How “The Pitt” Diagnoses America's Ills

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker
Episode Title: How “The Pit” Diagnoses America's Ills
Release Date: March 6, 2025

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Introduction: Exploring Medical Dramas and Their Cultural Impact

In this episode of Critics at Large, hosts Vinson Cunningham, Nomi Frye, and Alex Schwartz delve into the enduring presence of medical dramas in television and introduce a standout newcomer, “The Pit”. They explore how this latest series not only captivates audiences but also serves as a mirror reflecting the current state of America’s healthcare system and broader societal issues.

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The Ubiquity of Medical Dramas

The conversation begins with a reflection on the prevalence and longevity of medical shows in the TV landscape. Cunningham notes, “Medical shows, they occupy this pretty unique place in the TV landscape” (00:56). Frye adds, “medical dramas are usually… something we grow up with and something we'll die with as well” (02:20), highlighting their role as cultural fixtures akin to “Law & Order” or “ER”.

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Introducing “The Pit”: A New Contender

“The Pit” emerges as a fresh and compelling addition to the medical drama genre. Launched on Max with a concise format of 15 episodes, each episode captures an almost real-time hour in a Pittsburgh emergency room. The hosts describe its innovative approach, emphasizing its ability to generate a “viral reaction” and garner praise from both audiences and medical professionals.

Notable Quote:
Cunningham shares his excitement, saying, “The Pit, it's one of… it's reached kind of like viral reaction zone” (03:35).

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Deep Dive into “The Pit”

Plot and Structure

“The Pit” follows Dr. Michael Rabinovich, portrayed by Noah Wylie, a seasoned attending physician navigating the high-pressure environment of an overcrowded ER in Pittsburgh. The show's real-time documentation of each hour provides an intense and immersive experience.

Character Dynamics and Tropes

The hosts dissect common tropes in medical dramas, such as the “rogue doctor versus the bureaucratic supervisor” and the inevitable romantic entanglements. Frye observes, “There’S always a romance… There's no hospital drama without the side of potential romance” (12:55). This mirrors classic dynamics seen in shows like “Grey’s Anatomy”.

Notable Quote:
Frye humorously compares the show’s romantic subplot to “the biscotti on the side of the bitter espresso” (14:09).

Realism and Medical Accuracy

A standout feature of “The Pit” is its commitment to medical authenticity. The hosts commend the show for its realistic portrayal of emergency medicine, noting that actual doctors find it more accurate than previous medical dramas.

Notable Quote:
Schwartz remarks, “People in the medical profession reportedly are finding it very accurate” (33:39).

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“The Pit” as a Reflection of America’s Healthcare Crisis

The discussion shifts to how “The Pit” serves as a diagnostic tool for America’s healthcare woes. The show’s depiction of an overwhelmed ER, staff shortages, and bureaucratic hurdles mirrors real-life issues plaguing the system.

Key Themes:

1. Systemic Overload:
   The overcrowded ER in “The Pit” represents the strain on healthcare resources, a nod to the current nursing shortages and hospital bed shortages.

2. Bureaucratic Pressure:
   The interactions between doctors and hospital administrators highlight the tension between medical ethics and institutional demands. For instance, Dr. Rabinovich argues against patient satisfaction scores demanding faster patient turnover (25:28).

Notable Quote:
Cunningham emphasizes, “The point the show is making… is that that’s just a tiny band aid on the much bigger situation” (42:35).

3. Humanizing Healthcare Workers:
   By portraying doctors as empathetic individuals grappling with personal and professional challenges, “The Pit” humanizes healthcare workers, fostering a deeper understanding of their struggles.

Notable Quote:
Frye reflects, “No one is wrong here… Doctors… are doing their best within the confines of the system” (40:18).

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Audience and Professional Reception

“The Pit” has resonated not only with general audiences but also with medical professionals who appreciate its accurate representation of emergency medicine. The hosts mention that doctors are creating YouTube content analyzing the show’s medical plausibility, further bridging the gap between fiction and reality.

Notable Quote:
Schwartz notes, “There's a bunch of doctors who are also becoming, or wanting to become YouTube personalities… commenting on the medical plausibility” (32:03).

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Comparative Analysis with Other Medical Dramas

The hosts compare “The Pit” to established shows like “ER”, “Grey’s Anatomy”, and “House”, highlighting its unique approach in addressing both the personal and systemic aspects of healthcare.

Notable Quote:
Cunningham states, “One thing that I'm testing out in my mind is that it just offers a lot of story… the medical drama just gives us so much opportunity to be told a story” (15:00).

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Cultural and Political Commentary

“The Pit” goes beyond medical procedures to comment on larger societal issues such as the opioid crisis and systemic racism within healthcare. The show’s narrative choices provoke discussions about compassion, ethics, and the impact of political pressures on medical practice.

Notable Quote:
Cunningham discusses a poignant scene, “…Dr. Mohan… empathetic… trying to serve the patient above all” (39:02).

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Emotional Resonance and Real-World Parallels

The emotional depth of “The Pit” is underscored by scenes depicting real-life dilemmas, such as end-of-life care decisions and the personal toll on healthcare workers. The hosts share their own emotional reactions, illustrating the show's powerful impact.

Notable Quote:
Schwartz admits, “I was weeping… why am I weeping?” (31:00).

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Conclusion: “The Pit” as a Cultural Mirror

In wrapping up, the hosts affirm that “The Pit” succeeds not just as entertainment but as a poignant commentary on the state of American healthcare. It highlights the relentless pressures faced by medical professionals and the systemic flaws that impede patient care, offering viewers both a gripping narrative and a reflection on pressing societal issues.

Final Thoughts:
Frye concludes, “It's just like ER… it really was giving me like ABC vibes” (20:30), reinforcing the show's connection to traditional medical dramas while carving out its own niche in addressing contemporary healthcare challenges.

