Watercooler TV is back

Summary

Today, Explained – Episode: "Watercooler TV is back"
Release Date: April 11, 2025
Hosts: Sean Rameswaram and Noel King
Podcast Network: Vox Media Podcast Network

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Introduction: The Resurgence of Watercooler Conversations

In this episode of Today, Explained, Sean Rameswaram and Noel King delve into the revival of "Watercooler TV," exploring how certain television programs have reignited office conversations similar to the pre-streaming era. The focal point of the discussion is the return of the medical drama “The Pit”, alongside an examination of current trends in television programming.

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The Pit: A New Era of Medical Drama

Joe Sachs, an executive producer, writer, and former emergency physician, joins the conversation to shed light on the creation and impact of “The Pit”.

• Significance and Legacy of ER
  At [02:09], Sachs reflects on his tenure with the iconic medical show ER, highlighting its unprecedented reach:

  “The show got a 50 share. That means that 50% of all televisions in America that were on were watching ER.” (03:08)

• Creation of The Pit
  Sachs explains the motivation behind “The Pit”, emphasizing a desire to portray the stark realities of modern emergency medicine:

  “There's a crisis in emergency medicine, and we're gonna show that, warts and all.” (04:03)
  The show adopts a continuous format, presenting a 12-hour shift over 15 episodes, each depicting an hour of the same chaotic day in an emergency room.

• Realism and Authenticity
  Sachs underscores the show's commitment to authenticity, drawing from his real-world experiences:

  “The de gloved, fractured dislocated ankle was a case that I had actually had as an emergency physician.” (10:04)
  This dedication has resonated deeply with medical professionals and emergency workers, who find the portrayal accurate and cathartic.

• Audience Reception
  The response has been overwhelmingly positive, with viewers appreciating the realistic depiction of emergency medicine:

  “This is the first medical show I've been able to watch that feels real.” (08:24)
  Additionally, the show has prompted discussions among emergency workers about their own experiences and mental health.

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Trends in Television: Weekly Releases and Content Depth

Katherine Van Arendonck, a critic at Vulture and New York Magazine, provides insights into broader TV trends and the unique positioning of “The Pit”.

• Weekly Episode Releases
  Van Arendonck highlights the importance of weekly releases in fostering sustained conversations:

  “Weekly release is a huge part of why all three of those shows have been so discoursey lately.” (23:45)
  This approach contrasts with the binge-release model prevalent in streaming platforms, thereby reviving the communal aspect of TV watching.

• Comparison with Other Medical Dramas
  The conversation extends to other contemporary medical shows, each bringing a unique twist to the genre:

  • Watson (CBS): A detective-style medical drama focusing on genetic mysteries.
  • Doc (Fox): Centers on a doctor with a traumatic brain injury navigating her professional and personal life.
  • International Shows: Includes Berlin ER on Apple TV and various Korean medical dramas on Netflix.

• Political and Social Commentary
  Unlike traditional medical dramas, “The Pit” incorporates significant political and social issues:

  “The Pit is radically political... focusing on the stories of the patients who come in, not the personal lives of the doctors.” (19:23)
  Storylines address topics like racial bias in healthcare, vaccine debates, and the impact of mass shootings, making the show a reflection of current societal challenges.

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Cultural Impact: Escapism Through Competence

The episode explores how “The Pit” serves as a form of escapism that aligns with current societal stressors:

• Comfort in Competence
  Van Arendonck theorizes that viewers find solace in the show's depiction of competent professionals handling crises:

  “It is an incredibly comforting fantasy of competency.” (22:19)
  This portrayal offers a sense of control and assurance amidst the chaos of real-world issues.

• Balancing Realism and Escapism
  While “The Pit” tackles intense and political themes, it remains engaging by focusing on the immediate and actionable scenarios within the ER, allowing viewers to immerse themselves without feeling overwhelmed by external problems.

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Conclusion: The Future of Watercooler TV

As “The Pit” returns to network schedules with renewed vigor, the episode underscores the show's potential to inspire similar programming that fosters communal viewing experiences. Van Arendonck expresses optimism that the success of “The Pit” may encourage other networks and streaming platforms to adopt traditional TV strategies, blending depth with accessibility.

