. Al-Hashimi. They gave a fairly, I thought, generic answer, and that's fine. That's their right to do on a panel. But I don't think they really illuminated. I was just like, what was the point of this arc? And they were just described literally what happened, rather than talk about what larger point they were trying to make, that's fine. But a friend of the pod, Katie Rich, told me that she did interview Seppi Muafi, so I would really like people to go listen to that interview on the Ankler Prestige Junkie Podcast. So I do not want to scoop her coverage or whatever, but I was really, we were both a bit baffled by Seppi who plays Dr. Al-Hashimi, her interpretation, which was not, so what's your interpretation of how the Dr. Al-Hashimi storyline wraps up in this episode?
Speaker 4:
[22:55] My interpretation is that this woman is very smart, Dr. Al-Hashimi, very smart, very qualified and absolutely fucking unfit to do this job. And the fact that she has talked herself into thinking that she could even attempt it is almost like unfathomable to me. And I think the most charitable read on that is, when we want something so badly, we're willing to explain away a lot about ourselves and our circumstances, and especially if your circumstances are changing under your feet in real time. I get how a really ambitious and driven person would try to convince themselves and others that they still deserve to do the thing they want to do. But watching it play out and specifically watching the absolute lack of momentum or movement on this story basically every step of the way, like Robby was skeptical of her from episode one. It turns out, as you raise this being like a potential issue, that he was just kind of validated in that skepticism. And she, in this episode, it's just like, I have no idea how to connect with her perspective on the argument she's trying to make.
Speaker 3:
[23:54] What's your interpretation of her sort of outburst in the car at the very end of the episode?
Speaker 4:
[24:00] I think acceptance.
Speaker 3:
[24:01] See, that is so, again, I'm not trying to scoop my pal, Kitty Rich. I really would like people to check out that interview. That is not the actress's interpretation.
Speaker 4:
[24:10] Wow.
Speaker 3:
[24:10] That it is her frustration at she believes her character is right and Robby is wrong. And that it's about making accommodations for people's, I don't know if this is the right word, but disabilities. What are the accommodations you can make inside of a workplace for people who have things that are obstacles for their... Yeah. I don't... First of all, I find it hard to uncover that interpretation inside of the episode that was presented to us, whether it's in the edit or something like that. To me, that looked like defeat. Her stopping her car specifically because when Robby's like, you shouldn't even be driving. So her pumping the brakes... And he's right. And he is right. And her pumping the brakes on the car, my interpretation was this is her acceptance that she cannot even drive, let alone do this job the way that she wants to do it. The question I have to ask myself, though, is this actress is meant to be here next season. So what is... She's talked about she's going back to work on season three. So what role is Dr. Al-Hashimi playing in season three? I'm quite confused by it. Again, Noah Wiley articulated this very well on the PaleyFest panel, talking about how he likes, he's like, we caught Robbie on a very particularly bad day.
Speaker 4:
[25:31] For sure.
Speaker 3:
[25:31] I like that we allow him to be petty, to be shitty inside of this episode. Samira calls him a dick, like Dr. Langdon is like, you need help.
Speaker 4:
[25:42] A hundred percent fucked up.
Speaker 3:
[25:43] There are many ways in which the show is not saying, Dr. Robbie, he's great and fine. But when he's like kind of right about Dr. Al-Hashimi from the start, when he's seemingly kind of right about Samira, I really hated how that conversation went. Like I was actually having quite a bad time with this finale until the Alanis Morissette karaoke happened because between the Mohan scene and the Al-Hashimi scene, I was just like, this is just, Robbie thinks two women can't do their job and both women kind of seem like they agree with him. Because Samira telling Robbie he's a bit of a dick, but that the ED needs him and she hopes he comes back and her mother was treating her like a child and she let her and she's just sort of like, it's a very much I was wrong kind of conversation and Robbie not really saying, I was wrong and I shouldn't have treated you that way and I was projecting my mommy issues onto you or my own like experience. Like he has no concession on his side. So I was just sort of like, what are we doing here? I was really confused by it.
Speaker 4:
[26:45] The Mohan stuff is very frustrating, but I kind of want to put a pin in it because to me it's like a whole separate conversation about the future of this show and that character. With Al-Hashimi, I think part of the problem I'm having with this endpoint, whether you see it as frustration, whether you see it as defeat, the way she has concealed this secret about herself makes me reconsider almost everything she has raised over the course of the season. As far as like, should there be two attendings on the floor, that no longer feels like I'm trying to do what's best for the ED. It feels like I'm trying to do what allows me to do this job.
Speaker 3:
[27:15] I think it can be both.
Speaker 4:
[27:16] It can be both, but it's like even something like, you know, the argument she gets into with Robby earlier about being named in a lawsuit. It's like, does she now want to be named in a lawsuit because she doesn't want scrutiny that comes with something like that? She doesn't want to be deposed like Mel's being deposed.