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Notable Moments and Quotes

• Birthday Celebration:
  The episode opens with a lighthearted birthday celebration for Nomi Frye, setting a friendly and engaging tone.

• Authentic Medical Scenarios:
  Example: A scene where a patient with chest pain is evaluated urgently, illustrating the high-stakes environment of an ER (29:10).

• Emotional Storylines:
  The tragic case involving a teenager and his parents, evoking strong emotional responses from both characters and hosts (30:53).

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Behind the Scenes: Production Insights

The episode is produced by Danielle Hewitt, with Rhiannon Corby as senior producer and Alex Barish as consulting editor. The hosts also promote upcoming live events and other New Yorker podcasts, maintaining an engaging connection with their audience.

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“The Pit” emerges as a thoughtful and impactful addition to medical dramas, successfully diagnosing and portraying America’s healthcare challenges through compelling storytelling and authentic character portrayals.

Transcript

[Nomi Frye]

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[Vincent Cunningham]

We the people shape our country's story. America250 is gearing up to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of America's democracy by collecting and preserving diverse stories from across the nation. Nominate any living person you think has a story to be preserved and celebrated for generations to come. Help tell our American story, every unique version of it. Visit america250.org nominate to submit.

[Nomi Frye]

Listen, it's my birthday. Oh, my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. It's Nomi's birthday.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Naomi oh, my God.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Happy birthday to you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Frye]

I'm Nomi Frye.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now. We read the scans of the culture and how we got here. Medical shows, they occupy this pretty unique place in the TV landscape, Right. There've been so many of them and some of them go on for so long, it feels like forever, like decades forever. Like police procedurals, like soap operas. It's easy for these shows to kind of just fade into the background and feel like, I don't know, a utility. What are the genres that kind of feel that way, that are just, I don't know, ever present? Always with us is medical the chief one.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, it's one of them for sure. I think it's one of them for sure. I think, at least for me, there's something in the fact that medical dramas are usually. They feel very kind of classically network TV to me. And much like, you know, the procedure, like Law and Order or, you know, that sort of show that seems to have always been on air and will always be on air. It's like something we grow up with and something we'll die with as well. I mean, it's a circle of life.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly how it feels. So given how many of these things that we've seen and how long they've been running, it's kind of unusual for one to become like a sensation, you know, really break through. But somehow the pit has managed to do exactly that. It's a new show that's coming out now on max 15 episodes, with each episode in kind of almost real time sort of way, documenting a different hour of one shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room.

[Nomi Frye]

Welcome to the Pit.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let's go save some lives.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Systolic only 80 14.

[Alex Schwartz]

Alex, you've lost a lot of blood. You need to go to surgery right away.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Am I gonna die?

[Nomi Frye]

Not now that I'm here.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Easy, easy. I'm in.

[Alex Schwartz]

Good. Well done. That was awesome.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I don't know about you guys, but my Twitter the other night was all like, oh, my God, the Pit, it's one of. It's reached kind of like viral reaction zone. Is that true in your lives?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, not to make anyone feel bad, but. But I'm done with Twitter. I'm done with Elon Musk's Twitter, so I don't know what the people are saying.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I just outed myself as a.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, it's fine. It's cool.

[Nomi Frye]

No, it's fine. I'm still on Jersey.

[Alex Schwartz]

I don't know what the people are saying. I'm living in a little bit of a cultural. What's the word for it? Cave. I don't know. I'm trying to follow my pleasure, but that's to say it's reached even me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In the small town where you reside, do the laundresses talk of the Pit?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, yes. I'm hearing. I'm hearing on the street and also cultural articles in various publications. They're saying that this show is good. Watch this show.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, Maybe two or three weeks ago, I passed by the sofa in my very own home where my husband. My very own husband was watching our very own television. And I saw him. I saw the face of Noah Wiley, who is familiar to me from er. And we'll talk about this a lot. Played the young Dr. Carter on ER and now plays the chief attending physician in the Pit. And I said, what are you watching? I was like, oh, my God, it's Noah Wiley. And he's once again, like, you know, wearing, like. I mean, he's not wearing scrubs, actually, but, you know, whatever. He has his, like, stethoscope around his neck.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He's wearing a hoodie is what it's called.

[Nomi Frye]

He's wearing a hoodie. Yeah. And he said, oh, it's this show. It's actually pretty good. And I was like, oh, okay. So my ears perked up because, really, my husband is quite a tough. Much like myself, he's a hater. And that's when I first Heard of it. But ever since then, Vincent, I agree with you. It's been all talk of the Pit everywhere.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's nonstop Pit. So today we're talking about the Pit and why the show is generating excitement right now. And we're also going to kind of talk about the medical show more broadly. You know, him, er, Grey's Anatomy, the McDreamys and the McSteamys. And the big question I have is, at a time when Americans are more disillusioned with and frankly angrier at the healthcare system than ever, is the medical drama changing to meet the moment that's today on critics at large, how the Pit diagnoses America's ills. Okay, so today maybe it works for us to just start broad just because of the sheer number of shows that fit into this genre. Are there early ones that were kind of your gateway drugs, your gateway meds, perhaps that brought you into this setting?

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I mean, definitely. Er. Dr. Doug Ross, a young George Clooney who taught me how to love.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can you say more about that?

[Nomi Frye]

No, no. I just mean I was like a teenager, you know, when ER started. And I remember it as appointment tv. And I remember being, you know, it was one of those shows. It was kind of prized realism.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Everything will be fine, sir. Let's have a CBC, type and cross match. We got a pre op here. Notify the or, get us a room. Call Vascular and call Orthopedic. Tell them to come down here now. It's their lucky day.

