The Prestige TV Podcast - ‘The Pitt’ Series Premiere: ‘ER’ Is (Kind of) Back!

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney work the overnight shift at the emergency room to recap the two-episode premiere of ‘The Pitt,’ the Max original series from much of the creative team behind ‘ER.’ They discuss it as a spiritual successor to the popular ’90s drama, their relationship with the medical procedural genre, and how its high-concept premise is executed (1:35). Along the way, they talk through their favorite and least favorite characters so far (24:15). Later, they consider whether the barrier to entry is too high for the show to widely catch on (36:31). Email us! [e-mail] Subscribe to the Ringer TV YouTube channel here for full episodes of ‘The Prestige TV Podcast’ and so much more! Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney Producers: Kai Grady and Donnie Beacham Jr. Additional Production Support: Justin Sayles Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Look, it's not that confusing. I'm Rob Harvilla, host of the podcast 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, except we did 120 songs. And now we're back with the 2000s. I refuse to say aughts. 2000 to 2009. The Strokes, Rihanna, J-Lo, Kanye, sure. And now the show is called 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, colon the 2000s. Wow.

That's too long a title for me to say anything else right now. Just trust me. That's 60 songs that explain the 90s, in the 2000s, preferably on Spotify. This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce, and some very tasty limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda.

Perfect for a picnic or brunch. As is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. It's delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. This episode is brought to by Bor's Head. What if we told you the taste of deep fried turkey is now available at your local deli? Well, Borershead just did that. Bursting with flavor, perfectly seasoned with that indulgent taste that usually means pointing your whole day around it, presenting the friars turkey breast only from

Boershead. Backyard tradition now available behind the counter. Visit your local deli today. Discover the craftmanship behind every bite. Borashead committed to craft since 1905. Come back to the prestige TV podcast feed. I'm Joanna Robinson. I'm Rob Mahoney and we're here with you for the next 15 hours to cover the first two up. No, just get we're here for the next hour to cover the first two episodes of the HBO Mac series, The Pit. This is a double premiere. So just in, you know, if you You watched one episode and didn't know that they dropped to. We'll be covering both. So that's your spoiler warning for the pit.

Rob Mahoney. Yes. As always, press Tadshyv at Spotify.com. If you have pit thoughts, you know, we'll repeat it again later. What is the pit? And why should or should not people be watching it? I mean, the pit itself is, what, hell? Oh.

Is our descent into the underworld? The inferno. Okay, all right. The absolute inferno. The pit for the purposes of this show, I would say specifically the ER portion of the hospital at, do we know what the broader Pittsburgh general? It's a Pittsburgh trauma medical hospital.

Thank you. P-T-M-H. Just rolls off the tongue. I think it's just a lovely place to spend some time with an assortment of doctors and med students as they deal with just really whatever trauma or issue. or general larger societal concern happens to roll through the front door. This is a 15 episode, 15-ish hours, like 50-minute episode, so we get a little like 10-minute wiggle room.

That's the smoking break. Yeah, there you go. That's the flashback to COVID. This is a 15 hours in the overnight shift, essentially, of an ER at a trauma medical hospital in Pissburg. It is from a few of the folks who made ER, so we'll talk about that in a second. And it stars Noah Wiley famously one of the stars of ER. So it is a sort of, it is as, it is so much a quasi-ER sequel spinoff that Michael Crichton's widows sued HBO. You know what?

No, it's not ER. It's 100% not ER. So, you know, we're. we're in Pittsburgh, we're not in Chicago, it's definitely not different. Yep. But let's say, Noah Wiley has a beard now. It could not be the same guy. Could not possibly be any different than ER.

But we are going to talk about a little bit about ER and just sort of in a historical context kind of thing, and it makes me feel like dust in my bones to say historical context in ER. But our beloved producer, Kai Grady, is a good deal younger than us and is very helpful. in reminding me that not everyone grew up watching ER and so I just wanted to like give you a little

or give anyone who's listening like a little bit of context so Landman a show that has been on our minds and in our hearts near and dear to your hearts across several podcasts Landman is like being touted as this cultural phenomenon

the monoculture's back baby and Landman's at the head of it and all this sort of stuff like that so they are bringing in And as far as I could tell with some like Googling, around 15 million households, sort of, you know, streaming era. So like over the course of the week, 15 million households are tuning in to Landman. And that is just like amazing numbers. Incredible.

ER got 30 million households in its first season, and I kind of peaked at 35 million households. ER ran for 15 seasons, 331 episodes of ER exist in the world. And just in season one, just to like remind people what a phenomenon was, season one, it was nominated for 23 Emmys. Every single cast member was nominated. That's incredible. It won directing. It won writing.

It won like Julianna Margulies won. And then like it won, you know, best drama in its second season. It was like, it had a grip on everyone from 9th. 94 on and then obviously it like sort of waned a bit as it went on. It's obviously not the first medical procedural. Those existed before, say elsewhere, China Beach,

etc. But it definitely changed the game and was just this massive, um, in terms of setting something in the R, which both of these shows are, uh, it changes the medical procedure from like a soapy workplace drama, which,

you know, oftentimes something like Gray's Anatomy, is to like a constant adrenaline pumping sort of experience. ER, the pilot, the two-hour pilot of ER was actually a Michael Carton film script that they just sort of like changed slightly. Hence the pending litigation. And made, and Michael Crichton was a, you know, was a medical student. And so this is based on, so Noah Wiley's playing John Carter and ER.