“I just strongly believe that the weekly release is a huge part of why these shows have been so discoursey.” (23:45)
“Watching the Pit feels like somebody finally remembered how to make television again.” (23:45)

Sean Rameswaram wraps up the episode by hinting at future discussions and encouraging listeners to engage with the ongoing television renaissance sparked by shows like “The Pit”.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Joe Sachs on ER's Impact:

  “The show got a 50 share. That means that 50% of all televisions in America that were on were watching ER.” (03:08)

• Sachs on The Pit’s Purpose:

  “There's a crisis in emergency medicine, and we're gonna show that, warts and all.” (04:03)

• Audience Reaction to The Pit:

  “This is the first medical show I've been able to watch that feels real.” (08:24)

• Van Arendonck on Weekly Releases:

  “Weekly release is a huge part of why all three of those shows have been so discoursey lately.” (23:45)

• Cultural Impact Insight:

  “It is an incredibly comforting fantasy of competency.” (22:19)

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This comprehensive overview captures the essence of the "Watercooler TV is back" episode, highlighting the resurgence of conversational television through “The Pit” and its alignment with broader industry trends. The discussion underscores the balance between realism and escapism, illustrating how modern TV continues to evolve while rekindling the communal spirit of earlier broadcasting eras.

Transcript

[Sean Ramis]

Remember the global COVID 19 pandemic? All of a sudden, everyone had to stay home and people didn't really know what to do. So they started watching tv. Lots of tv. And we talked about all the TV we were watching. Not since way back then have more people been asking me about the TV I'm watching.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Like, my. Dude, are you watching the Pit?

[Claire White]

Don't you have to know basic anatomy to become a doctor?

[Miranda Kennedy]

He's a student doctor.

[Sean Ramis]

Did you see that white Lotus monologue?

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Maybe when I really is to be one of these Asian girls. Severance, have you ever heard the story.

[Joe Sachs]

Of the Glex Schupen?

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Let's assume we haven't.

[Sean Ramis]

Something's afoot with all these seemingly unrelated television programs.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Yes, they actually have one very, very important thing in common that has directly to do with what you were saying, which is that they are released weekly.

[Sean Ramis]

Water Cooler TV is back on today explained.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

PayPal lets you pay all your pals like your dinner dates.

[Miles Bryan]

How are we splitting the bill?

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Um, evenly. Well, I only got soup. Let's Split it on PayPal based on what people ate. Get started in the PayPal app. A PayPal account is required to send and receive money.

[Claire White]

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[Katherine Van Arendonck]

You're listening to Today Explained.

[Sean Ramis]

All right, so TVs got people talking again. And one of the shows they're talking about is the Pit. And if we're going to talk about.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

The Pit, we got to talk about er.

[Joe Sachs]

I'm Joe Sachs. I am an executive producer, writer, and also a real world emergency physician. I came in halfway through the first season of ER and stayed for 14 and a half years.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

For people in our audience who, you know, maybe weren't even alive in 1994. Can you just help people understand how big a deal ER was and why?

[Joe Sachs]

Yeah, you know, back in the day, there was no streaming. There was no YouTube. Basically, there were four television networks. There was NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. So after I came on the show, there was a milestone.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Please, please, my brother needs help.

[Joe Sachs]

He's gonna drown one man's defining moment.

[Miles Bryan]

Over 48 million people experienced it.

[Joe Sachs]

The show got a 50 share. That means that 50% of all televisions in America that were on were watching er. So, you know, right now, a big hit show gets 2 or 3% of the American public is watching you. And it was really the classic water cooler show. And what's fascinating about the Pit is that I've heard so many stories and so many online postings from people who say that on Friday morning, everybody's talking about the Pit in the office.

[Sean Ramis]

Joe had half the TV watching Country eating out the palm of his hand in the 90s, a feat that's basically impossible to pull off now unless you're the Super Bowl. So we asked him why he wanted to return to the medical drama with the Pit.

[Joe Sachs]

Well, after er, I didn't have a strong desire to work on a medical show. And in fact, I worked for 10 years on a crime show. When John Wells. No Wylie and Scott Gemmell first called me in to pitch the show, they said, well, what's changed? What's different? And my answer was everything. And I said, after Covid, you wouldn't recognize the place. There's this thing called the boarding crisis. Most of the beds are in all the hallway spaces are taken up by patients who can't go upstairs to be admitted because they don't have the nursing staff, they don't have the beds. The waiting room is filled to the brim, and you have to try to practice medicine from the waiting room. So people are angry, people are frustrated, waits are long. And these doctors and nurses who are trying to deliver quality, compassionate care have. The deck is just stacked against them. So I said to them, you want to make it real. This is how it's real. And they embrace that. That, number one, there's a crisis in emergency medicine, and we're gonna show that, warts and all. And number there's tremendous post traumatic stress on emergency workers who worked during the pandemic before there was any effective treatments and who just watched hundreds and hundreds of people die.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And in order to tell this story of what it's like to be an Emergency medicine physician in 2025ish, you guys decide to tell this show in this continuous fashion where every episode is picking up exactly where the last episode left off, depicting the course of one long, chaotic, gnarly shift at one hospital.