[Nomi Frye]

It wasn't kind of like a. At least not seemingly a kind of trussed up version of what a hospital looks like. It was kind of more on the raw side. I think I really. I recall that as being like. I was very impressed with that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

How about you, Alex?

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, I'm gonna come clean right now. Cause we gotta just know this at the start.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I can't make a diagnosis unless you tell me to take this.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. That's right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And what did you take?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, here's the thing. I took nothing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I. Oh. Oh, my God. The size, the heart. So this is not a genre I have that much experience with. I am here to learn.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Because a few things. One, er, which is such a famous show, it is ubiquitous show. It began in April, I believe, of 1994, when I was a young first grader, not permitted to watch such stuff. It ended in 2009, when I was on the verge of graduating from college and very much could watch whatever I wanted. And yet somehow, in that entire growing up Period. I have not seen a single episode of er. I have not watched Grey's Anatomy. I have always actually stayed away from the medical drama because it makes me kind of anxious.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

The entire idea that I'm gonna hang out in a place I don't wanna be to begin with freaked me out. And so today, because of our episode, I'm facing some fears, I'm confronting some stuff. But I will tell you something which is, I think the one real medical show, and maybe we'll think of others that I'm not thinking of, that I have watched is a show called this Is Going to Hurt. It's an English show, It's short. It's like the opposite of ER in that there not only are not a million seasons, there's just one.

[Nomi Frye]

You're generally sailing the ship alone.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A ship that's massive and on fire.

[Nomi Frye]

And no one's had the time to.

[Alex Schwartz]

Teach you how to sail It Stars Ben Whishaw as a doctor who is an OBGYN working in a public hospital in England for the NHS at a time when budget cuts are extreme and dealing with all kinds of stuff going on. You know, he's depressed and has a problem in his personal life, but. And that's really tied in to the work. There's this kind of idea that he's being ground down by the system around him. I watched the show when I was pregnant and I think that was the beginning of my feeling like I would like to understand a little bit more about what goes on with the body. Let me look at this C section presented on screen. Cool.

[Nomi Frye]

The human body is a fascinating thing.

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, let me engage with the fears, you know, the taboo of opening, Opening the flesh. Let's go there. But I don't know. Vincent, how about you?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Mine was certainly, in terms of devoting to something, my total interest in sort of week by week attention. Certainly, certainly Grey's Anatomy, which I was put onto by my mom and then watched with my mom, especially in the first one or two seasons. It was kind of our thing. It tells a story of a young doctor named Meredith Gray, who is the daughter of a very famous doctor named, I believe, Ellen Gray. And she's joined by many doctors, all of them suspiciously good looking. Izzy Stevens, who's played by Katherine Heigl.

[Nomi Frye]

I totally forgot that Heigl started on Grace Heigl.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It was a big Heigl mom. I would say that the thing that I remember most about this show, and this maybe gets to kind of what makes these shows work, is that I remember these personalities of the doctors much more than I remember individual cases.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, here it is. Your choice. It's simple, her or me.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm sure she's really great. But, Derek, I love you in a really, really big. Pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of.

[Nomi Frye]

Cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window. Unfortunate way that makes me hate you. Love you. So pick me.

[Alex Schwartz]

Choose me.

[Nomi Frye]

Love me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There is a kind of medical show that's all about the cases, and you sort of gain amateur insight into different methods of diagnosing people, person by person by person. There's some of that in Grey's, but mostly it's a soap opera that happens to be set at a hospital.

[Nomi Frye]

It's a total soap opera. Like if ER was a more gritty, you know, kind of like choppy, fast cuts action. Fast cuts action, Dirt, you know, grime. Then what you're saying about a soap opera, Vincent and Grey's is really true.

[Alex Schwartz]

I did just think of another example of a medical show, one I've actually seen and did spend a good amount of time watching. It's Come Back through the Mists of time. House. House.

[Nomi Frye]

Dr. House.

[Alex Schwartz]

And what I liked about House, which started in 2004, went to 2012, I'm seeing so a sizable chunk of time. I like the Sherlock Holmesian element. Yeah, I love that it was Hugh Laurie being caustic, just firing off insults with bravado, solving crazy cases. The way that these things were solved. The caustic back and forth between Dr. House and Cuddy, the administrative head, you know, I think that's a whole trope of these shows as well. Like the doctors giving off this let me do my thing vibe versus the administrators who are in charge of the entire ship, trying to rein them in.

[Nomi Frye]

He was a bit of a rebel.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, more than a bit.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But now that we're onto this, right, let's get down to tropes. Let's start to make some a diagnosis here.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let's get down.

[Nomi Frye]

Let's populate the tropes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The rogue doctor versus the sort of bureaucratic, sclerotic, whatever, you know, boss man. What else is always in these shows.

[Nomi Frye]

There'S always a romance. There's always kind of a failed or either, like, will they or won't they? That is kind of like, complicated. Like a relationship that might be complicated by a work hierarchy, perhaps. You know, much like McDreamy and Meredith Grey. You know, it's like he's, you know, attending. She's a student and the tensions that bring these like star crossed lovers into constant contact and constant like locking horns. But the sparks are flying. You know, I think that's a very common, that's a very common trope and it kind of carries us. It's like, you know, if we have the kind of like potentially more political or more gritty or more gross, you know, if it's kind of like the surgical, you know, whatever, like the spleen is like, explain. Then we have, you know, we have that little kind of like biscotti on the side of kind of the bitter espresso of. That's kind of the romance. Like will they share a kiss on the cot? You know, or whatever. It is like it's. We always need to have that. There's no hospital drama without the side of potential romance.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I love the Italian snack analogy. That's so good. And also like, so yes, sometimes these romances have occurred in the past also. I would say what has often occurred in the past is some sort of trauma. There's the troubled doctor who is either lost a patient, lost a loved one, or you know, can't forgive themself for something or they've got like some sort of like covert substance abuse problem. There's the brilliant doctor who's a little bit unscrewed because of something in the past. And it shows up at the most inopportune moments.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah. I mean, so guys, were you to kind of think about medical shows kind of pre the Pit, you know, the field as we've known it. What is it? What's the appeal? Like, what do we like about it?

