The Pitt Recap: Pressure Relief

Oh, baby, that four o’clock hour comes for us all, doesn’t it? It is simply a fact of working life. While many of us can sling back an afternoon coffee and keep a spreadsheet tab at the ready to pull up if necessary while we online shop and count down the minutes until it’s time to go home (not that I’ve ever done that, okay?!), the team at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital does not have that luxury. Or, if they do, a lot of people are in trouble. While the tail-end of any shift is taxing for our medical professionals, this one seems to be especially so. When even Dr. Robby is declaring out loud, “Oh my god, I can’t wait for this shift to be over,” you know it’s been a tough one. And the way this one ends, it doesn’t seem like it’s going to get any easier as we head into the home stretch.

But let’s start with how the hour begins: Dana just got punched in the face by that asshole Doug Driscoll, you guys!! Doug has not returned by the end of the hour, but Security Guard Ahmad has alerted the police, as well as other hospitals in the city, so hopefully we’ll see him again if only so he has to face some consequences for what he’s done to our mom, uh, charge nurse.

Dana, of course, wants no special attention as she walks into the hospital with a broken nose and tries to downplay what’s happened, but she’s clearly rattled — everyone is. It opens up a much larger discussion about safety for employees at the hospital — almost every nurse has a story about being assaulted by a patient — and Gloria Pink Blazer once again finds herself in the middle of some angry and confused employees wondering why she’s declined Dr. Robby’s repeated requests for increased security measures. If she’s worried about a nursing shortage now, just wait until they no longer feel safe at work. Robby couldn’t be happier to leave Gloria in the middle of that mess and honestly, I love that for him. Physically, Dana will be fine, but her decision to pick up work again at the end of the hour instead of going home to her family is worrisome. And she’s the one who keeps harping on Robby for working a shift when he’s not mentally all there!

Speaking of Robby: This hour certainly isn’t going to help him pull himself together in any meaningful way. The man is cycling through emotions at Olympic levels. I’m in awe of him. I’m scared of him. I’d like to hold him while he’s wearing those slutty little glasses. (Where are those, by the way? I’m concerned.) There’s the Dana of it all, for sure. But, you’ll recall, he’s also hemming and hawing because he’s just learned that McKay went around his back to call the police on Incel David and the cops have just arrived to question Theresa about her son. Robby and McKay have a squabble about how to handle the situation: Robby thinks McKay is jumping the gun and risks ruining a confused teenage boy’s life. McKay wants to know why David’s life is worth more than the girls on his list — they should be doing everything they can to make sure those girls are safe. It gets more heated than it probably should and when the two find themselves working together on a 16-year-old baseball prodigy who took a line drive to the eye, McKay’s surprised when Robby lets her do the canthotomy needed to relieve the alarming amount of pressure on young Everett’s eye from the blood pooling behind it. “This is a teaching hospital,” he tells her when she admits she thought he’d bench her for the David stuff — but he’s not saying it to mean that he’s obligated to teach her no matter what, but rather turns it around on himself. This is a teaching hospital, and teachers still have things to learn as well. She was right about the David thing — he hadn’t even considered the girls on the list, only the kid in front of him. Who is this man just openly admitting to mistakes and being sensitive at every turn?

McKay is probably just as shocked as I am to encounter such a man in the wild because we meet the type of men she’s been hanging around when her ex-husband shows up in the ER with a broken leg from a skateboarding accident while trying to show off for his and McKay’s son Harrison after Harrison went on a skateboarding adventure with sometimes babysitter Mateo (yes, that Mateo). Whoever in the Writer’s Room decided to name this man Chad deserves a raise. He is such a fucking Chad. When he’s high on the pain meds Collins administers — she, the perfect doctor for Chad — he basically admits to still having a thing for McKay, even though he has a new girlfriend named Chloe and Chloe is somehow the reason for McKay’s ankle monitor. It is a mess and a delight and I cannot wait to see where this whole situation goes.