Speaker 3:
[27:30] Possibly, but I think it's more, I mean, from what she's explained to him, this is not something that has been an ongoing issue inside of her career as a medical professional. This is an exceptional day that this has happened to her. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying, you know, you and I both raised this, we raised it in sort of like the medical diagnosis spoiler section, so it's possible that people didn't hear us talk about it earlier, but like, we were both appalled by the idea that she was hiding this thing that is a very risky thing for her to grapple with inside of a job where she needs to be able to act quickly, think quickly, move quickly, you know, and she's pushing back on Robby. I'm not really on her side, like you, I'm not really on her side, but overall, it's just a very dissatisfying storyline for Robby to just be, just think no one else can do this job better than I can, and look, this woman physically cannot do this job is a really weird outcome, I think, at the end of the day.
Speaker 4:
[28:28] I just think it's so much messier than trying to make space an accommodation for people with disability or different needs.
Speaker 3:
[28:34] I agree, yeah.
Speaker 4:
[28:35] And some of that is like, look, even within this episode, two attendings on the floor, you transpose Dr. Robby, who was a good but flawed physician, with Dr. Al-Hashimi, with Judith and her baby. We've seen already this season, Al-Hashimi frees, have one of her seizures at this moment, which is confronted with this past trauma from working with Doctors Without Borders and the very specific pain that that caused. Is she fit to be in that room, in that split second emergency, where if they do not get this baby out in seconds, there's huge risk to both the baby and the mother. It's just like the fact that you're raising that within this episode, as she's trying to defend herself, and I think almost most damningly, the fact that she's going to the chief neurologist to basically get a permission slip, tells you that she knows there's something wrong with this. If it was fine, you don't need anyone's approval to do this.
Speaker 3:
[29:24] Where I would disagree with you is that, is there a role that she can play on the floor that is extremely helpful? Yes. And that's her argument, that doesn't require her being in those particular moments.
Speaker 4:
[29:37] I think that's absolutely true in the case. It's not being an attending though.
Speaker 3:
[29:41] Or an attending that plays a different role. I don't know the exact parameters of the job definition, because this is a teaching hospital. We are instructing people. There's a lot of things that attendings do, and especially, we talked about the night shift, there are two attendings on the night shift. So do we need both Abbott and Shen doing the exact same job, if they're both there? It's like Abbott is the slightly senior attending over, Shen is what it appears to be. He's the one giving the hurrah sort of motivational speeches to the troops. So, I don't know, I don't have the answer. I am very curious to see how the rest of the cast and the people who worked on this episode talk about it after everyone's seen it. I'm very curious to see how audiences react to it. But like, on the one hand, I am with you in that I am like, I am frustrated with his character for concealing this information. On the other hand, I don't think it means there's no future for her inside of this department. You know, I don't think that's what you're saying either.
Speaker 4:
[30:42] Yeah, I don't think it's that there's no future. I don't think it's not the future that she wants, right? Like, she wants to take over this department in Robby's absence and bring in a second attending and kind of like reshape what The Pitt looks like. And she could definitely be involved in that particular effort. But the day to day, minute to minute, second to second reality of being in attending just doesn't feel reasonable with her circumstances.
Speaker 3:
[31:02] What is the second to second reality of being attending? Robby's definition of what that is. And is that in a completely unsustainable, untenable definition of what it means to be in attending?
Speaker 4:
[31:13] Yeah, I think he's hands on to probably an unhealthy degree. But in a best case scenario, I would think in attending in this context is like the ultimate safety net, right? It's like it's a teaching hospital. You're trying to delegate and assign and help people learn first. But when things get really bad, you have to be able to jump in. And those are the exact moments where, and honestly, even she froze teaching earlier this season when she was trying to explain like the asthmatic medications, even that was a moment of a seizure for her. And so there's something about this environment that doesn't seem very conducive to the way that she, like whatever state she's in currently with all this.
Speaker 3:
[31:47] Yeah, it's interesting. And then like, I find myself largely dissatisfied with the storyline this season. I'll be curious to see how it plays out.
Speaker 4:
[31:55] And I want to be very clear, not with Sepideh Moafi's performance, which I have really liked. And I think part of the reason I'm frustrated by the character beats here at the end is, I came to really like Dr. Al-Hashimi at points in this season. And ultimately bringing us along and getting us on her side, I think that part was successful. And so I just feel like the rug has been pulled out from under me, not in a narratively satisfying way, but in a way where it's just like, what was all this for?
Speaker 3:
[32:19] I mean, to go back to sort of my question about theories this season, this is one of the instances where I was like, this is a mystery that the show is asking viewers to ask questions about and try to follow breadcrumbs and say what's going on. From the very beginning of the season, what is going on with Dr. Al-Hashimi.
Speaker 5:
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Speaker 1:
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Speaker 3:
[35:26] Jimmy, do you want to talk about Samira here?
Speaker 4:
[35:28] Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker 3:
[35:29] I really hated this. I'm sorry. It's really bad. So we got a couple of emails from people saying, hey, will you talk about Supriya Ganesh leaving the show?
Speaker 4:
[35:37] Yes.
Speaker 3:
[35:38] We did talk about it in sort of like a spoiler section because you, Rob, did not, and I support that, did not want people to know ahead of time before they wanted to that Samira Mohan is not coming back next season, but Samira Mohan is not coming back next season. So this is her, this, and then seeing her up on the roof with the other women of The Pitt in a very like, This is it. Avengers assemble sort of here are all the women moment.