[Vincent Cunningham]

One thing that I'm testing out in my mind is that it just offers a lot of story that you can tell stories on the sort of long term stories like romances and conflicts, things that, you know, might span a whole season or the whole series. But you can also tell little stories about patients, about moment by moment by moment, such that there are stories within stories. And it's just like if you like the sort of the rhythm of beginning, middle and end, maybe there's no better opportunity to do a lot of that than in the medical drama. It just gives us so much opportunity to be told a story.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We're about to talk about Max's new show, the Pit, which is about as buzzy as I can remember a new medical show being. So do you want to just tease your favorite patients from the first few episodes? I'll start Twisted balls degloving.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's not good. Don't let it happen. To you.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All this and more in a minute on Critics at Large from the New Yorker.

[Nomi Frye]

Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of.

[Alex Schwartz]

The New Yorker and host of the New Yorker Fiction PodC.

[Nomi Frye]

On the podcast, I ask a great.

[Alex Schwartz]

Contemporary writer to select a favorite story.

[Nomi Frye]

From the magazine's almost hundred year archive.

[Alex Schwartz]

To read and discuss. Together, we delve into the story, exploring its themes, its style, and what makes fiction work. You can listen to authors like Ottessa.

[Nomi Frye]

Moshfegh talk about why we write story.

[Alex Schwartz]

Or attaching a story or creating a story. Is this inclination that we all have to stop spinning? And you can hear writers like George.

[Nomi Frye]

Saunders discuss the nature of storytelling on the first read.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You accept these things as descriptions and they make you see the scene. But every line is a chance to inflect the reader's mind.

[Alex Schwartz]

You'll discover new favorite authors and read old favorites in new ways. Episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast.

[Nomi Frye]

Are released on the 1st of every month.

[Alex Schwartz]

Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Before we get back to the episode, we've got news. We're doing a special live event that's coming right up, and we want to see you there. Maybe we need to see you there. I don't know. On March 11th at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn, we're doing a live show about a classic conundrum for critics.

[Nomi Frye]

What happens when you write a review and you get it wrong?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, we're doing this live on stage.

[Nomi Frye]

I know. That's very brave of us, right?

[Alex Schwartz]

Absolutely. We will be looking back at some of the classic pieces of New Yorker criticism that may have missed the mark. Like, for example, a scathing review that declared the wizard of Oz a stinkeroo marred by eye straining. Technicolor.

[Nomi Frye]

Not a stinkeroo.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yes. And of course, we will also talk about critics who got it right as well.

[Nomi Frye]

So if you're in New York or if you feel like traveling, come see us live at The Bellhouse on March 11th. Bring a friend. Don't come alone. Or you can come alone as well. Anyway, we'll see you there. All right, back to the episode.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Okay. We've tackled this long lineage of medical shows. I mean, just a. A percentage of it. I mean, we tackled the part of the glacier that's above the water, really, and how the genre's taken shape over time. But let's talk about the Pit. As we've mentioned, it's a new medical drama. It started coming out on Max in January. It stars the exquisitely grizzled Noah Wylie also of ER fame, as Nomi mentioned. Yes, as Dr. Michael Robbie Rabinovich. He's an attending doctor at an overcrowded ER in Pittsburgh. Really just a mile a minute, high velocity stuff. Good morning, sunshine.

[Nomi Frye]

You obviously haven't seen this board.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Ah, we've seen worse. Nothing like a little challenge every now and then to keep everybody on their toes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Dr. Rabimovich, Melissa King.

[Nomi Frye]

I will be joining you today.

[Alex Schwartz]

I just came from two months in the VA. Hey, welcome to the Pit. This is Dr. Jack Abbott.

[Nomi Frye]

Nice to meet you.

[Alex Schwartz]

I can't take how excited I am to be here today. So talk to me at the end of the day.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Top line, Just quick. Do you like it?

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It's been a while since I've watched the type of show that's a kind of like, I know it's on Max, but it really was giving me like ABC vibes. ABC network. I mean, it has some cursing and has a little bit of nudity, but not that much, honestly. It's like pretty family friendly. It's like good old drama. It's like chills and thrills of a kind of like well made television, you know, 50 minute show. Nothing will kind of like surprise you. Like, the characters will probably behave according to type. Like if you meet these characters in the beginning and you're like, oh, yeah, this is the grizzled, you know, well meaning, but, you know, somewhat troubled, somewhat haunted by past, you know, trauma and death. Attending physician. That's what you're gonna consistently get for the next 15 hours.

[Vincent Cunningham]

15 hours, yes.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, but there's a lot, a lot to say for that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, it's not gonna turn your life upside down.

[Nomi Frye]

It's not gonna turn your life upside down. But it's really good entertainment.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Alexa, do you like it?

[Alex Schwartz]

I love the pit.

[Nomi Frye]

She's a pithead.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm a bit of a pithead. I love the pit. And no one could be more surprised than I because this is not a world that I usually want to spend time in. And frankly, if we were not going to discuss it on today's show, I probably would not have watched it because I would have thought, why the cirrus? Why the stress?

[Nomi Frye]

Why the cirrus?

[Alex Schwartz]

Please, I don't need it. However, now that I'm in, I'm so in. And at the beginning also, I was a little bit, you know, I'm seeing some of these faces. I'm seeing the very devastatingly TV actor, handsome face of Patrick Ball, who plays Dr. Frank Langdon. And I'M thinking you're an actor, sir. I see your chin dimple.