[Joe Sachs]

Yes. How can we make the show different from anything you've seen before? And that's to do a 12 hour shift in 12 hours where every Episode is an hour of the same day.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

I wanted to ask you about that. It's funny, you know, I'm used to shows On HBO being six episodes, eight episodes, 10 episodes. I just watch adolescence. It's four episodes. This show is 15 hours, which, it's HBO, it's Max or whatever, but it feels kind of like old school network television where there's a lot of episodes.

[Joe Sachs]

Yeah. And the powers that be at HBO Max decided that they wanted this show to be unique from what people are used to seeing. The seven or eight hours and 12 just wasn't enough. So they wanted 15 to say, wow, here's a streaming show that can give you 50 in a year. And. And one of the reasons we can do 15 in a year is because we're in the same place, same set. We don't go out on location, we don't go home with people to see their personal lives. So we are literally in this submarine for 15 hours. And that saves you a lot of time and money with location work and sets and costumes, because everybody is wearing the same thing for the whole. The whole. The whole run. Except for Whitaker, of course, who gets bodily fluids on his scrubs every now and then.

[Claire White]

Oh, do something, man.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

I need a little help here. Jesus, noob.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Were you nervous that the amount of stress in this hospital, in this emergency room, in this sort of like tight 15 hour period, would overstress your audience out and they might get scared off? Were you at all nervous about that?

[Joe Sachs]

I honestly had no idea how the public was going to respond to our show. I just wanted to do it as realistically and as accurate as possible. And that was the bar that I set for the medicine. But what a delightful surprise to see that people responded in a way to seeing what we worked so hard to create.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

How do people respond?

[Joe Sachs]

I can say that people in medicine are saying, this is the first medical show I've been able to watch that feels real. And I can also say that for many emergency workers, they're saying, for years I've tried to explain to my friends and my family what it's like, and I've never been able to put it into words. And now I just say, watch an episode of the Pit and you'll know what my workday is like. And that's a big compliment. And then there are the emergency workers who see it and see the flashbacks to Covid and say, oh, my God, I have been dealing with such post traumatic stress disorder and I've been denying it and I need to get help. That's a wonderful thing.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

The show's also pretty gnarly at times. I mean, if you're like, you know, faint of heart. There's this floating face moment early in the show where I was just like. I mean, the noises that come out of me while I'm watching the show are pretty hilarious. I imagine the skinless foot. I think in the first episode, there's like a needle in the heart. Was there stuff that didn't make it because it was too gnarly, or did you guys just go for it?

[Joe Sachs]

Not so far, no.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

No.

[Joe Sachs]

The first episode, the de gloved, fractured dislocated foot train ran over her foot.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Got caught between the platform and the incoming train.

[Joe Sachs]

Ma'am came about by the writers room looking to me and saying what would make a young medical student faint.

[Miles Bryan]

An artery is totally transected the smooth muscle and the tunica media contracts with hemostasis.

[Patrick Boyd]

But if it's a partial cut. Get out your umbrella.

[Miles Bryan]

I'll stabilize the knee for the reduction. Dr. Langdon will be distracting distally before moving medially to clear the tibia.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Ready? Mad student down.

[Joe Sachs]

That's the dramatic need of the story. It's not like I've been saying, oh, man, I want to do this. De gloved, fractured dislocated foot. And I got to have that on the show. That came out of nowhere. That came out of. What can we show that will just make the audience feel the same way that this young medical student feels? And on other medical shows and on er, you know, we open chests and we put in chest tubes and we put tubes in every orifice and this and that. But the de gloved fractured dislocated ankle was a case that I had actually had as an emergency physician. And when I pitched it to the room, all the eyes lit up and they all said, that's it.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

So what are you gonna show us that we haven't seen before in season two?

[Joe Sachs]

Stay tuned.

[Sean Ramis]

Joe Sachs is an executive producer and writer on the Pit, which had its season finale last night on Max. Which means you can binge the whole thing over the weekend now and maybe still catch the tail end of some of that water cooler conversation that we are gonna be talking about when we return on Today Explained.

[Miles Bryan]

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[Miranda Kennedy]

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[Miles Bryan]

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[Miranda Kennedy]

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[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Scalpel. Scalpel.

[Joe Sachs]

Suction.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Suction. Today.