And that is basically the Michael Crichton like insert into like what it was a, like to be a brand new scrubbed-faced, fresh-eyed, you know, med student coming into a jaded metropolis ER, which we get in this show, and this time Noah Wiley is our sort of grizzled, you know, ahead of the department. Rob Mahoney. Joanna Robinson.

What is your experience of a medical procedural? And how do you feel about a medical procedural of sorts? coming to HBO Max? I would say my experience is pretty scant. It's mostly tropey. It's mostly dropping in occasionally on shows like ER, which I was not a dedicated watcher of by any stretch of the imagination. You can't avoid these things if you have been watching television regularly.

But I would say my enjoyment, most of medical-oriented TV has been more on like the parody side, more on like the children's hospital side of this spectrum. So I'm enjoying getting in the lane in earnest. and taking this thing at face value and engaging with it on its terms because this is not a genre that is explicitly for me. That said, I love a ride,

I love a roller coaster. I do love the adrenaline pumping that you're talking about, not just with the ER, but in this case with the pit. The mechanisms here, I think, can work for a lot of different people. It's kind of undeniable

once you start rolling gurneys into room and shouting a lot, that you're just going to be interested in what's happening. It's funny. I was comparing the medical jargon in this, because I rewatched the ER pilot.

And I was watching the first steps of the pit, I was like, I feel like they've gotten bolder with the depth of the medical jargon that they're willing to babble at each other inside of this. Whereas in like ER, it was just like intubate, push several CCs of saline. Like there's just like a few things that you would say in ER. And I feel like we got like the whole gamut of possibilities

inside of this show. But yeah, there are a few sort of signposts of the genre that are exist in an ER and this. But once again, for legal purposes, this is not a sequel. Definitely not ER. Definitely not a reboot of ER that was then quickly repurposed into a different show. That didn't happen. Don't worry. It didn't happen.

Don't worry about it. John Wells is here. A TV legend made ER and West Wing and a bunch of other stuff and is also here, but it's not an ER sequel. Don't worry about it. But there's a few things that are quite helpful inside of a medical procedural like this that, you know, are easy to help us understand the world. The concept of the brand new, it's their first day medical students coming into the department. So they get, you know, exposition dumped on them as they're toured around. Well, they also do a lot of dumping, to be fair.

Everyone is exposition dumping in this show. Okay, that's different. The personal life exposition dumping is, I think, actually, by far the weakest part of the show. We'll talk about that in a second. I don't know. When I walk into a room, I try to tell people one relevant detail about me that will define my entire personality. That's usually what I lead with. I got a kid.

You know what I mean? And as a mother of children, I just wanted to say that to you. That was the worst one. Okay. The challenge of the pit faces with its high concept, which is 15 hours inside of a shift, which is different legally and definitely different from ER. Here are some challenges, and we haven't watched beyond the first two episodes, but here are some potential challenges here.

Will it feel claustrophobic to be just inside of the hospital? We got up to the roof in episode one, but we're not, like, as we are in ER, you know, riding the L or, you know, going across the street for a cup of coffee or whatever else the case may be. We're not going home with these people necessarily, is my assumption. Will it feel claustrophobic to be inside of, how much can a character arc over 15 hours of a shift versus? an entire season of television that takes place over weeks, months, years, et cetera.

And then also this flashback device, which we get at the very end of the first episode, which is, you know, our main character, played by Noah Wiley, has a sort of traumatic flashback to COVID era and what it was like in the ER. And we hear we get the little drops of information about a colleague. who died four years ago. So what is that story and how will that unfold and flashback? As sort of like a pressure valve release, potentially for being locked into 15 hours with a group of people.

Any thoughts about that about like this high concept and how you feel, you know, obviously shows exist like 24. Movies exist like go. You know, like we've been in this sort of like ticking clock environment before in our lives. But like how does this work for you? Yeah, I think it's a huge reason why this probably isn't. a binge drop and why does it make sense as a binge show? Week to week, you can go out in your real life and come back to the hospital for an hour

and feel okay about that. And I think that depressurization is going to be a really important part of the experience of watching this show, not just because it is in these very confined settings, which are not even hospital rooms so much as like hospital beds surrounded by curtains in which all of these cases are stacked on top of each other. You need some relief from that in terms of the time and space. As far as the character arcing, I think my counter to that would be the, this does not seem to be a show

that is terribly interested in character and maybe shouldn't be. I think ultimately the architecture is what drives it, and they are trying, and I would say ultimately not succeeding very much to this point, in peppering in some character details,

some existing relationships, some new relationships. They're trying to tease things out between these people as they go about making their rounds. I don't think that's what's drawing this show. I don't think that's what's going to be pulling people in. And certainly now what keeps people

watching week to week. I almost think about it more of like the pit to me in terms of like balancing character and case has a lot more in common with like law and order than it does a character-driven drama. Okay. On the one hand, yes. And I see what you're saying. And we should note that our Scott Gemmel is the is the technical showrunner the show. And he worked on ER yes, but also JAG and NCIS. So he's like very much a procedural guy. The difference between the pit and even the difference between the pit and ER even is these cases are going to be bleeding. We're not just a case of the weaking. No, not at all.

