Jumping in late here. When Season 1 wrapped, I said to my husband, “Give that man an Emmy.”
What a great show. I love Mel. My husband and I were debating about whether she herself was autistic until she got excited about removing 1,000 pieces of gravel from a man’s leg, which settled the issue.
I don’t trust Santos and I don’t want her anywhere near Whittaker. What she did to that man suspected of sexual abuse was beyond the pale and a flagrant violation of her oath. Her hamfisted way of trying to get an answer from the girl made me want to scream. This is not who I want representing this issue. Beyond that she’s an obvious shit-stirrer. I really don’t know if anything can redeem her in my eyes at this point. She’s mentally unstable. Get her out.
And yes, as someone pointed out upthread, this would absolutely be a mandated reporting situation. You don’t need to have evidence of abuse, just suspicion, which is one reason mandated reporting is so shitty. But given the police were already involved it wouldn’t go uninvestigated for long. There was absolutely no reason to try to intervene and even if there were it still would have been wrong to threaten a helpless medical patient.
When I was in high school I thought Noah Wyle was the hottest thing ever. I never watched ER but I sure watched those commercials with interest. Now I look at old pictures and he’s just a baby. But then so was I.
During the “ER” era, a neighbor asked me where I worked, and when I told him which hospital employed me, he went, “Ewwwww!” I had no idea what he meant by that, until he told me that he had never set foot in a hospital since he was discharged as a newborn, and he thought the whole inside of a hospital building looked like the set of “ER.” I replied that only the ER looked like “ER”, and then only part of the time; most of the time, it looks more like a standard doctor’s office.
I should explain something about myself and TV viewing habits. While I like SciFi/Fantasy or paranormal, something not real in my TV shows, I can watch almost anything. I’m a TV junkie and have been since a kid. Things that slightly interest me can get me to watch it. I don’t know that I could watch Duck Dynasty, the Kardashians, Real World, or Jersey Shore, but I have watched Face Off and Glow Up and enjoy those.
After watching the first three episodes of ER, could I keep watching it? Yes. Was it as good or pull me into it as fast as the Pitt? Not even close.
I’m not sure why. I can’t explain it. I have been thinking about it for a while. Both shows have drama among the people, they are people. The drama happens quick in both in different ways. There was some surprising medical things in ER pretty quick. They showed more than I thought a network would show. Not as much as the Pitt but that’s to be expected.
There is something about the Pitt that worked on me. I binged it twice in three months. It has captivated me. ER didn’t do that with me. That’s not to say ER is bad. It’s not. It just didn’t pull me into it. I don’t know if I will watch more or not.
I do find it interesting how young all of the cast look, of course, it being thirty years old. I first saw Noah Wylie in Falling Skies, even though I knew he was in ER. Between FS and the Pitt, he looks like a kid in ER!
One bit of trivia about the earliest ER episodes; in the pilot episode, Carol Hathaway (played by Julianna Margulies) attempted suicide and the plan was for her to die, but test audiences liked her so she survived.
Episode one of Season Two has dropped. All the actors seem a little out of the character they were in at the end of Season one, which kind of makes sense due to the way a season rolls out over a single shift. 7 am and they are all coming back from a day or more of civilian life. The interesting part is how the next twelve hours will affect them. Does the stress revert them back or are the events making permanent changes. Whitaker, in particular is far more confident than we last left him. Does anybody know how much time has passed since the events of last season?
Googling, ten months have passed between the first and second seasons. “[Showrunner Scott] Gemmill recently revealed that season two would take place 10 months after season one, over the July 4 weekend. The time jump, for Robby and other characters, gives them some time to deal with the issues that emerged at the end of season one.”
Whitaker was definitely the most different in this episode from the first season; his personal growth in the intervening ten months was amazing to behold. Credit to Gerran Howell for making it look so natural.
A lot being made online about Robby not wearing a helmet when driving the motorcycle into work.
I noticed the name Charles Baker in the end credits. I went to IMDB and confirmed that this was indeed the Charles Baker who played Skinny Pete on Breaking Bad.
I’m late to the season 1 conversation, but my wife, teenage daughter and I finished watching it a couple nights ago.
A few observations:
Very similar to ER, which I really liked. I felt like Whitaker was the new Carter.
My daughter, who wants to get into the medical field, now has get eyes set on emergency medicine. I think she’s crazy, but adventurousness is for the young I suppose. (She’s now waffling between ER nurse and surgical nurse.)