[Miles Bryan]

Today.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

It's splained.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Explained. My name is Katherine Van Arendonck, and I'm a critic at Vulture in New York magazine.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And we've asked you here because we just talked about the Pit with a guy from the Pit. But it turns out the Pit isn't the only medical drama on the television right now.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

No, there are hundreds, thousands. You could be buried underneath them. There are so many medical shows right now, it's wild.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

What are the big ones that, like, we maybe don't know of yet?

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Well, so a lot of these live on network television. And if you have only ever been watching Netflix or Max in the last couple years, but you're like, I need more doctors. Where are all the doctors? They're on network tv. They've always been. They've never left. But now there are all these other options. There is one called Watson on cbs, and that one is your more detective y kind of medical drama. Not a lot of blood, not a lot of guts, a lot of people staring at a board and being like, what if it's this genetic mystery that's. That's the vibe of Watson. There's a truly bonkers one called Doc that's on Fox. And the premise of Doc, roughly, is that the main character suffered a traumatic brain injury and does not remember the last eight years, but does still remember mostly how to be a doctor. And so she's just wandering around the hospital like being a doctor, even though she's also, you know, not fully compos mentis. But the other great thing about Doc is that it turns out eight years ago, she was a jerk, and now she's nice. She's trying to understand everything that happened to her in the last eight years to turn her into a jerk. That shows crazy.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

You're really selling me on duck.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Look, there's a lot of options for people if you prefer your medical dramas to be not in English. There's also Berlin ER on Apple tv. That's quite good. And like the Pit, that's kind of the vibe of Berlin, er, But if you're like, not that kind of. Not in English. There are also several Korean new Korean medical shows on Netflix too. So again, you're hurting for choice, really.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And you didn't even mention the one I have heard of, which is Dr. Odyssey.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Dr. Odyssey is the new Ryan Murphy show on ABC. And in that Joshua Jackson is a super hot daddy doctor and he wears pristine white uniforms and yet somehow cares for people's blood and other liquids. And. And there's threesomes. Like, that's kind of the vibe of that show.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Oh, yeah, that's good. I haven't seen one in the Pit yet, but I haven't finished it yet, so.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Well, fingers crossed.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Why are there so many daddy doctor doctor dramas, Doc Watson, et cetera.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

So there are, I think, a couple of reasons why we're suddenly seeing all these medical dramas. One is that TV just tends to go through trends, right? And we have been in this period where there are tons and tons of cop dramas. There's been this huge proliferation of the Dick Wolf style shows. But the medical drama has always also been a TV mainstay. But the dial has just been turned a little bit more toward cop drama, I would say, in the last decade or so. I do also think that there is this moment in Hollywood and sort of politically where it's like, how are we feeling about cop dramas right now? They used to be the great American past, time watching somebody get murdered and then somebody else be like, you did it. But we are currently in this moment where everyone is like our cop dramas. Is this a partisan thing now? How do I feel about this? And network TV wants to be a big bucket. It wants to get everybody in. And the medical drama does not have those same kinds of political associations. Now, a show like the Pit, I would argue is radically political, but we just sort of, as a national discourse, have not turned to the medical drama and been like, this is where the culture war is happening. And so it is this political procedural safe haven for TV right now.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Tell people how the Pit is radically political.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Yeah, so the Pit, because it takes place in the ER hour by hour, and because its co creators and writers make this really deliberate choice to be focusing on the stories of the patients who come in, not the personal lives of the doctors. The cases that show up on the Pit are things like a situation where a black woman comes in and she is experiencing an incredible painful crisis because she's having a sickle Cell crisis, and she is instead assumed to be drug seeking.

[Miles Bryan]

Stop fighting.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Come the fuck down on calling the cops. My meds at home aren't working.

[Miles Bryan]

Please, I have sickles. Okay, stop. Everybody stop.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Later in the season, there is a measles case, and this becomes a big and very fraught discussion about vaccines.

[Patrick Boyd]

Georgia was sick, but she got better on her own quickly. Yeah, many people get better on their own, like Georgia. However, as many as 1 in 20 kids that get measles get pneumonia. Like your son.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Are your children vaccinated against measles?

[Joe Sachs]

No.

[Patrick Boyd]

The MMR vaccine is perfectly safe. Measles is not.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

And then there is this, of course, this huge season arc that's about a mass shooting, and that includes a lot of implicit, I would say, commentary on, like, why. On the role of guns.

[Patrick Boyd]

As the nearest trauma center, we are going to be getting the majority of the victims. We don't know yet how many we are getting, but we are instituting hospital wide emergency protocols.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And that's sort of interesting to me because people are watching this show as escapism. Our colleague Jonquillen Hill was explaining this morning how she feels like watching the Pit is like, oh, this is my new family. These are the people I hang out with every night. And yet when it's getting so political and when people are constantly dying or almost dying, like, how is that escapism?