These things and we're even dropping some things like in the first two episodes, we meet a troubled youth who wants to hurt people. And it would not be who's the son of a woman who came in and faked being ill so that she could get her son like a side consult essentially. and like I would not be surprised if this sounds so jaded of me, but like, and I'm not sure that I wanted at all, but like if we got a mass shooting from that character, like, you know, they failed to track him down. Right. And if we got that as a case later in the season of like his victims come in or something like that,

I feel like those are the long arc bridges that they're trying to build. There's certainly like we have a character who is like secretly pregnant. That is something that is going to be, you know, know, percolating throughout the season. We've got a character who's related to an important member of staff in the hospital. Two, it sounds like. I was texting with CR a little bit about The Pit and like asking if he had watched it what he thought. And like, we didn't talk that much about it.

And he will certainly go into it on the watch. And we don't want to like, you know, double dip on anything. But the one thing he said to me is like, it's missing Doug and Carol, which is George Clooney and Juliana Margulies's character. from ER. And that's what made me want to rewatch the pilot. Because I was like, what do they do with Doug and Carol, these two, you know, star cross lovers essentially in the, in the ER in the first episode. And like famously, spoilers for ER. Juliana Marley-Lis plays this like, you know, beautiful and popular nurse who's just like,

sort of the life of the party for the first half the episode. She goes, she goes home. She attempts suicide. And so she's brought it. So it's like one of those like one of our own brought in as the patient for the back half of this two-hour pilot. She was supposed to die in the pilot. Your character was so popular, a real Jesse Pinkman situation that they just brought her back and she became a co-lead on the show. But the fact that, like, this could not be more personal. The ER pilot, this could not be more about it.

The ER pilot opens with Doug Ross's played by George Clooney coming in drunk and they have to like hook him up to like saline and sober him up. all this sort of stuff like that. So like our personal lives are so enmeshed in that show in a way that this, to your point, is much more go, go, go, go, case, case, case, case. There's way more characters, way more staff to keep track of. I was having, you know, to constantly consult my notes

to track all the people that we meet in these first two episodes. Do you think there's a chance of overwhelm? when it comes to like all the medical students and residents, et cetera, et cetera? I think so, but I also think it's part of the design of the show, is that everything that's happening, character and otherwise is supposed to feel overwhelming. Ultimately, in the show's defense, I think this is why some of the characterizations are as simple and straightforward as they are. It's just going to be hard, especially in the early episodes,

to internalize four different things about one character. And so it's easy at this point. It's like, oh, this is the prodigy. this is the single mom, this is the farm boy, right? You can put people into these boxes very, very quickly and give them some identifying characteristics. And for now, I think that's enough two episodes in, mostly because I think the cases themselves are really interesting and pretty compelling. And I am amazed at how much they have to burn through in a single episode, much less two, and how they are possibly, if I say this from like a writer's room perspective, going to be able to keep up with the uncompromising and unrelenting page. of what it means to work in one of these specific ERs.

In these two episodes, here is a semi-complete list of some of the cases that are walking in the door. A classic Rob Mahoney moment. Let's have it. A woman whose foot was run over by a train and the guy who fell and hit his head trying to save her, the teen with the fentanyl overdose,

a guy in a bike accident with a broken face, and I have to say, as far as the gnarly medical part of the show, and I want to circle back to that, The facial reset really, really got me. Did not enjoy watching that. You have an older man with sepsis. You have a homeless man who is DOA but brings a bunch of rats with him.

You have a mom who made herself sick, as you alluded to, Joe, to get help for her son, psychologically speaking. You have this dude with a gallstone that's not just a gallstone. You have a workman who cut into a live wire. You have a four-year-old who ate weed gummies. You have a triathlet whose heart is giving out. You have a dude who woke up with a shock collar gorilla glued to his neck. And I'm sure that there's more than I'm forgetting. and this is two episodes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot about the shot collar guy. Great. Very good. Great one, great one. The advantage, great shout to all of that. The medical procedural as like a way to give us a bunch of little short stories, a little look inside the lives of, you know,

the working men and women of Pittsburgh is, undeniable, delectable, and especially in the ER when they come in with just like, strain things that they've ingested or have, you know, impaled themselves on or, etc., whatever the case may be. And it makes it so as a natural mechanism

to juggle all those stories too because you just have, like, Noah Wiley's character as a chief attending, making his rounds. Like, this is literally his job to check in on all of these stories over a short period of time. This is one thing. And, like, I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm not a doctor.

But I did, I did used to watch, I did used to watch ER with my medical professional parents and they were just like constantly like, what that shit is this? Like they were, they were, but a question I have about this and press CTV at Spotify.com, if you were a medical professional and you have insight into this, is like, everything I know about an ER I learned from the television show ER. And it seems wild to me that no wild. Riley's character, Dr. Robbie Rabinowitz, is across all of these cases.

You know what I mean? There's like there's echelons of, you know, there's attendings, there's residence, there's medical students, you know, like, blah, blah, there's layers. The fact that he as head of the unit is just sort of like across all of it at all times. In ER, at least, there was like a different echelon where, there were like a few people at the top. And so the fact that he is carrying the show. And by the way, I think Noah Wiley's great.

It's quite good in this. I think he's really good in this. I think especially the moments in which he has to like give news to, you know, people about their loved ones or interact with people about their loved ones. He's really conveying like, I've seen it all and yet maintained, my humanity. I'm not jaded by this yet. I thought that worked quite well. But yeah, it was, it just like, and again, I don't, I don't know how the fictional Pittsburgh medical trauma hospital works, but that just seemed like, that's the only thing that stretched, you know,

credulity for me. I could accept the rats and everything else, but this is like one thing where I was like, they don't, he has to be across all of it all the time for 15. Is that what's happening? I mean, yes and no, because he does have his senior residents who are kind of, you know, the level of bureaucracy below him in terms of the overall org chart here, who are, yes, also over these cases. And he's kind of swooping in mostly when they need help or gets a little too big for their dealings or need a consultation or need an opinion on these things.