Speaker 4:
[36:02] With their hair down though. Women may get the job done. Dr. Bangs is banging harder than she's been banging all season.
Speaker 3:
[36:07] But like that's it for Samira. This is our last impression of her. And like, it didn't feel like it was written like a final scene for a character.
Speaker 4:
[36:16] The report in Variety was that this was a story-driven decision to write Samira and Mohan off the show. Where is the drive here? Like, where is that motive, like that motivation? I just feel like this is a wildly unsatisfying and unsatisfactory, really. Like, it's not about, I don't need Mohan to have wins. I don't need her to triumph. I don't even need her to have perfect clarity. But we need a turn in her story where she is angling towards something. It doesn't have to be a complete moment of realization of like, oh, I need to be in geriatrics or whatever. But where we leave her is just like languishing in the ambulance bay, beaten down by the day and by Robby. And I guess she's just going to leave.
Speaker 3:
[36:55] I mean, do we need her angling towards something? Or is it realistic for some people to just wash out?
Speaker 4:
[37:02] Oh, no, I don't even mean that. I just mean from a character standpoint, yeah, turning a corner towards some kind of understanding of what it is she's meant to do or not be here.
Speaker 3:
[37:13] But like, isn't that where we find her? Just sort of like beaten down and washed out. I think part of what— Which I hate, but like, is where we find her, you know?
Speaker 4:
[37:21] I think that idea that there are some people who— and we were just talking about this with Al-Hashimi, too— who are just like, great doctors, but maybe not best suited for this kind of medicine. That's an interesting idea. I don't think we ever got to the point where, like, those ideas were raised but never processed. And maybe that's unreasonable to expect within the context of one day.
Speaker 3:
[37:40] I think that's the main issue, is like, this is the limitation of a TV show like The Pitt, in order to do this over the course of— you know, because the story arc for Samira Mohan in season one was, Robby's on her ass for being too slow, and yet sometimes when she takes the slow and steady approach, she finds things that other people miss. And then at the very end, in the absolute moment of crisis, she comes through as an absolute rock star. That's her arc in season one. That's one day. And we get another day, and it's just a complete wash up for this person. And so like, that's a question I had, I don't think I got a chance to ask during the panel, but that was a question I have is like, can one bad day just derail a person? And is that something that the Pitt writers feel like they can demonstrate? Did we need to meet Samir at the beginning of this day, a bit more on the ropes than we met her, for this to be sort of like the final straw of her time in the ED? We meet her, her mom's calling her, she has this plan to go to New Jersey, like her plan, but like it's all a lot to happen over the course of the day. And I kind of feel like if this were a season of watching her like, again, wash out, which is not something I want for a character that I really like, and I think is really good at her job in many, many ways, but would it make more sense if it happened over the course of a year or a couple months in this person's life?
Speaker 4:
[38:57] I think the one bad day as the final straw, and we almost get that with Robby in this episode, I think there are so many moments when he and all the other doctors are treating Judith and her baby and trying to get them back to stable, where you can tell he needs a complete win. It's like, if anything happens to either Judith or the baby, that's maybe it for Dr. Rabinovich. With the day he's had, with the momentum, with all of this suicidal ideation and vocalizing it all day, he's in such a delicate place that he needs this one thing to go right. I don't have any sense of that with Samira over the course of the season, that it was like the Orlando Diaz case for as tough as that is, like a loss for a doctor to take, and she tried so hard at so many points to make that work, that it would be the kind of thing that would dramatically change the entire course of her career.
Speaker 3:
[39:47] Yeah. Especially with the knowledge that we had that maybe we would rather not have looming over the last few episodes that the actress wasn't coming back. I think it re-contextualized the whole storyline for us. It's really tough. I don't know the full story of what's happening with Cypria Ganesh, but this does not feel like a clean, clear we're writing this person off.
Speaker 4:
[40:13] No.
Speaker 3:
[40:14] Ditto with Dr. Collins last season. Same.
Speaker 4:
[40:18] Yeah. Both just left hanging in a way that, yeah, I get you're wanting to capture the reality of a day, and you don't want to have every character who leaves the show, which structurally there will be characters who leave the show based on the realities of these sorts of departments. They're not all going to get their big dramatic send off where everyone cuts a piece of cake and salutes them on the way out the door.
Speaker 3:
[40:34] Dr. Shen wishes there's a piece of cake for every send off.
Speaker 4:
[40:36] Sometimes so do I. I'm open to lots of different versions of this. I think what this felt like was they didn't quite know if they were going to have Dr. Mohan back on the show or not, and wrote it in this ambiguous up in the air sort of way, that does not work for a character that's this important to The Pitt. It also left me like hanging on every word, even when she is trying to give Robby a note of like encouragement on the way out as far as his own mental health struggle. What she says is, have a good trip, please be safe, we need you here. Not they need you here, not The Pitt needs you, not this place needs you. It's like, that's not a character in that moment has already decided she's gone. And maybe that's fine for the kind of story you're trying to tell, but it certainly doesn't seem like your writer's room was like going into this moment in the scene fully understanding that this was going to be her exit.