McKay’s not the only resident Robby’s been reiterating the importance of the teaching part of the teaching hospital to — we saw him in the last hour, you may recall, all over Langdon for his less-than-stellar teaching methods with Dr. Santos. Now, Langdon is attempting to be on his best behavior. Well, he’s also nervously tracking Santos’s every move which is highly suspect, but also he’s attempting to be on his best behavior. He does a nice job of it, too! He and Whitaker wind up taking on the case of a young man named Teddy who arrived covered in burns from a gas tank explosion while trying to fill his tractor. He’s about 90 percent covered in burns, the majority of them full thickness. In short: This is bad. This is so, so bad. When Teddy is unable to breathe because his burned skin doesn’t allow his lungs or chest to expand, Langdon calmly and clearly walks Whitaker through the process of cutting into the chest to relieve that tension. This procedure has been done on so many medical shows — it is quite dramatic, so I get it — but never with this kind of detail. Hey, I guess Langdon was teaching me too! Poor Teddy and his wife Amy, who bonds with Whitaker over their love of farming, are headed for tragedy; Langdon, in another teaching moment, gets quite honest with Whitaker: There’s almost no shot Teddy doesn’t get sepsis within the next week. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but while this is awful for Teddy and love stories set around 4-H Clubs, it is sort of a winning moment for Langdon. Robby commends him for his work with Whitaker.

If only Langdon would take the win and move on with his day. Instead, he simply cannot let the Santos stuff go. When he sees her having a fairly intense-looking conversation with Robby, he assumes it’s about him and unloads on his mentor. She can’t be trusted, he tells Robby. She isn’t a team player. She’s undermining her superiors. She’s using Javadi to get a good word in with her mom. She’s mean to Whitaker. She is a problem. As if Robby needs this on his plate right now, my man! And yet, Robby can’t let something like this fester — the department only works when they are a unified front. He pulls Santos aside for a quick check-in. Well, for what Robby thinks will be a quick check-in. But when she utters the phrase “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Robby, you, and I all know we’re in for it now. Santos pulls out the vials of pain med she’s been fixated on.

Robby is fired up. He pulls Langdon over to the lockers and tells him that he’s heard about some inconsistencies when it comes to the pain medication Langdon has been prescribing for his patients. Robby wants to know if he has been helping himself to some of those meds. The moment Langdon pivots from confusion to defensiveness you know this dude is guilty as hell. The Pitt’s best decision in regards to pulling off this reveal was making Santos so easy to dislike and therefore, easy to dismiss. Oh, how badly I wanted to believe Langdon! Santos was right to be suspicious all along.

When Robby demands Langdon open up his locker — actually, he says, “Open your fucking locker or I will have security smash it,” so more of a threat, really — he finds a bag of pills that are most definitely the ones Louie, the drunk guy, was missing just a few hours ago. Robby fires him immediately. He doesn’t want to hear his excuses about weaning off a prescription from a back injury, he wants Langdon gone. Noah Wyle is so good here, a perfect, potent mix of quiet anger, betrayal, and absolute heartbreak. Langdon was more than just Robby’s trusted senior resident, he was his friend, and he has made a fool out of him.

Discharge Papers

• Oh, interesting! Robby notes that they have about three hours left on this shift — bring us to a full 12 hours — but The Pitt is 15 episodes! 15 hours! Who’s going to be sticking around for overtime and why? Hold me, I’m scared.

• Okay, I’m into this Mohan/King pairing. The two residents work on a stroke victim patient together and talk about finding your own “special sauce” when it comes to being a good doctor. Mohan’s is going with her gut. King worries she might not have one. She is the most precious.

• What is the greatest balm to all the tragedy in this show? Dana and Collins hanging out in bed commiserating about their shitty day.

• Javadi relates to the teen baseball prodigy and his overbearing father — perhaps a little too much. When Greg seems more concerned about when his son can get back on the field than just being there for his scared kid, Javadi reams him out. Although McKay agrees with Javadi, she reminds her to keep her cool. Still, is this the beginning of a beautiful friendship? Or just a parent/babysitter one? Because Javadi does accidentally volunteer to babysit McKay’s son Harrison in yet another misguided attempt to spend more time with Mateo. Just striking out all over the place! Javadi wouldn’t get that reference because she has never heard of baseball, apparently, but the rest of us do.

• When Chad is out to la la land on his pain meds, he asks if McKay is sleeping with Mateo. Without missing a beat, Princess responds: “Well, if she isn’t, she probably should.” She isn’t wrong!

• Long live Myrna! When she sees what happened to Dana, she tells her that she could take care of the guy for her and “can make it look like an accident.” Every hospital needs a Myrna.