[Nomi Frye]

Oh my gosh.

[Alex Schwartz]

Don't start telling me that you actually are a Doctor and within 30 minutes, yes, I'll do whatever you tell me to do.

[Nomi Frye]

I believed him.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, of course. I believed them all. I believed them all.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Baby faced asshole. Langdon.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's it. I'm into the pit. I'm into the pit for. We can talk about why, but let's just. If you wanna know, that's the truth.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay, Vincent, what are you feeling?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm besotted with the pit.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You're in rare consensus. Nomi said it. It's just well made. Yeah. It takes seriously the sort of goad to proceed at something that feels like real time. And it does induce an incredible anxiety. I mean, there's a minor plotline in episode five that's just like, can this guy Robbie take a piss? He keeps trying to use the bathroom and he keeps being pulled into different cases and this guy's tonsils are spurting blood and this guy's got a weird boil. I mean, every. He's this. And also just the worst thing, he's trying to like sort of walk some parents down the road of accepting that their son has become brain dead because of fentanyl laced Xanax pills. There's so much, I don't know, human drama. Yeah, but. And also I like shows about work, so I also just like displays of competence. I just, I'm always drawn into.

[Nomi Frye]

To me at least, part of the appeal of the show is that it's about a teaching hospital. Right. So part of the drama that is, you know, takes us from one episode to the next is that we have student doctors who are. It's like their first day.

[Alex Schwartz]

It is their first day. Yes.

[Nomi Frye]

On the job. Right. At this hospital, at this particular hospital in Pittsburgh. And it's not an easy place. You know, it's a rough and tumble kind of, you know, public hospital. And so there's a couple of things that I liked about the show in terms of kind of politics. And I don't mean politics like dem or you know, gop. I mean kind of like more deeply. First of all, the fact that it's like it's important to learn how to do your job, you know, and how to be successful in service of other people. But essentially it's about being a better practitioner in order to help people. To me, you know, it. It kind of reminded me. This is a very different type of show, but it kind of like reminded Me of the first season of the Bear on fx, where it was like, okay, this is a show about labor. It's a show about a restaurant. It's a show about how to work together in order to achieve a certain collective dream. There's something about that that I like. It seems to me optimistic about kind of a social project or a collective project, if that makes sense.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, Nomi, I think you're putting your finger on exactly that. And it's so funny to hear you compare it to the Bear, because, of course, what is comic, I guess you could say, on the Bear, which has been classified as a comedy, at least for Emmy purposes, and has never felt particularly appropriate, is that the stakes feel so high for a situation that is about a restaurant. If it closes, it would be devastating for the people who are behind this thing. But, you know, other people might be disappointed not to get their sandwich or later on their very fancy gourmet meal.

[Nomi Frye]

It's not brain surgery, as they say.

[Alex Schwartz]

And here it is.

[Nomi Frye]

And here it is.

[Alex Schwartz]

And here it is. And one thing I like about the show is the show is trying to, I think, get at all these different aspects of the experience of both, like, what it's like to work in a place like this, as you guys are pointing out. But they're not skimping on the stress of being at a place like the ER either, and how difficult it is under the current situation to just be stuck there. There's a conversation that happens between Dr. Rabi and that classic figure of the medical drama, the hospital supervisor. Like, yes. If we're gonna give a little criticism of the show, do they have a suspicious number of conversations about hospital finances for one day? Sure they do. Great. I'm fine with it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Y.

[Alex Schwartz]

And she comes down and says, we need to be getting higher scores on patient satisfaction. We have a big problem here. You guys are not doing well enough. And he says, well, the scores would go up if we could move people faster, but you guys are not hiring the nursing staff to allow us to move people upstairs. There are the beds up there in the icu, in surgery, wherever. But you're not putting your money in the right place. You know how likely patients are to recommend this hospital.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is an emergency department, not a taco bell.

[Nomi Frye]

11%.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, if you want people to be.

[Alex Schwartz]

Happier, don't make them wait for 12 hours.

[Nomi Frye]

There's a nursing shortage across the country.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Most of our patients are boarders who.

[Nomi Frye]

Are waiting for a bed upstairs. We don't have the beds.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's bullshit.

[Alex Schwartz]

The beds are up there.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You just don't want to hire the staff you need to care for.

[Alex Schwartz]

We're getting a kind of sense of the macro problems even as we're, you know, in this kind of go, go, go, like trauma victims coming in. I mentioned the degloving before de gloving. For those who don't know and haven't been lucky enough to see the first episode of the Pit means when your skin is peeled away from what lies beneath like a glove and all that stuff that's not supposed to be out is flapping about.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So flapping about.

[Alex Schwartz]

Now we've seen it and I like that the show puts it in front of our faces. I'm into that. And at the same time, there are moments that I think are more, to use that word, relatable. I'm thinking in particular of a moment where an elderly patient comes in from a nursing home and this guy has dementia or Alzheimer's. He's clearly not doing well and he has asked in his medical directives to not have a breathing tube put in. But his two middle aged children are trying to decide what to do and Dr. Rabi is in no uncertain terms advising them that they're not really going to manage to prolong their father's life and they're certainly going to decrease the quality of his life if they do decide to put him breathing tubes. But the siblings are not quite ready to let him go.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, we know he expressed his wishes in writing. Do not intubate.

[Nomi Frye]

We're thinking, try it for a week. That would be a very painful week.

[Alex Schwartz]

And he wouldn't really know what was happening. Elderly patients can often develop psychosis, but.

[Nomi Frye]

He might get better or he might get worse.