Speaker 3:
[41:26] It's really fascinating. So at the Paley Fest event, watching the episode, backstage, the people who were there on the panel were watching the episode. So like watching Catherine Lanasa laugh at the funnier parts of this episode, really delightful and stuff like that. But you could hear the audience watching the episode, and they're laughing, and they're gasping, and they're doing all this stuff because it was a huge crowd at the Paley Fest event. There was the most, the moment that like really surprised everyone. Scott Gemmell, who wrote this episode included, was when Robby was nice and encouraging to Victoria, and the whole theater burst into applause. They were like, Robby managed to be nice, and everyone got really excited about it. So I thought that was really interesting, but like that he could find that grace for Javadi. Like, I still don't feel like I have nailed down, like, when Robby can find it within himself to be a supportive mentor, telling Victoria, you can do anything, right? Not just like, I think you could do that, you could do, just like the kind of blanket approval from daddy that like you want, right?
Speaker 4:
[42:35] It was a little too blanket for my tastes.
Speaker 3:
[42:37] Fine, fair, but like nothing, not a crumb for Samira. Not a crumb of like, I get it, moms are tough, or like whatever.
Speaker 4:
[42:46] Life doesn't turn out the way you want.
Speaker 3:
[42:48] Or, we need you here too, or, you know, medicine needs you, or something like that. Just like nothing for her. Really tough.
Speaker 4:
[42:55] Well, even the way he has talked all season about whether, what her future should hold, it was never, your talents would be really suited towards this. It's like the pace of this place doesn't work for you. You need to wash out to be in something else.
Speaker 3:
[43:09] Well, I mean, he almost gets there a couple of times. He's like, it's more of an art than a what, you know, anyway. Okay, let's talk about Victoria. So you're talking about something that feels satisfactory for a character at the end of the season is pointing in a specific direction. And so you get that very explicitly for Victoria pointing into the direction of mental health inside of this. This is Whitaker's idea.
Speaker 4:
[43:30] Badass self care, perhaps.
Speaker 3:
[43:31] Robby approves. How do you feel about this storyline?
Speaker 4:
[43:35] I actually really like this one because it feels like a culmination of everything she's been going through all day. And specifically, the kinds of cases we've seen animate her. Right? Like when she was working with Jackson and his family, you could tell like that's a difficult situation. She's learning on the fly. It's not something that she's like inherently suited for, has like the knowledge and understanding of how to do it yet, but she has the compassion for it and the attention to detail for it. And you can see her like learning in real time how to be better at this part of her job. And also she gets to, if she does end up going into emergency psych specifically, the parts of working in an ED that appeal to her are still there, right? The urgency, the adrenaline, like helping people in very specific need right now, that's still there. But there's not necessarily the Roxy level mortality events, right? It's like you are brought in to consult with people who need help, who are looking for some kind of outlook and you're trying to help them find it. But you're not having to deal with just like the loss after loss after loss that as she lays out is basically eating everybody in this department alive.
Speaker 3:
[44:37] She reads everyone to filth very accurately. Thanks, I would agree.
Speaker 4:
[44:40] She mercifully stops short.
Speaker 3:
[44:41] She diagnoses all of them. So yeah, perhaps this is a great future for her.
Speaker 4:
[44:45] But how did you feel about this? Did this work for you?
Speaker 3:
[44:47] Yeah. I mean, I love the idea of Victoria finding something that is her own. It's not dermatology. It's not what her mom wants. It's not even just like doing what she's currently doing. It's something specific, something she's interested in. I really love that. And I would love that for all of them. It's the anti-Samira, because Samira is just casting around for just sort of like ultrasound. Like, what fellowship can I follow? She just does not have a bead on what animates her, what she's passionate about. And since we spent all this time with these people, we care about them. We want them to be animated and full of passion, which is something that for better for worse, like Abbott has found the joy inside of all of this. And Robby is just being pulverized by this. And so like, where is the joy? Where is the, yeah, where is the passion? And so like, for her to find that, I'm excited for that potentiality. Yeah, I think that's great. Mel King and Santos. This is incredible stuff. I love them as a unit together. I love this idea of...
Speaker 4:
[46:00] It's an unlikely animal friendship, you know? Like a lion and a dog, a baby lion and a puppy that have just found each other in the wild.
Speaker 3:
[46:07] But Mel being like slightly immune to Trinity Santos' like sharper cuts, you know what I mean? She just lets it kind of roll a bit. It's true. And Santos really needing like another Whittaker, like another pal, because, you know, he's off on the farm and that seems like where he's gonna stay. So this was great. Mel, something that Taylor Dierden said at the panel was she was like, she's like, I don't think Mel King drinks. And so I was trying to figure out like how to do this sober. And then she said Issa Briones who plays Santos said like, oh yeah, but Santos is the kind of person who would just spike Mel's drink. And she's like, okay. So that's what they played. But like her little dance moves, not just like the taking out the hair and the glasses, but just like these little hoppy dance moves she does something like that is like incredibly precious, very good.
Speaker 4:
[47:00] Yeah, I mean, like being drunk in character is really hard or half drunk in character, dancing in character very difficult. And yet everything she does feels like exactly Mel. I love these two people who desperately just need like a friend finding each other at the end of their shift. Like it really is one of the best moments of the finale. I would love a little karaoke encore at the end of every season if we want to keep going back to it.