I liked the fact that it’s was a “real time” show, which meant there was little room for the soap-opera drama that consumed ER. I think my daughter appreciated that too. I was a little annoyed by Javadi driving to the hoop so hard on Matteo in the first three hours of her first freaking shift in a super chaotic ER, without knowing anything about him or his status, especially as a somewhat-insecure 20-year-old. Seemed a little too forced, trying to set up a romantic drama that doesn’t need to happen.
My only experience in the medical field, aside from my college job in a hospital kitchen, is watching ER start to finish twice. It was really something seeing the changes in emergency medicine since ER started. Two things that stood out are the robotic chest compression machine and how much easier it seems to intubate with a camera; seemed like intubation on ER was a lot about “feel.”
My wife and I just recently started watching S1. We should be finishing up this weekend so it sounds like we’ll be able to dive right in to S2.
One “called it” moment in S1 for me: when they brought in the dog walker who had been hit by a car. He and Langdon were talking about dogs, Langdon said he had a labradoodle or something and dog walker guy says “Crosby’s a terrier.” I said to my wife “They need to sic Crosby on the rats…”
While it is obviously intentional to increase the drama, Dr Robbie’s temporary replacement seems fun. If I was only leaving for 3 months, I would not be happy if my temp replacement changed how everything operates. Curious what caused her to freeze up at the end when she was handed the results of the baby’s tests.
That definitely stood out to me as something to notice. Last season he seemed smarter than that. Especially with one of the doctors asking a bike accident patient if he had been wearing his helmet.
there are plenty of “do as I say not as I do” doctors. Doctors that are heavy smokers, drinkers, or overweight that tell off their patients for similar bad habits. The past trauma from Covid and the mass casualty event of Season 1 could have left him with a few self destructive characteristics.
(retired) RN here checking in with a few thought after just having binged The Pitt:
I love Mel. If anyone on the show deserves an Emmy, it’s Taylor Dearden.
Regarding the Harbor Freight battery-powered IO device, I’ve never seen one. In my day we practiced with a manual IO device that required the strength of Samson. Practice involved inserting it into a chicken bone (I’ve never used an IO on a human).
I would rate the show as very realistic in comparison to any other medical show, but there are still realism-related things that bug me, probably more than they should. One small example: the universal dedication of the staff. So many encouragements to “go home, your shift ended 3 hours ago” - “Nah, I’m good”. I get that this was a major traumatic day, but most folks, in my experience, don’t need to be told twice (or once) to GTFO of Dodge at the end of the shift. Remember when the Eastern United States had the massive power outage? There was a whole lot of “Why can’t we leaaaaave???” going on where I was.
I have seen and walked through vacant units that were closed due to, yes, staffing issues. It’s a little creepy. However, I can’t imagine anyone could get away with living in one undetected for more than a day or two.
New staff fainting and hitting the floor is a thing. I’ve seen it.
It is rare, in my experience, for physicians to call another physician “Doctor Jones” when there are no patients around or alert. It’s always first names. I only recall one physician insist on being called Doctor in my entire career. I called her “Marianne”.
Kudos for the realism on the procedures, etc. The lumbar puncture they showed was 100%. So was the grand mal seizure. Many others, as well.
Finally, the administrator, Gloria (?), was incredibly well-written and well-acted.
Since it is TV, they dont wear masks as much as they would IRL, but that is understandable.
If that young gogo female doctor- Trinity?
that chewed out the patient for maybe preying on his daughter was caught- or he complained- she’d be fired.
Yep, same here.
The wife said that she was frightened that maybe, and the daughter vehemently denied it (which she might do even if true). There was no evidence. Now, if they had reported it- that would have been okay. But chewing out the guy on life support- not Okay.
there are three things i say are no-nos in a medical drama- I want more medical than drama, less cats dating, etc. No main cast doctor should be addicted to drugs (okay, the secondary/tertiary Doc was getting off drugs, or so he claimed) and no relatives getting sick. They kinda did that last.
One thing annoyed me, and would annoy me IRL the constant “are you Okay?”.
Oh, and Season 2 is apparently JUST streaming on HBO, so I am gonna have to wait for a while until it is on cable again.
In many states, if not all of them, it would be legally mandated to report that. You are supposed to report it not only if you have evidence but if you have any suspicion that abuse may be taking place.
I had a whole class unit on this in grad school. Mandated reports, which make up the majority of abuse reports, are overwhelmingly found to be unfounded by the investigating agency. But it’s the law.