[Alex Schwartz]

I found this a really moving and emotional and difficult moment because these are real dilemmas that real people go through all the time that, you know, everyone will face to some degree or another.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And so you do feel such empathy for people who are confronting something like the end of life in this intense environment and what that must be like.

[Nomi Frye]

Definitely.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It makes these amazing emotional disclosures and it also makes a lot of bureaucratic disclosures. Not only is there the administrator who's haunting, wily like a demon, but every once in a while. So we cut from the bright, kinetic, chaotic environment of the ER itself. There are all these cuts out to the waiting room, which is people waiting for six and eight hours. These just like masses of people, some of them looking like they're in acute distress. One really good scene has one of them just erupt into A really big seizure in the middle of. And they have to finally bring him back. But just the grousing and the waiting. The waiting, the waiting, the grind is kind of one of the visual signatures of the show. I would say we get to know the waiting room almost as well as we get to know the er. Any chance someone can see me now? I've been there for, like, two hours.

[Alex Schwartz]

Unfortunately, Mr. Driscoll, there's a lot of patients still ahead of you. Some of them are severely ill. Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I got chest pains that woke me up in the middle of the night.

[Alex Schwartz]

Chest pain?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. No, it's not plural.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's just chest pain, not chest pains.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, and if I have more than one, it's chest pains. Are you even a real doctor?

[Alex Schwartz]

She's a student doctor.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, well, keep her the hell away from me. I just need to see someone.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Isn't chest pain an emergency? I don't.

[Alex Schwartz]

It looks here like you get an EKG five minutes after arrival. So it's not a heart attack.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, but I'm supposed to get a chest X ray and blood tests, and.

[Alex Schwartz]

You are next in line for lab tech. Okay. So listen for your name. Excuse me.

[Nomi Frye]

Totally. It's almost like that's where I think the durational gambit of the show really comes into focus, because it's like we have these, like, things happening. Yeah. Like, really fast and changing, and you see how hard the doctors are working. You know, there are no angels, but they're definitely, like, doing their best, you know? And then you go to the waiting room, and you. You actually see how real time, hour after hour, it's like Jean Del Mon or something. You know, it's like you see this, like, long durational thing of, like. And now here we are sitting again. You know, it's like third hour, fourth hour. There's like, a kind of asshole patient who's like, hey, what about me? Take me. And he says something sort of racist. You're like, oh, my God. Yeah, I've been in situations where I've had to wait for someone to see me. You know, like at City MD when I thought I had Covid during, like, the pandemic, you know, whatever it is, you know? And I think it does a really good job of showing how both. How the system is overwhelmed and how the system is made out of people who are mostly doing their best. And these two things are at odds with each other or, like, are kind of in tension with each other.

[Alex Schwartz]

I was really very affected by this whole. With the parents of the teenager who turns out to be Brenda. Because I was weeping.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I cried. And I don't cry at tv.

[Alex Schwartz]

Me neither. I was weeping and I was like, why am I weeping?

[Nomi Frye]

It's their only child, Alex.

[Alex Schwartz]

I know, but they're also fictional people. But again, when we all love, when fictionality can sneak up on us and make us feel real feelings. The three people in this room live for that. And the Pit's given it to me.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In a minute. Two words, two loafers, two eyebrows. Luigi Mangione. Stick around.

[Alex Schwartz]

Hi, I'm Morgan Sung, host of Close.

[Nomi Frye]

All Tabs from kqed, where every week.

[Alex Schwartz]

We reveal how the online world collides with everyday life.

[Nomi Frye]

You don't know what's true or not.

[Alex Schwartz]

Because you don't know if AI was involved in it. So my first reaction was, haha, this is so funny. And my next reaction was, wait a minute, I'm a journalist. Is this real?

[Nomi Frye]

And I think we will see a Twitch streamer President. Maybe within our lifetimes.

[Alex Schwartz]

You can find Close All Tabs wherever you listen to podcasts. One other thing occurs to me in talking about the Pit and the reaction to the Pit and the ways in which it's distinguishing itself from the slew of other medical dramas, and that's that people in the medical profession reportedly are finding it very accurate and more. Much more accurate on the medical level and on the level of what it's like to actually be in an ER and work in an ER than they're used to seeing. And I have to say, as someone whose profession of journalism is often depicted as well. And we all know what it's like to speak poorly. Yeah, you know, okay, it's not like, all right, so you say it's like that. You kind of roll your eyes. I get why there would be a huge amount of excitement that finally the public, and particularly for medicine, no one has to care about the way we do our jobs, really. Maybe they should. But for medicine, I get why, when you're working to save people's lives all day long, you might like some of these people to know what you actually do and what it's like. So I have become aware of a phenomen. I don't know if you guys know about this. There seems to be. I guess it's not surprising, but it was a bit of a surprise to me. There are a bunch of doctors who are also becoming, or wanting to become YouTube personalities who have videos in which they go through episodes at the Pit and comment on the medical plausibility of the different things that happen in the pit.

[Nomi Frye]

Where do they find the time?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, this is what I'm saying. Part of it for me is just a greater reflection about the culture in general. Oh, you also want to be famous. You want to be TV famous. You want to be a TV doctor. You want the TV doctors to be like you, but you also want to be like the TV Doctors. It's an endless hall of mirror here.

[Nomi Frye]

I mean, there's always been. There's always been doctors who wanted to be TV doctors. Remember Dr. Travis Stork? He was the Bachelor.

[Alex Schwartz]

I certainly don't remember him, but I guess he's like this.

[Nomi Frye]

He was on a season of the Bachelor, and then he started being on the show the Doctors.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, so here.

[Nomi Frye]

Which was like a show where doctors weighed in on people's, you know, medical issues.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, it sounds like the Doctors has migrated to TikTok.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, here we go.

[Nomi Frye]

I feel like Dr. Travis Storek would have killed on TikTok.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. And some of them.