Speaker 3:
[47:23] I was just on cloud nine. Honestly, it was so good. As you know, I love a musical moment. I thought this was so good. Before we hit like Dana and Robby and Langdon, who are like sort of the big three, I would say in this finale, can we talk about my favorite finale tradition, which is Dr. Shen and Dr. Ellis, like Tom Fulary. And the Tom Fulary we get in this particular episode, because like last season, if you recall, it was like the fork up the nose moment. And like wanting to take a photo of it. And so this like, we get the code for our dead body, which is a DB, right? DB in chairs. This sort of argument back and forth about like, whose responsibility is it? Is it the night shift's responsibility? Is it the day shift's responsibility?
Speaker 4:
[48:05] I do love that element with Robby and Abbott both. It's always like, how can they shirk the responsibility of this patient to another shift?
Speaker 3:
[48:12] And then for Ellis and Shen to just like come out into chairs and just be like, so, it was so funny.
Speaker 4:
[48:17] What is it, hyper narcolepsy?
Speaker 3:
[48:19] Yeah, it's a serious condition. Are you a doctor?
Speaker 4:
[48:21] I'm not. But this guy's been here since 5 a.m. Does he smell okay? He's gotta be a little gamey.
Speaker 3:
[48:27] It's been hot in the...
Speaker 4:
[48:29] That's what I'm saying. He hasn't been in the fridge.
Speaker 3:
[48:32] No, really tough. But yeah, they just hoisted him out of there and it's pretty phenomenal work.
Speaker 4:
[48:38] But this episode needs some of that, right? It's like, where can you find the humor in it? And I think there are very intense emotional scenes. Like Abbott does a good job of, it's like emotional truth and hard reality and also undercutting ourselves without like necessarily making light of what Robby is going through. And this is where, anywhere you can find it, like a little joke, a little barb, a little something just to keep us feeling like engaged and alive and not like we're all about to be driven like Buffalo off of the cliff.
Speaker 3:
[49:07] Great call.
Speaker 4:
[49:09] Thanks Jo.
Speaker 3:
[49:10] Well, I think a similar moment of just sort of, I don't know, emotional connection was when we get the women Avengers assembling on the roof to watch the fireworks, no men allowed. There's like one man blurrily in the background, but not any of our main characters. We get the hug between Perla and Dana.
Speaker 4:
[49:27] That's very sweet.
Speaker 3:
[49:28] That just really hit for me. What did you think about?
Speaker 4:
[49:30] Something about, we've seen lots of characters cry on the pit and almost cry on the pit. Something about Perla with tears in her eyes watching the fireworks at the end of this kind of day really hit me. I think overall, there's a lot of stuff in this episode that doesn't work. There are a lot of individual character arcs I'm not super pleased with. Some of the big emotional stuff did. And I think some of that is like Robby-oriented, some of it's Baby Jane Doe-oriented, some of it's just little things like this where it's like a character we have this kind of time spent with who I care about and just seeing her like, have a moment of emotional outburst, if that.
Speaker 3:
[50:03] Anything else you want to say about Dana this season? Dana, she gets to dress down the cops and talk about the rape kits once again, but doesn't have anything else sort of like major in this episode. It's kind of just a wrap up episode for Dana. Anything else you want to mention here?
Speaker 4:
[50:20] I thought this was pretty Dana light actually. Like she is in the mix consistently and she's going around figuring out if there's like a way for somebody to foster baby Jane Doe. Unsurprisingly, not a lot of takers on that one for this staff of people. I mean, they've got a lot going on.
Speaker 3:
[50:35] I approve of all of them hard passing.
Speaker 4:
[50:37] Completely. Did you feel any whiplash at by the Dana-Robby dynamic in this episode? Because we've just seen for episodes on end, hours on end in their shift, they've just been like going at each other. They've been trading those sorts of barbs. They've just been like at each other's throats. This episode starts and it's just like they're just cutting up like old times. Maybe it's just like all that tension is sort of fizzled out as they've gotten exhausted, but it did feel like a pretty sharp turn from where we were last week.
Speaker 3:
[51:04] I felt like it was her handing off the responsibility to Abbott to a certain degree. She has enlisted Abbott and she's like, I've done everything I can do. I'm done fighting this battle. I'll just be supportive to my friend and colleague here and hope that this other person can get through to him.
Speaker 4:
[51:21] Not her monkey, not her circus.
Speaker 3:
[51:23] Exactly. This is a Langdon episode and a Robby episode is what it feels like. I've been invested in the Langdon story all season. I thought we got a really interesting email from our listener, Pat, about last week's episode, Robby complimenting Langdon. He gets this little morsel of approval from daddy, right? He says, Pat wrote, The Langdon scene after Robby complimented him was a tough watch. The relief on his face seemed to me to be the dynamics of a codependent relationship. My father was an alcoholic with a temper. When he was mad at you, he wouldn't talk for days. When he finally did, the relief was overwhelmingly emotional. There's a cruelty to purposely withholding love as a form of control. At least I projected my experience onto Langdon's reaction. It's not the only example this season or even this episode, but I think it displays the emotional trauma Robby is yielding in the ED. I really love that analysis, especially when we get in this episode, Langdon confronting Robby and saying, you remind me of a lot of people that I met in rehab. Your behavior is that of a substance abuser. If it is not an addiction to drugs or alcohol, it is addiction to the adrenaline of the ED, it is your emotional addiction, whatever the case may be, but you need psychiatric help, which people have been telling him all day. Robby's like, no thank you for your analysis here. Just pushing back, just being very snide. As Noah Wiley put it on the panel, very petty, all of this sort of stuff. But I thought this was a great Langdon moment. Langdon has his drug test, which presumably he passed, despite a lot of email theories that he wouldn't.
