‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Episode 10 Recap: You’re Giving Me A Heart Attack
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“Structural collapse at the water park.” Dana’s red phone is ringing again, and new traumas are inbound. Patient of the week? That’s for generic medical dramas. On The Pitt, it’s more like disaster of the week. And as we reach Season 2 Episode 10 (“4:00PM”) – the later afternoon of this long, sweaty, no-computer-ass shift – the stress of life in the ED is also doing disaster numbers among the staff.
Langdon’s ready to jump in on the arriving cases. But Robby railroads Frank’s offer of returning to the rooftop helipad. The senior attending dispatches Ogilvie instead, almost because the pedantic med student happened to be the first breathing team member in the senior attending’s line of sight. (Guess he’s holding onto that grudge.) As the medevac choppers arrive, Ogilvie looks stunned. He tells his boss he worked in an ER in Vermont before – which was nothing compared to PTMC’s “relentless” pace. Maybe Dr. Robby doesn’t care for the student’s consistently tactless beside manner, or maybe he’s straining against his own waning reserves of stress management. But the senior attending only characterizes the pace of his ED as not for everyone while a flight medic stuffs the arriving patient’s severed leg into Ogilvie’s arms. Here, hold this.
Robby, the veteran staff, us viewers: we all know chaos is the status quo in the Pitt. But minutes after Victoria Javadi is overcome with emotion, as she observes a dying Roxie Hamler somehow remain gracious with her young sons, Javadi is confronted in the ED by her own domineering mother. And Dr. Shamsi knows all about the sigmoid volvulus Victoria whiffed on last episode. In full view of Robby, Dana, McKay and others, Shamsi won’t let her daughter speak as she dresses down her professional choices. Chaos? Mistakes? Beneath her. “Down here you’re learning street-level medicine. All seat of your pants. You are better than this.”
And maybe Dr. Mohan’s mom would have something similarly domineering to say to her own daughter, but Samara isn’t picking up the line. Her phone blowing up during Above Patient Scrums, the stress of her mother’s life choices throwing her own career path into uncertainty – while with a patient, Mohan’s heart starts beating like a hammer. Help! I’m alive, but my mother’s giving me a heart attack! “I’m doing everything right! It’s everything around me that’s all fucked up!” Robby becomes unsympathetic real fast when these hysterics only prove to be an attack of panic. Go home then, he snaps at Samira. His entire ED is a shitshow and he doesn’t need the liability of someone whose head is not in the game. Everybody notices as Robby’s professionalism falters in this exchange.
“What do you need to get some basic human empathy back?” Dr. Al-Hashimi asks him. Has Robby leaned so far into chaos that he’s become a significant part of its cause? To this, her co-senior attending can only offer cutting cynicism. What does he need? “Something that gives me hope this place won’t fall to shit when I’m gone.”
Dr. Al doesn’t deserve this slight. Sure, she’s more process-driven than Robby. But she’s also a careful, intuitive teacher. And we love her in teach mode, like when she explains while performing a “slash trach” on the airway of a young accident victim. It’s a procedure Whitaker, Langdon, and even Robby have never seen before, radical but effective, and Al-Hashimi isn’t having Garcia’s commentary about all the resulting blood. (“Maybe the OR will thank us for not letting him die.”) Showing off her skills and standing on principle: it makes us curious how chaos might be mitigated under Dr. Al-Hashimi’s continuing leadership.
The incoming senior attending also regulates the continued sniping between Santos and Langdon, which has devolved into a rap battle with medical terms, “Hemodynamically stable” versus “tachycardic hemopneumo-thorax.” Dr. Al tells Santos, gently but firmly, that she can learn a lot from her senior residents. To the extended drama Santos has with Langdon, Garcia, her “keeping it casual” romantic partner, is less gentle but just as firm.
“Nope.” In a stairwell, Yolanda cuts off Trinity’s latest protests. “If you want to have sex and eat ramen in bed, I’m your girl.” But if she wants to harp on this Langdon shit – still, always, again – “call a therapist.” Santos is left standing with a look that’s part personal devastation and part realization. There could be truth to Garcia’s other observation, that Trinity has achieved pariah status around the Pitt not because of her bad blood with Langdon, but because she consistently won’t play well with others.
As staff nerves continue to fray, and Dana Evans has doctors writing scrips to pump her and Monica Peters full of nicotine gum, there is a sense of plaintive calm inside Roxy’s room. She has shared with her youngest a promise, that “invisible string” will keep their hearts linked forever. Cassie McKay has spoken with her older boy, helped him to place in his heart the profound unfairness of a parent’s advanced cancer diagnosis. And “death doula” Lena is there, along with Roxy’s parents and her husband Paul, as McKay receives her patient’s wordless communication. Depress the morphine drip. We’re getting to the end now.
“Unprofessional,” “posturing”, “an insurance game”: hospital attorney Morgan Styles (Alison Haislip) is trying to reassure Dr. King that her deposition was just a formality, that she won’t be on the hook for any repercussions. But Mel isn’t sure what to think after returning to the ED. And Mel is even less sure what to think about her sister’s announcement: Becca’s urinary tract infection is due to all of the sex she’s been having.
Duke revealed! In a sublime bit of casting, Robby’s crusty, just-admitted motorcycle engineer buddy is played by Jeff Kober, an actor whose intensity goes all the way back to the gripping 1988 medical/war drama China Beach, more recently graced Sons of Anarchy, and won Kober an Emmy for his work as Cyrus Renault on General Hospital.
And 9-1-1 veteran Lou Ferrigno, Jr. also appears in Ep 10 of The Pitt. Orthopedist Dr. Brendan Park totally floods the trauma bay with a severe, asshole-y demeanor that has earned him the nickname “Park the Shark.” However, the surgeon does determine that the water park accident victim’s salvaged lower leg is eligible for replantation. Ogilvie, shut your fucking mouth and put some saline on that thing.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