[Nomi Frye]

Perhaps he is.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, there's. There's Dr. Mike. Dr. Mike.

[Nomi Frye]

Not doctor.

[Alex Schwartz]

Dr. Mike is. I'm just gonna show you Dr. Mike. Dr. Mike is very much in the McDreamy mold.

[Nomi Frye]

Wait, I want to see.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm pulling it around.

[Nomi Frye]

Okay.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Dr. Mike's in a little bubble on the bottom of the screen.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. Dr. Mike is in a little bubble. He has wonderful hair. He's quite nice. He's very handsome. Dr. Mike, good for you. And he's wearing a kind of royal blue scrub situation. And so he's going through at. At length. It's 20 minutes long. And telling us which of the procedures that they're doing seem accurate, if that's what he would have done.

[Nomi Frye]

Of Tylenol 400 ibuprofen and saline dressing.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. That's pretty good.

[Nomi Frye]

Pretty good dosing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I would just ask if the patient.

[Alex Schwartz]

Has any allergies, maybe before doing that, but maybe it's already in the chart, so I'll give them benefit of the doubt. And you might. So Dr. Mike finds the pit to be pretty accurate. The YouTube commentator I'm a little more into is this real ER tech Steve IOI, and he also is in scrubs, and he is commenting also on certain things of the show that he finds very realistic. Beds are a very precious commodity around.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Here, so please be quick and efficient with your workups. Oh, my God.

[Nomi Frye]

Did you hear that?

[Vincent Cunningham]

That is the whole problem with the er. The ER is always filled with patients who don't belong in the er that's the first time I've heard anybody on TV talk about this.

[Alex Schwartz]

So Steve is talking about this thing that we were describing before of the ER doctors being told they don't have the beds upstairs. This kind of political problem within the politics of the hospital, but more broadly within the capitalist system where you don't want to pay for the nurses for the care. And he's applauding the show. Literally applauding.

[Vincent Cunningham]

He clapped.

[Alex Schwartz]

He clapped for being the first time that he's seen this depicted in tv. So the doctors are liking it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. This is like, you know, if you go to a restaurant that has a certain kind of cuisine from a certain region and you see people from that region and the restaurant, you're like, it must be good.

[Nomi Frye]

It's totally similar thing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This is like how. You know. But, you know, interestingly, what you just played for us was kind of less even about the sort of the visuals of it all or the. Or certain procedures. But it's about the political, social, bureaucratic kind of machinery that surrounds this kind of notionally sacrosanct, enclosed place, but is actually always bleeding in to the space. And the pit's really good for that. Right. We see not only just the bureaucrat who doesn't wanna pay for more nurses or whatever, the management company that wants to take over the er, but unhoused people coming in. The fentanyl crisis enters more than once. The world is coming in. Right. I mean, that's one of the good things about the.

[Alex Schwartz]

A teenager seeking a medicated abortion and needing consent from her mother. Yeah. There are a lot of these. Maybe they're ripped from the headlines. Sure. Yeah. But they're real things that are going on all the time.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, no, definitely. I really like that. I mean, I think, you know, as we've already mentioned, and listeners, you don't need us to mention it. Although we will. Like what a sorry state the kind of, like, the health system is in right now and how much anger there is directed at the system. And I think the pit does a really good job in not really sugarcoating that. I mean, this hospital is like. It's like on the verge of constant collapse. The fact that, like, anyone is getting any treatment that is making them better.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Frye]

Or saving them is kind of like a miracle that is owed not to the system or the institution per se, but to the people who, against the odds, continue to operate within. It's kind of like collapsing structure.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And what is interesting about it is that I think it would be somewhat easier to have these things Right. The human drama and the medical drama maybe to one side and politics to the other, and create sort of a bifurcation between them. But what the show does well, to me is that it allows politics to actually pressurize things that we think of as, quote, unquote, human or moral or ethical. So, for example, one of my favorite characters is Dr. Mohan, who is spectacularly, you can see it in every one of her interactions, empathetic, good with the patients, wants to understand. There's a black woman who comes in with sickle cell anemia.

[Alex Schwartz]

She's in the middle of a crisis.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A sickle cell crisis, where she's being treated pretty poorly on the way in because the people who have brought her in don't understand. Dr. Mohan steps in in this very compassionate way.

[Alex Schwartz]

You seem surprised by the opiate dosage.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Seemed a little high.

[Alex Schwartz]

So was her pain.

[Nomi Frye]

How do you know she's not driving?

[Alex Schwartz]

You can't fake a hemoglobin of 6. Do you know what sickle cell crisis does to the body? Blood cells get caught and plug up your capillaries and deprive all your cells of oxygen. It's been described as an electrical, stabbing pain that feels like it's breaking your bones and flushing glass through your body. I never thought of it like that. Little empathy goes a long way with those suffering in real pain.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But on the other hand, Dr. Rabi, her boss, is saying, you take too long and we need to get people out. And so neither of them are wrong. Right. And so this politics, this political pressure, makes us ask, what in this context is compassion? Right. Something that we would maybe bracket from politics. Compassion, care. Here it's saying politics makes the definition of this human quality. It puts it under question, which I think is really interesting. It makes these worlds kind of bleed one into the other.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, no one is wrong here. It's like. Or like the doctors, at least again, are doing their best within the confines of the system.

[Vincent Cunningham]

One question I have that kind of. This show made me keep thinking about Nomi. You mentioned that there's this at least mildly racist person who is waiting and waiting and waiting, and we see his frustration rise and rise and rise. I was kind of waiting for it to break out into violence and. And spoiler alert, it eventually does. Which makes me think about the current state of our feeling toward the US Healthcare system. Famously, Luigi Mangione's alleged murder of the United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson really took the lid off of this cresting, rising, surging, frankly, scary anger at the way that healthcare works in The United States, you know, the surprising levels of support for him, all of that. I wonder, does that change the way you watch a show like this?