Speaker 4:
[53:02] That's a little cute about the process. It's like, yeah, you have to be observed taking your urine test.
Speaker 3:
[53:09] That's because you've been watching a lot of you for it, Rob. It's true.
Speaker 4:
[53:11] And those are mom-distributed urine tests. Don't even get me started about the official capacity.
Speaker 3:
[53:16] As you mentioned, we go up to a different floor, very unusual moment for The Pitt. We follow Langdon, following the Neckfash case. He gets a compliment from the nurse who's like, you did a good job, but he's going to be hard on himself because the amputation is above the knee, which is a much harder reality to navigate going forward. And so he's being told you did a good job, good catch and all he sees is the ways in which he failed and let someone down.
Speaker 4:
[53:46] Which is kind of an echo of the conversation as with Mel too, where she kind of tells him a version of the same thing.
Speaker 3:
[53:50] Exactly. And so like, he has yet, of course, a conversation with Mel in this finale. Like, when is he not going to find a moment to talk to Mel? And then he has this conversation with Robby. And I really, I really liked it. I really, really liked this scene. What did you think?
Speaker 4:
[54:04] I like most of it. I think the Langdon stuff, especially him going to check in on his patient, even just like the larger, where is your confidence level on a day like this thread that has been like, strung throughout his season, I think has been really effective. And it makes total sense for where that character would be coming from after all this time off. The Robby stuff, I'm a little mixed on, and I think this is just like a personal thing where I'm finding a little bit of clash between a character as a person and a character as a vehicle for drama. And so it's like, as a person, Dr. Langdon coming to Dr. Robby, a guy who is important in his life and telling him, like, you need help in the most direct fashion possible. It's never going to work because of how testy their relationship is. And so it's like, you still have to try if that person matters to you, and he has been acting all day the way that Robby has been acting. So I get it. As a real life person in this scenario, I get it. For dramatic purposes, I'm not sure that he says a lot that Abbott didn't just say. And so it does feel like it's a little bit of a hat on a hat. And I get some of that is baked into the process of so many people having these sorts of conversations with Robby at this stage in the season. But I was left wondering, wouldn't it have been truer to the arc these two guys have been on for Robby not to be able to find Langdon when he finally did want to talk to him? For Langdon to have already been gone.
Speaker 3:
[55:24] I think that would be interesting. I don't disagree with you. I do think it's, even if it were the identical words, I think the source is so different for Abbott versus Langdon. I got some emails from people talking about like, why is it that Robby can hear certain things from like Duke and Abbott and not various other people? And the point that a couple of our listeners made was like, these are the only people who are not subordinate to Robby. Abbott and Duke are the only two people who are, I mean, I'm sure there are other assessments.
Speaker 4:
[55:53] Salmon shorts, you know, like there are a couple of other people.
Speaker 3:
[55:55] But like that are talking to him in this manner, right? And so from Langdon, this is coming from a subordinate who has disappointed Robby or made, you know, as Noah Wiley has been talking about all season, made Robby disappointed in himself. Like I let him down as a leader or something like that. So all of that is true. But I think also Langdon pushing back and like Robby, like abused him all day, like shit on him all day, other than the one little crumb of approval he gave in last week's episode. And for someone to not just take it and to push back on him, I think is an important interaction for him to have. I did ask Noah Wiley at the Paley Fest panel, is Robby going on his trip and is he coming back? And he said yes to both. Yes, he's going on his trip. Yes, he's going. I mean, like we knew he was coming back. But I was curious if he was going to go at all, like if this Dr. Al-Hashimi revelation was going to stop him or something like that. Yes, he's going. Yes, he's coming back. And then I asked him, like, was there a moment inside of this episode? Was it swaddling the baby? Was it talking to Abbott? Was it, you know, that sort of changed his mind? And he said, no, it's accumulation of all of it, which is understandable, which is something you just said. But like, so I think that Langdon element is in importance. To not just have Abbott say it to him, but to have Langdon push back on him and just say like, you can't treat me like shit all day and get away with it. Samira kind of lets him get, you know, we need you here, sort of like Samira lets him get away with it. But like Langdon doesn't and that's, I think, important, so.
Speaker 4:
[57:31] Maybe that is what I wanted from Samira. For her to not let...
Speaker 3:
[57:35] All she says is you're kind of a dick sometimes. It's very mild compared to like what he deserves for the way that he treats her.