But I do think the show is very much engaging with not just these cases, not just its attempts at the personal dramas of these characters, but also gestural. somewhat at the broader complications of running a hospital in the year 2025. You know, we get some extended sequences about like the importance of metrics in these spaces and how, you know, in real life, hospitals are basically like tailoring the entire way that they operate to satisfy these metrics in lots of different ways. You also get this extended conversation about how understaffed they are, about how there are beds to take. It's just they literally won't hire enough nurses to help them manage them and help occupy them at this

point in time. And so when you open the show with, you know, Sean Hadessey makes a brief appearance in the first episode as basically the guy. I'm sure he'll be back. I would hope. I would hope so. Either in flashbacks or he'll clock in, like, you know, in the back half of the season for his. I could see it just be premiere finale, honestly, where he shows up to spell Noah Wiley at the end and they, you know, do it, they dab it up and he's on his way. Like, good morning, Ralph, good Morning. Okay. Well, he is a John Wells guy. And so if it's like, this is calling in a favor for a, you know, a good, a good working

actor to come play a part that he's maybe like a little overqualified for. I could see that. But surely, I mean, like, he's connected to the flashback plot line, which surely we're going to like keep her visiting, right? We have to see him in the flashback, right? Well, I don't know if you heard, but it is, it is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's, Dr. Adamson's death. Don't talk about it.

If you don't remember, don't worry. Someone will follow you into the bathroom to remind you that it is. is the anniversary of Dr. Adamson's death. So tried lightly. On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other hand, I think it's kind of a trope staple of the medical procedural that you have the administrator who's like, I'm here to talk to you about the business of running a hospital.

It is interesting. I was interested comparing the ER pilot to this one. Like, how much are we, you know, we have such a different relationship to our informed state about the health care system? and it's fuck up, up in this. I'm not saying that it wasn't

fucked up in the 90s, but I think we as a, this is not controversial, we as a country are much angrier, much more informed about how fucked up it is.

And so I was curious how much that would be reflected inside of this show. But rewatching the AR pilot, they're listening to the radio and they're talking about like health insurance and the uninsured

and all this sort of stuff. So, I don't know. It's, It's been a long problem here in these here United States. But yeah, I'll be interested to see how much this administrator character and this bureaucracy angle plays a part over the next 13 hours of this particular shift. One thing in her defense, she seems to be the only person who is appropriately bothered

by the number of rats that are now running around the ER. From the moment that the four rats pop out of this guy's like clothes, I would say Dr. Collins, who's the senior resident who's pregnant. She is like, hell no. She's out. I'm not dealing with this. She's out. Everyone else, Dr. Robby in particular, is like, yeah, another day in the office.

My guy, you got to get these rats out of here. He's seen it all, and I don't know if you know that. Okay, can I give you a high point, low point of leaving Noah Wiley aside, who is the star power of the show, whether or not you would say Noah Wiley is a star. He is a star if you're making an ER. He's a television star. He's a television star. And so he's the anchor of this show.

He's across everything, as we said. Do you have a high point, low point of any of the other characters that we met in these first two hours? This is tough because it's like low point as a character, Dr. McKay, who is the single mom, who I just called Dr. Banks as I'm watching this show. Aggressive bang situation. Very aggressive bangs. I actually think like Fiona Dura, who's playing that part, is doing her damn to make this a human being in some respect,

but this part is not a person. You saying the actor's name just made me realize that she's Brad Doris's daughter, Brad Dorff, the legend, Brad Durif. Who is many things, but also Grame of a Wormtongue, but many other things. Yes. Billy Babets, etc., etc.

Doc Cochran, he will always be to me. I also learned that Taylor Deirden, who plays Mel, is Brian Cranston's daughter. this was a high point for me. So Taylor Dearden was on an MTV show called Sweet Vicious that was canceled after one season and I loved her on that show. And she played a very, very, very different character

on that show. So this babe is not just an apple baby. She has range. I actually thought she was the standout. She's my high point, actually. And I like, I understand when you early, I think, referred to her as like the, oh, no, no, she's not the prodigy.

The prodigy would be younger, yeah, yeah. The 20-year-old medsuit. Right, right. But, you know, she is very like sort of type A in her own way, et cetera, et cetera. I loved her. There was something about like she didn't, she wasn't given more to do than anyone else, but I think she did more with it. Well, she was given more Megan the stallion lyrics to recite, which I think is powerful and important. Incredible stuff from her, I think. I would say a low point for me so far, though I'm not ready to write him off is Dr. Lignan, who is referred to as E.R. at one point. And also says, sorry,

I did a fellowship in cynicism. And I wrote, that wasn't good. I wrote, Oh, brother in my notes. But on the, he's paired with my favorite,

who is Taylor, Taylor, and is Dr. King. And so, you know, to go back to this is definitely not an ER reboot or ER sequel.

That sort of like, if you watched ER, John Carter, Dr. Senate sort of like a resident medical student relationship is one to potentially watch. Because I like that they're quite, they're quite oil and water in their own way. But already we're seeing some sort of like interesting bridges being built there. I also love her place in the show.