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Yes. I have a theory about this for the Pit in particular. Your brain knows that things are crazy, that the world is very stressful right now. And even when you are seeking escapism, it is very hard to turn off the part of you that is like, alarm, alarm, alarm. So things that are purely escapist, things that are like a fantasy world that has absolutely nothing to do with what's going on right now, are hard to enter into. Something like the Pit is instead this incredibly comforting fantasy of competency. Emergencies that are happening that people can deal with, they care about and they want to deal with in the best way they possibly can. The world is a mess, but you don't have to care about that. All you care about is what is in the emergency room in front of you at this moment.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

What I'm hearing from you is that it's escapism in that someone has your.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Back in this world 1 million percent. I think that is the nature of this. And I truly cannot emphasize enough. Just, like, not just that they have your back, but they're so good at their jobs and, like, I cannot imagine anything more gorgeous, fantastical and escapist right now.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And how does the Pit and its throwback quality fit into the broader trends we are seeing in television? Whether they're, I don't know, on. On the sort of tail end or somewhere in the middle, I'm not really sure. But, I mean, the Pit exists in the same televised universe as the third season of White Lotus and the second season of Severance. And these shows don't seem to have much in common with each other, except for the fact that people are talking about them a lot right now.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Yes, they actually have one very, very important thing in common that has directly to do with what you were saying, which is that they are released weekly. TV used to know how to create conversations, and it did that by releasing one episode a week so that your friend could be like, you know what shows really good?

[Miles Bryan]

The Pit.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

And you're like, how many episodes are there? And either they say two, and you're like, great, I'm gonna catch up. Or they say, like, there's seven seasons and they all came out four years ago, and you're like, well, that's never gonna happen. And so I strongly, strongly believe that the weekly release is a huge part of why all three of those shows have been so discoursey lately. I think both White Lotus and Severance are built on this prestige TV model, this peak TV thing, where it's like you find a guy and you give him a billion d dollars and goes off and creates a whole season of tv, and he's an auteur, and he's a genius. And the Pit is like, what if we made. Can I swear on this? What if I made tv Ass tv? Like, what if I just made the most. Like, it feels like a show that you watched in 1995, but we're gonna streaming it, right? Like, we're gonna be able to have gory medical procedures. The runtimes are gonna be just a little more flexible. You don't have to hit the commercial breaks. Qu. It has been very frustrating to watch streaming shows from the last 10 years, forget how to make television. And watching the Pit feels like somebody finally remembered how to make television again and put it on a streaming platform. And I'm just so hopeful that other streamers look at this, other creators look at this, and are like, great, we can make suits again too, and put it on Netflix.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

And for all the people out there, Katherine, who are, you know, mourning the loss of their precious Pit or their brief sojourn to Thailand or hanging out with the severance kids, what are you excited about in the coming weeks and months on the tv.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

I was not actually the biggest fan of the Last of Us Season one, but I very much enjoyed the Last of Us Season two. And that will have that weekly release rhythm. There are seven episodes, so you get to.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

You've already seen it all.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

I have, yeah. I'm really excited about Andor yes, it is not quite weekly. It's not quite weekly release. It is in chunks. It's like three episodes a week for a couple weeks. But I think Andor season one is astonishingly great television. And it is also the kind of thing where you're like, oh, it's escapist. It's a Star wars show. And then you're watching it and you're like, actually, no, this is the most devastating text about fascism that like any entertainer has created in the last decade.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Another great example of escapism, but not 100%.

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Something more like full escapism. The Sex and the City spinoff. And just like that will be coming out again at some point. Finally, finally, finally, our not our long national nightmare is over. The other thing that I want to mention about the Pit, though, is you won't have to wait that long for it to come back. It is actually on a network schedule. Like they are going back into production this summer.

[Hadi Mwagdi]

Okay, great. So what you're saying is if you're missing the Pit, don't worry, you can watch the Pit?

[Katherine Van Arendonck]

Yes, yes.

[Sean Ramis]

Kathryn Van Arendonk, New York Magazine fan of the Pit. So is Hadi Mwagdi, who made the show with help from Miranda Kennedy, Miles Bryan and Patrick Boyd, who's not sure he needs the stress of the Pit in his life at the moment. I'm Sean Ramis. Forum this is Today Explained. We'll be back Monday, but don't forget, we got a Sunday show now. It's called Explain it to Me. This week they're going to explain it to you. Why high school grads aren't automatically being funneled into college anymore. You can find that where you find this. Except on the radio. That show isn't on the radio. This one is shout outs to TV on the radio.