Speaker 4:
[57:40] And especially to come off of like, I was just letting my mom treat me like a child and now you're letting Robby kind of treat you like a child. Very tough. I hear what you're saying about the accumulation. I think that makes total sense. I also think just sort of reframing this as we're talking about it as much more of a Langdon moment than a Robby moment. Like those elements I do think are important to this character and the sticking up for himself. And kind of asserting a different place within this ED. Like he's not the golden boy anymore. He's not Robby's chosen one to succeed him or follow in his footsteps. But he's gonna have to chart something new for himself. And that kind of thing is gonna have to be a little bit more adversarial at times.
Speaker 3:
[58:14] I love that. Last but not least, Robby himself. Several mental health professionals wrote into the podcast to note that if all of these people, including a literal psychiatrist in last week's episode, are asking Robby about, hey man, you're saying some things. They're a little troubling. Several mental health professionals wrote in to say, it is very odd that no one asked Robby directly about suicidal ideation, that it is standard procedure. If you suspect, you don't beat around the bush, you don't hem and haw, you ask directly. And no one is doing that with Robby.
Speaker 4:
[58:50] And these are people who would know.
Speaker 3:
[58:51] Exactly, that that's the procedure. So they all thought that that was really strange, I suppose.
Speaker 4:
[58:56] Great call.
Speaker 3:
[58:58] But yeah, we get the Abbott conversation, we get the Baby Jane Doe moment, we get the Mohan confrontation, we get the Javadi encouragement, we get the Langdon confrontation. I want to read one last email from our listener, Andy, who gave that interesting analysis of the badge and what occurred. Most of Andy's email was about Robby though. The loss of Robby's mentor, Adamson, and seeing loss constantly also plays a role in his sense of importance and hyper responsibility in my perception. We know he feels responsible for Adamson's death and cannot truly forgive himself. In this as well is perhaps more selfish thought from a juvenile place of being furious that his mentor abandoned him. I think that's a great call. What a conflict to hold in mind if that's a factor. In my experience with patients, that sort of conflict is pretty common. It's like the emotional equivalent of Digby's arm. Untended with decaying bits being eaten by maggots because shame and a sense of unsightliness or expendability has prevented help seeking. There's just a lot of festering under the surface for Robby and it's being intensely projected outward or mismanaged in inappropriate ways, such as in his relationship with Whitaker with whom he is over-identified and whose boundaries he violates after extolling the virtues of setting limits. So yeah, here's the thing about Robby, Dr. Rubinovich. I like him as a person much less this season than I liked him in season one. Sure. I love him as a character.
Speaker 4:
[60:16] Yeah. I mean, that's because it's by design, right?
Speaker 3:
[60:18] I think Noel Wiley is doing a tremendous job in this performance. And this is just like, I think we came into the show, especially watching Robby give speeches about sort of like, especially in season one, speeches about emotional management or what it means to be in the ED. And we're like, this is our leader of, this is our coach Taylor, like this is our guy. And not this season. And that's just like a human reality. He is a human character. He is messy. He is frustrating. And he has all these things and it is being performed very well. And it's like thinking back on ER, a show that this is definitely not a spinoff of.
Speaker 4:
[60:57] Absolutely not a spinoff of ER.
Speaker 3:
[60:58] Legally, not a spinoff of ER. You know, there's characters like Anthony Edwards' character, Dr. Green, having like a season where you're just sort of like, what is going on with Dr. Green, who is like a leader that we're used to looking up to. Or people who are in higher levels in the hospital who were assholes from the start, who are always assholes. You know, and so like that kind of archetype is one that medical shows, and specifically the medical show that Noah Wiley cut his teeth on, like spend a lot of time with. It's just, I think it's that day in a life aspect again, of just like watching a day in Robby's life where he was struggling in season one, and still showing up as like an encouraging mentor in many cases, not always, but in many ways. And this day, he's just not up to the task, man. And we're just experiencing that over several months of viewership. We're experiencing one guy's really bad, maybe his worst day, you know?
Speaker 4:
[61:56] But that investment in terms of story and track laid, I think does pay off here in the finale, right? And really leading into it the episode too. I think the conversation with Duke, the conversation with Abbott, some of those other send-offs of the other characters interspersed in there, and then where he ends up swaddling baby Jane Doe Burley swaddling himself. That stuff, I think, all really hits. And like, hits in a really deep emotional place that The Pitt is very good at accessing through, often, Noah Wiley, who I agree with you, the performance is breathtaking. I think just kind of the defeated way he is carrying himself throughout this episode in particular, when he has to glove up to go help save this baby and just like the, he just is so clearly carrying so much at that point, he is physically transformed.
Speaker 3:
[62:43] There's also, you know, this episode is directed by, it was written by Scott Gammill and directed by John Wells, like power house people. And the many times inside of this episode, where Robby is like on the other side of glass, where audio is muffled, where he's just sort of like space, you know, sort of Al-Hashimi like sort of spacing out inside of this episode, I thought was like a really great depiction of his isolation. But like more so than I think we've gotten in previous episodes, it just felt like a really directorial flourish of just sort of positioning. And but then there's also this moment, and this is brought up to me in the panel by someone at HBO, and they had mentioned, and I don't know who, but another journalist had pointed this out to them, that in the scene where he is swaddling the baby, but actually swaddling himself, he's in the nursery, which is his like most triggering spot, the place that he lost Adamson.
Speaker 4:
[63:38] The place where he had his own breakdown last season.