Like, as you said, a lot of characters, I think depending on your level of familiarity with how hospitals work, and I am not professing to be an expert by any means, just like a wide range of rankings, relative to other people and levels of experience at play. And I think Mel Dr. King as a resident but a transfer is kind of like a nice compliment. Because it's like everyone else who's new is also a pretty young med student and is like learning very much on the fly. She's put into a space where she gets to be pretty competent and she clearly knows her stuff, but she's new to this space and like this level of intensity and frequency.

And so it's cool to see, you know, doctors of varying kinds of backgrounds and med students of varying kinds of backgrounds, including ones that are just like, not just in over their head because the cases are weird and hard, but because of the sheer volume of what's coming through the door. Yeah, absolutely. Snoring, gasping during sleep, feeling fatigue, ask your doctor about Zepbound, terseptite. The first and only FDA-approved prescription medicine for moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and adults with obesity.

Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea, OSA, and obesity to improve their OSA. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zetbound contains terseptitide and should not be used with other terseptite-containing products or any GLP1 receptor agonist medicines. It is not known if Zepound is safe and effective for use in children. Don't share needles or pins or reuse needles. Don't take if allergic to it or if you or someone,

in your family had medullary thyroid cancer, or if you've had multiple endocrine neoplasia syndrome type 2. Tell your doctor if you get a lump or swelling in your neck. Stop, Zepbound, and call your doctor if you have severe stomach pain or a serious allergic reaction. Severe side effects may include inflamed pancreas or gallbladder problems. Tell your doctor if you experience vision changes before scheduled procedures with anesthesia. If you're nursing, pregnant, plan to be, or taking birth control pills. Taking Zep bound with a sulfonelioria or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsened kidney problems.

Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit setbound.lily.com. It's time to refresh your yard during spring backyard days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179, like the next grill three-burner gas grill. Or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit grill and bring big flavor to your back. yard, then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot. Now through May 6th.

Exclusion supplies to homedipo.com slash price match for details. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your ocean front room.

Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. This is something that ER did really well

is the nursing staff. And so Catherine and Lanasa as Nurse Evans, Dana Evans, I thought she was wonderful. even though she's playing a recognizable archetype, I thought she did a great job with it. Well, let's be real. Everyone on this show is playing a recognizable archetype. That's true.

It's not even a criticism. I think it's just an acknowledgement that we have to make. Maybe most especially Dr. Banks herself, but I think that like... Do we mention she has an ankle monitor? Do we even call that out? We neglected to mention that she has an ankle monitor. And she's a return student.

she's like, you know, entering the medical profession and quite a bit older than other folks. But, you know, for us, as gratifying as the med school experience was for her, Joe, it just wasn't as important as having her son. It just wasn't as big for her. They make spores together and sometimes they ate pizza. Did you know that about them? I did hear that.

Wow, okay. Just making sure. Yeah, but the head nurse, who is sort of like the, you know, the real brains behind the operation of the hospital, and we meet a few others among the nursing staff. And this show, much like ER, has the consistent message of, like, listen to the nurses. The nurses know what they're talking about. Don't disrespect the nurses.

Don't cross the nurses. This is an important part of the power structure at the hospital in general. I think the nurses are also really important, too, to one of my favorite parts about this being an ER versus a hospital show, as you said. If you're in more of a leisurely normal hospital pace, you can have a. the soapy elements, you can have all this other stuff going on. I actually really like that triage is an active plot device in the pit. It's like for these doctors going through the waiting room and identifying something that looks especially fishy or looks especially urgent and they are pulling those people into rooms

and trying to help them immediately, it really does everything on this show, the stakes feel pretty high, like these are life and death cases a lot of the times or at least ones of mortal peril. And so the threshold for making something feel more important or more urgent, I think is pretty hard. But when you do that, when you have a doctor walking through a room and eyeing something that seems weird and being like, oh, no, we need to talk to this person right now. I think adds an interesting element to the show. And it creates an urgency of not just how do you treat these people, but in what order are you supposed to treat them, given the limited resources that are available. We are living in a post house world where, like, this idea of like the medical mystery. Let's Diagnose the Medical Mystery has been explored, again, at a much more leisurely pace with Hugh Lorry leading the charge on House.

But in an ER setting, you're doing that and you have like mere minutes, mere seconds to do all of that work. What would the labs say? What is this symptom presenting, et cetera, et cetera. And I think a question I have for you is, and not to keep talking about Landman, but I did watch 9-11. You're so landman-pilled. It's unbelievable. But I did watch nine episodes over a week, so I am going to squeeze as much content out as I can.

A thing that irritates me so much about that show, I don't need to spend this episode of prestige-bearing it, is that Billy Bob Thornton's character on that show is always right. And it really bothers me in a character is always right. You love his politics. You just wish he had to come up once in a while. Yeah, I'm like climate change. What's that?

Anyway, Dr. Robbie Rabinovich. It's pretty much always right so far. So far. But they're setting him up to be big wrong. Well, was he big wrong four years ago? Is that the question? Like, is he somehow responsible for, let me check my notes, Dr. Adamson's, you know, like he's not only grieving him, but was he somehow responsible?