[Alex Schwartz]

So interesting. I mean, certainly the episode, which could not have been more like something staged for a movie or a TV show, of this anonymous murder of this healthcare executive in broad daylight on a New York City street, the subsequent manhunt, then the discovery that the accused has movie star good looks and is an Ivy League educated guy in his 20s. I mean, what are we living through, like, endless question marks at the end of that sentence? You know, is the pit the way I'm gonna try to analyze it, maybe it's so much. I mean, one thing I think the pit gets across to me is everyone feels underserved by the system we have. The people in the waiting room feel underserved by it. The doctors are stressed by it, Even the wins, so to speak, when something turns out okay, someone is discharged, someone is healed, someone is helped, all of those things. The point the show is making, and I think it's a point that many people believe to be true, is that that's just a tiny band aid on the much bigger situation we're all facing, where all of us feel pretty precarious, that no one is well served by this.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Frye]

I think it's kind of brave, like, I think it's like. Because the satisfactions of plot depend in some ways on completion. Right. Or on a certain resolution. And I think what you just said, Alex, is very true. And the kind of lack of. Ultimate lack of resolution, the impossibility of resolution, at least in the current system. And I think that in itself is political, you know, kind of like the kind of the life of an ER doctor, ER doctors trying to kind of chase their own tail and never being able to catch up.

[Alex Schwartz]

All I could think during this whole thing was, I think I have stress. Oh my God.

[Nomi Frye]

I know.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm being told, oh, I'm behind on my deadline. Boo hoo. Wow, you can't really come up with your little words today, can you? Oh, yes. The fate of some other person is really depending on that.

[Nomi Frye]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And it also shows how, you know, the people who are the figureheads for or almost symbolize institutions, and therefore, I mean, maybe their reputation has suffered the casualty of institutional collapse, that they're kind of in the middle of things, they're feeling those strains as much as we, the sort of end users of their services do.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right, you mean doctors.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Doctors in this case. But also, we talked about the other big Procedural genres. Right. The police. Procedural police are not thought of in the same way that they used to be for many reasons. The legal, procedural. I mean, let's. The. Among other things, the absolute corruption of the Supreme Court and other things. That the lawyer is no longer the sort of paragon that she or he used to be or the judge. That's right. And also, by the way, our industry, the media, believe it or not, people used to like the media after, let's say, Watergate and the Washington Post's heroics not too long ago. So we're in this era where all of those establishments crumble and the people who epitomize them, the journalist, the doctor, the lawyer, are kind of often caught at a crossroads. And I think that this show shows that that crossroads, that crucible, affects them as much as it kind of. Maybe not in the same ways, but certainly as much as it affects the rest of us.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think that's an amazing point. The only thing I would add is that people have hated lawyers forever, and people will hate lawyers forever. But judges, they used to respect as.

[Nomi Frye]

The daughter of a lawyer, as the daughter of a law.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, Shakespeare was there slinging mud at them. Okay, fine. That's okay.

[Vincent Cunningham]

They didn't like him, but they still wanted their kids to become them.

[Alex Schwartz]

But it's the judges. It's the judges. I'm laughing, but I think your point. I really take your point. The judges and the idea of impartiality, or the doctor and the idea that they're trying to serve the needs of the patient above all the police and the idea that they are trying to serve public safety above all, or the journalist, the idea that they're trying to serve the truth. For many legitimate reasons, faith in these institutions has eroded. And I think what you're asking, Vincent, is at the low point of such faith and trust, because society cannot function without trust. What happens to build it back? I mean, I don't think the pit is there to try to be positive PR for doctors who are doing such a great job and the rest of it. But, you know, I think we all tend to be on the side of art as humanization, depiction, show, some piece of the. That's why I actually think this question of doctors finding this realistic is important. You know, people seeing what the work actually is seems quite important.

[Nomi Frye]

I think so, yeah. It's about the labor, and it's not easy.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

I guess I would say that one of the things I was most moved by with the show was like, that kind of humanness of the doctors at the end of the day that they have to see things that the rest of us really try not to see. Just like, like me not watching medical shows to try to avoid some of these things. And that's just their 15 hour shift.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been Critics at Large. This week's episode was produced by Danielle Hewitt. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. And Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music. We had engineering help today from Jake Loomis with mixing by Mike Cushman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] Critics if you want to come see us live, you still have time to buy tickets. We'll be at the Bellhouse in Brooklyn on March 11th. That's just next week, so come on down. We would love to see you there. You can buy tickets at thebelhouseny. And of course, we'll be back next Thursday with a brand new episode. See you then.

[Alex Schwartz]

Working at Vanity Fair, our entire lives revolve around press screenings, premieres, film festivals, Q&As, set visits, its award ceremonies. Not that we're complaining, it's pretty great. But you know that feeling when you see a new film or show and you want to talk about it with everyone immediately? We feel that all the time. Yes, we sure do. I'm Richard Lawson. I'm David Canfield. And I'm Rebecca Ford. On Little Gold Men, Vanity Fair's flagship entertainment podcast, we discuss today's most exciting films and TV shows. David and I are fresh off attending the La Prince premiere last night. Break down the latest developments in the awards races.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Gomez and Grande split the pop.

[Alex Schwartz]

Girl, you vote. And catch up with Hollywood's biggest movers and shakers. Demi Moore, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. Whether you're a casual viewer or an.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Industry buff, this is the podcast for you.

[Alex Schwartz]

New episodes are published every Tuesday and Thursday. Follow and listen to Little Gold Men wherever you get your podcasts.

[Nomi Frye]

From. Prx.