Speaker 3:
[63:40] Where he had his own breakdown last season, and there's a son in the mural on the wall, and at one point it's sort of framed behind him to almost look like a halo. Yeah. Interesting stuff.
Speaker 4:
[63:51] Very interesting stuff. I'm tremendously moved by where Robby ends up this season. I'm with you that as a character, I find him fascinating, as a person, like endlessly frustrating, as the show wants you to be. I think there is, though, a fundamental tension between how much, and we talked about this earlier in the season, this is a Dr. Robby, Noah Wiley show, and how much it is an ensemble show. And I think there's always going to be a portion of people who love and watch The Pitt, who love Mel King, or love Frank Langdon, or love Dana. And I think Dana may be a little more impervious to this and other characters, but by nature of the ensemble, like we were talking about earlier, somebody is going to get less screen time, and it's not going to be Dr. Robby.
Speaker 3:
[64:33] Anything else you want to say about The Pitt? I had such a good time covering the show.
Speaker 4:
[64:36] Honestly, I mean, a very fun season to talk about.
Speaker 3:
[64:38] However spicy I feel about the finale, I feel quite mixed about it, but I feel quite positive about the experience occurring the show. I don't think this is the best show on television, but I do understand why it's probably going to win the Emmy again.
Speaker 4:
[64:52] Sure.
Speaker 3:
[64:52] It has become, just in terms of a practice of watching a story week in, week out, getting emotionally invested in characters that we spend so much time with, especially in shows that we cover on this podcast, just the length of time we spend with them.
Speaker 4:
[65:10] Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3:
[65:11] It's just a very special thing. So I'm going to miss talking about The Pitt, but it'll be back next year and as they've announced, set in November, not coming back in November, but next season will be set in November. So do you think it's going to be Thanksgiving proper, or do you think it's going to be Blackout Wednesday or whatever it is we decided the night before Thanksgiving was called?
Speaker 4:
[65:34] Blackout Wednesday would be great. Honestly, like Black Friday, someone just got trampled in a rush for a new flat screen TV.
Speaker 3:
[65:40] For the TV.
Speaker 4:
[65:40] Would also be pretty fun. I can't wait to see the wintertime fits that are rolling in. We had the humidity this season. We had the busted AC. We had people sweating bullets out there. I don't want to see everyone cozy time. Let's see what we look like. Come on.
Speaker 3:
[65:56] All right.
Speaker 4:
[65:56] We talked about all these character arcs. We talked about the season and what paid off and what didn't. There's just one thing that rung out from this episode for me because it's the one actual medical case with Judith and her baby and the whole wild birth situation, which I don't even want to fucking touch with a 10-foot pole. But as it was happening in real time, a great character moment that's uniting a lot of these different arcs, especially Robbie's, but also just the one constant of the show, even more than Noah Wiley, even more than the ensemble that we love, even more than the various emotional storylines that were pulled into. The production on this show.
Speaker 3:
[66:31] The viscera.
Speaker 4:
[66:32] The viscera is unreal. The amniotic sack ripple.
Speaker 3:
[66:37] I rewatched that four different times.
Speaker 4:
[66:40] What even is that? How did they do it?
Speaker 3:
[66:42] On the panel, they talked about the fact that that woman, she was all neck up, she was sitting and then it was just an entire prosthetic body on the table in front of her. That they could reset it and do it multiple times. But yeah, the amniotic sack slicing was a real... But then the baby coming out so blue. That was actually a really, really tough one for me to watch.
Speaker 4:
[67:04] This is terrifying of cases we've had on this show.
Speaker 3:
[67:06] Yeah, absolutely. It was interesting. Scott Gemmell didn't answer this, but I was curious what the thought process was behind, like, okay, so you want a case in your finale, where you're going to get like Abbott's in there, McKay's in there, Cruz is there, like ton of doctors are in there. So like, what goes behind the sort of like, what kind of case do you want? And he's like, oh, we lead that up to our medical consultants. We just tell them, we need a case where all these people will be involved.
Speaker 4:
[67:34] Give us a real scary one.
Speaker 3:
[67:35] Yeah, and they come up with something. I was like, okay. I thought it was going to be a little bit more story-driven. It is story-driven, but like, but I was like, the answer was our medical professionals come up with that. I'm like, okay, cool. Well, it was a great one. It was very harrowing.
Speaker 4:
[67:50] The dice rolled, the medical professionals spoke and it was exactly what this episode needed. So just like a shout out to that case in particular, which yeah, I was consistently terrified by, but also the way it's executed on The Pitt is just exceptional.
Speaker 3:
[68:01] Yeah, really good. Shout out to the amniotic sack.
Speaker 4:
[68:04] Shout out to all our amniotic sacks out there.
Speaker 3:
[68:06] Shout out to everyone who's here in Sycamore today, helping us out. Jacob's on the show today. Kai Grady, going above and beyond today for many different reasons. Just our fave. I'm so glad that he's here.
Speaker 4:
[68:17] They just don't make him like Kai Grady.
Speaker 3:
[68:19] They don't. They don't. Thank you to all of our listeners for hanging out with The Pitt all season and stick around for Euphoria and Beef. And we'll see you soon. Bye.