He seems to have internalized that whether it's true or not. And yet, that's what I don't know what we're going to get from the flashback. Is it where he makes the wrong call and it. results in actual damage or his death? Or is it the kind of thing where he just thinks he made the wrong call but actually did right by everybody? I think what sets it up to me is we get this early case where he has a situation where he can either act quickly or wait for the labs and he makes the like preemptive decision to just like inject. I don't even know what he's giving somebody. It's like something into their IV to help treat them on the presumption that he's right. And

in that moment he is and it helps this person like saves precious seconds in what could be a dangerous situation. There's going to be a mirror at some point where he fucks up. I feel like we are destined for that. And it was Dr. Collins who was calling him out for it. So like you know, yes, the question is, well then is she going to, yeah, it's interesting to me.

I just need everyone to be fallible on TV. That's important to me. You can't always be right all the time. It's not interesting dramatically. So yeah, is he going to be big wrong? Big wrong in the span of a show that takes like 15 hours. So how do you recover? Is that the last

thing you are, you're big wrong at the end. Are you big wrong at the middle and you have to work another seven hours of your shift? That's... Them's the brakes. That's the job. That's the pit, you know? That's life in the pit, Joe. Another opportunity that

ER or any of these medical procedures bring, be they Chicago meds, squid game med, whatever you want, is a roster, a level of that guy actor cycling in and out. as the, not necessarily the patient, but the loved one. But we get a couple inside of these first two episodes where I'm like, oh, it's a, you know, one of my favorite Mike Flanagan players.

It's like, you know, this, that, or the other. We're just like, you want, we always want those actors to be working and they should always be able to do a stint on an ER or a pit as this grieving mother or this unsure son or whatever they can. case may be. And then as ER progressed, they kind of got like starrier and starrier with those appearances and same thing happened at Grey's Anatomy. But I prefer when it's this level of actor where it's just someone you like vaguely recognize you can maybe name a couple of their projects, but like you don't necessarily know their name off the top of your head and you're just like happy to see them get to do something high drama inside of an episode of television. Well, and it doesn't tip off which of them are going to be that important, right? Who's going to be given the big speech or the

big dilemma. If everyone is kind of a that guy, then the cases could turn in any conceivable direction. And we've already seen some of these, some of these cases have already wrapped up and people are shipped out. They're out of the hospital already. They got shot. They're dismissed. They've done whatever. They've been treated quickly. They're out the door. Some of these are spilling over episode into episode. And I have to say, I want to make this very clear because we're having our fun. I think the show is what it is, which is more successful on the medical side of the medical drama than the drama side of the medical drama. Correct. That's fine.

But the pit to me, Joe, is good engrossing television. And I had to stop myself from just like, I was like, I'm ready to roll into the next one. I'm ready to keep going. This is a show that I'm looking forward to keeping up with somewhat despite myself, mostly because of all of these like engrossing cases and kind of quandaries that the show is putting itself in. So before we started recording, you sort of invoked this idea, We don't have to mention Landman again, but you mentioned Yellowstone, something in the tale of the Sheridan, Uvra. That is a, I don't have to think too hard about this.

Yes. I can just sort of guzzle it down, but it has the sheen of prestige. And so that I can feel like I'm not watching like trash television, but I am watching something that I can sort of just turn my mind off. and we all deserve to watch something that can help us turn our mind up. So my question is, like, you were pondering, perhaps this could be a Yellowstone-esque, mass appeal. Those are big shoes to feel, like to fill, ultimately. Big boots to fill? Incredible boots to fill.

A 10-gallon hat to fill? Does the pit have 10 gallons in it? I don't really know. They operate on a CC level, I think. Three C-Cs is enough, I've been told. But I think that, but I'm curious about that because, is this an easy show to watch with so many characters? It's not something you can second screen, right? Because things are happening at all times.

It's a very like adrenaline pumping kind of show. And there is a lot of technical jargon being thrown around. So like, on the one hand, it's not something that's making me, as you mentioned, everyone's a walking archetype. We're not thinking that deeply about story or character. But in order to not feel lost, I do feel like I need to pay close attention to it. So where does it sit in that sort of like turn your brain off or engage brain kind of TV viewing? So I think it does require that level of engagement and investment. But I think you're isolating something really important, which is it's not asking you to think a lot,

but it's also not treating you like you're dumb. And there just aren't many things in that space right now. And so I would argue it almost has no prestige sheen to it at all. this is a show that's on a platform with other prestigious shows. This is like the return of some of these names in this setting is it itself like a prestigious kind of premise. But like the John Wells project to me is not prestige. It's a lot of like making and shepherding.

And in some cases, executive producing and in some cases just kind of shepherding things along that are good, successful shows that get on the air and fucking stay on the air. Like they churn it out. He's such like a pros, pro operator in this sort of way. I'm getting like very well-made piece of furniture out of the pit. And it's like we live in a world now where when I want to go buy furniture, everything feels like it's falling apart by the time I get at home.

This feels competently made and structured. And that in itself in 2025 is a lot. No particle board. Okay. No particle board involved. No Allen wrenches required. This thing is just built and makes sense to me. Okay.

All the all the joints are secure. Okay. That's interesting to me. I, on the one hand, I don't, I can't disagree with you about sort of like getting things that work and stay and just go when you think about ER. So you concur, you would say. Yes, Doctor. Do you concur, doctor, I concur. West Wing ER, shameless.

But I would also argue all three of those shows have like a, they're not Chicago colon something. You know what I mean? like there is that sort of extra level of like thinking man's even shameless which is like um the guiltiest of pleasure in some way um it has i think maybe just by dint of william h macy being there i don't know what to tell you but like uh or the fact that it's a remake of a british television show i couldn't tell you but like there is something elevated is it like elevated procedural elevated something west wing you would call prestige tv um you know late late period west wing would you? And I say this

as a relative defender of late period West Wing, but would you? You know, it's an important question to ask, and I don't have all the answers for you. But I just genuinely don't know, and this is something we have to think about as we figure out what to cover

on the press TV feed, what's going to be a hit and what's not? Is it worth checking with the pit because ER, this is essentially a kind of IP in that like allegedly. Legally not ER, but is kind of ER colon the pit. Like, it's worth checking in, but it's not something we're immediately going to do by week.

A, because I'm not sure it's the kind of show that can endure that kind of scrutiny or has enough meat on the bone or enough CCs in the bag to make that worth it. And also, we don't know how popular is going to be. I cannot tell you if this is going to be a popular show or if it's going to feel like it doesn't exist. I actually don't know the answer to that question. You know, the ER nostalgia varies and whether or not people are actually aware that this is a kind of spiritual ER successor. I mean, Noah Wiley does a lot of work for you in that regard,

but like, I'm curious to find out. I could see it being a slow burn kind of hit too, where we'll see what the opening numbers are, if this is a show that catches fire out of the gate or whatever ends up happening. Yeah. But it feels like the kind of show that you could be talking to somebody,

four months from now. They're like, have you seen the pit? Like, I just turned that on because it was in my max queue or whatever, like recommendations

and they gave it a shot. And it's like, oh, actually, I enjoyed this more than I thought I would or more than I thought I would for a show that in a crowded landscape, I didn't even hear when it was premiering. Yeah,

it's a good question. And also, this is kind of like, this is a very intensive year of content, especially for like House of R, you know, the shows that I cover on House of R. There's a lot of heavy hitters coming out.

in, but right at the top of the year is usually kind of empty. So it is an opportunity for a show sort of just get in there and dig in. It is hilarious to me, especially given that like, you know, seasons of the R were like 22 episodes that you and Kai and I were all like, this is 15 episodes. This show is still going to be on in April. We're not built for this stuff anymore. Unheard of. We are weak and soft and canon. But like, that is.

wild to me that we are going to still be, if the pit catches on, we're still to be talking about the pit in April. That doesn't happen anymore. And it's just, I'm so curious to see if it works. And I'm curious who's, like, whose insistence?

Like, was that a John Wells thing? Where he's like, you got to give me at least 15 episodes and, you know, something like that. I don't know. The structure is cool, though. I'm not immune to the 15-hour shift kind of concede. I think it works really well. it certainly plays in when you're seeing the exchange of the shifts at the outset of like

why one of these men is standing on the roof contemplating his existence if this is what the first two hours of a shift like this looks like or at least looks like on this show I think it sets us up to go to some pretty interesting and probably some pretty dark places. Did you also do a fellowship in cynicism? I think at this point we all have. Oh, brother. Okay. All right, so yeah, so we will see how much we'll be checking back in on the pit.

Anything else you want to say about these first two episodes or the pit in general? Or do you want to hear more of my ER pilot thoughts, perhaps? I would love to hear more of your ER pilot thoughts. As far as points of division between the pit and a show like ER or the pit and a show like Grays or any other medical drama that's on specifically network TV, there's some gnarly stuff in here.

Yes. Is it de-gloving time? Is that what we're here to talk about? The de-glove has to be mentioned because I think a lot of us reacted the way that our second-year-med student did, which is I basically fainted as soon as that happened. De-gloving as a concept,

it's one of the most disgustingly evocative terms. And in case people don't know, de-gloving is what you refer to when the skin has come off of... It's what it sounds like. Something. Like, taking off a glove except it's your skin. Like that one Robbie Williams music video. So, like, I... That was horrifying.

Anything else you want to shout at? It was particularly gnarly and disgusting. Well, I would love to hear what is really hitting people in the visceral way. So if you want to email us at prestige TV at Spotify.com, whether it is the de-gloving, which, yes. And I think it was coupled by somebody saying, and I I thought my heels were painful as they saw this injured foot. That's not, that's not called for.

That's not good banter at all. Not even Buffy Summers would banter like that in the face of the de gloving. Absolutely not. The adjustment of the dude's broken face definitely got a squirm out of me. That was not, that was not it. He was just sort of feeling around in his mouth. We didn't really know why. Then all of a sudden it was just like crack and his whole face moved.

But I do want to give honorable mention to the, workman who had his whole arm electrocuted when he cut into a live wire or something and they are trying to relieve, I think, the blood pressure in his arm by cutting into it. And I would describe the way his electrocuted arm opens up as if it were like an alien egg. It just like unfurls at the seams.

Is that the one where his hand is like almost an attached or was that someone else? I think that, believe it or not, I think that was somebody else. Yeah, there's a hand that's almost completely detached and it's like just a different shade than the rest of the body. And it's just like, okay, anyway. ER is gnarly of places to be. Speaking of gnarly, let me just tell you,

the shock of a lifetime I had when I rewatched the YAR pilot and realized that Anthony Edwards of Top Gun fame, Goose himself, who is the lead of before George Clooney became a de facto lead. Bonafide movie star. Anthony Edwards is Dr. Margarita is the lead of ER. He was 32, 32 years old. And when I was like a child watching ER, I was like, that's an old man.

And now I'm like, he's 30. His whole life ahead of him. 32. And Noah Wiley is in his 50s. Looks great. Looks wonderful. But I was just like, wow. Anthony Edwards was 32 in the first season of ER and No.

O'Reilly is in his 50s. That's a lot to process. You know what? I would go as far as say Noah Wiley looks better than ever. I think this haggard look actually plays pretty well for him. In terms of character and portrayal, I find myself liking this version of Noah Wiley a lot more than, like, dorky earnest Noah Wiley,

which is, I think, what he played a lot early in his career, in his defense. Or any of the librarians. We've not seen any of his library work. Not yet. We are interested. This dude just got sucked into a point. and wound up playing a librarian for like 10 years. Anything else you want to say before we wrap it up here?

We've covered rats. We've covered de-gloving. What else could be possibly, you know, ankle monitors? We have not mentioned the excellent hoodie work, I would say, on Robbie, Dr. Rubinowitz. It's a great, it's a great look. You're right. The beard, the hair, the hoodie, you know, the world-weary experience. but the tenderness as well.

It's great. It's great. I'm in. I'm into it. I'm very into it. I just was not aware of the level of athleisure that people working in the ER were allowed to wear, permitted to wear. I just kind of figured it was scrubs or maybe a doctor's coat. But we're just rolling in in hoodies. I would say Dr. King is maybe like she looks like she's going for a jog. Yeah.

That's a great point. I wonder if like standards have slipped because my My memory, thinking about ER, yes, we're often in scrubs, but also like, yeah, if we're wearing the white coat or wearing it over, like, business casual, we're wearing a tie. If we're a woman, we're wearing, like, heels in a skirt or something like that. So, yeah, standards have slipped is what you're saying. Or we're just increasingly practical, Joe. You know, it's all about comfortable footwear. You're on your feet all day. You're going through these things. Like, let's put our professionals in a position to succeed. I love that. I love that. I do know that,

like a scrub, scrub couture has definitely changed. And I know that from like some of the nurses I know in my life that like there's designer scrubs that you can get, you get your scrubs tailored. There was this big, there was this the introduction to Noah Wiley's character

in the ER pilot is they're like, is that a tailored lab code? I've never seen one of those. They're just like absolutely trashing him because he just looks like an out of place rich boy. And now I know that nurses like get like very expensive tailored scrubs. Because like yeah, you don't need to be like, you know, if you want to look nice at your job.

And so if you don't want to be in baggy scrubs, I would choose baggy scrubs personally because it's basically your your gym jams at work. And that sounds great to me. But you know, not everyone. You want to look your finest when you're watching a grown man shit into a bedpan. All right. The Pit. Two episodes down, 13 more episodes to go. We may or may not be back. depends on you if you're watching the pit. Yeah, let us know. If it's a huge success, we'll be back to check in on it.

Before we go back to the pit, though, we will be definitely covering severance week-to-week, and we are really excited about that. Severed hands, maybe not. Severed existence. Yes. We didn't sever enough in the pit. That was our problem with it. More severance, please.

So we will be back. we may or may not, we have not decided yet, we may or may not do like a season one recap, but we will be here for season two, episode one of Severance starting next week. This is a theory show, so you're definitely going to be wanting to email us, prestigious TV at Spotify.com.

We love Severance. We're big fans of it. We will come up with a Severance specific email, TBD. Will it be livestock related? Who knows? Possibly. Probably, maybe.

I'm still, I still like Waffle Party. But, or what is it? Was it like, I need to do my season one rewatch? Is it like the egg cart or something like that? The egg? I don't even remember anymore. We'll be here week to week with severance. And then we'll also be checking back in with agency, a bunch of other stuff on the horizon.

So stay tuned. You can listen to us, as you are currently. You can watch us often on the Rigger. TV YouTube channel. I forget to promo that every week and I should do that more often. Remind me next time, Rob, if you remember, we're on YouTube. You can stare into our eyes lovingly

if you so choose. However you want, honestly, I'm not here to judge how you stare at us. With anger. Resentment. Complete resentment. Whatever it is. You can concur or not concur. Honestly, however you want to fall. Mocking derision, we'll take it. Eyeballs or eyeballs. We love it.

Those views count the same. Exactly. Thanks to Kai Grady, who is the very best. and we're happy to be reunited with him here in the new year. And thanks to Justin Sales for his work across the feed. He's just wonderful keeping everything in line. Our Dr. Robbie, I like to think. Yeah. He's got the scruff.

He's got a good scrap going on. All right. Love that for sales. All right. So we will be back soon next week and we'll see you then. Bye. This episode is brought to you by Netflix's remarkably bright creatures. What if a Pacific Octopus held the key to a mystery that could heal your heart?

Well, that's Tova's reality. An elderly widow working at an aquarium. Tova forms an unlikely friendship with their crumudgeonly, Marcellus, whose remarkable intelligence leads her to a life-changing discovery. Remarkably bright creatures is now playing. Only on Netflix. Hey, Mama. Thanks for making all my favorite recipes.

Hi, Ma. Thanks for your unfiltered advice. Hi, Mom. Thanks for always being by the phone. Hey, Mom. Happy Mother's Day. When you ship UPS Air at the UPS Store, your items arrive on time or your money back. Guaranteed at no extra cost, exclusively at the UPS Store UPS store U.S. retail locations.

Visit the UPS store.com slash air shipping for full details. Terms and conditions apply. Send your Mother's Day gifts at the UPS store and we'll get your gratitude there on time.