‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Episode 1 Review: The Calm

The Pitt is back and it feels like we never even left, which is helped by the fact that it’s only really been 8 months since we last saw this show on air. It helps that the show is able to pull together so quickly for the release it has, which helps the experience immensely. Here is our The Pitt Season 2 Episode 1 Review.

We enter with Robby as he’s riding on his bike back to The Pitt. It’s a massive day for not only Robby but everyone else at the hospital because it’s a day of changes. It’s Robby’s last day before he takes a 3-month sabbatical, so there’s a new attending in his place Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, it’s her first day. It’s also Dr. Langdon’s first day back from his leave after a long stint of rehab and counseling.

As expected, Season 2 doesn’t let up on the number of storylines it tackles and how each of them feeds into the characters we follow. Arguably, the first episode of Season 2 doesn’t have to do as much legwork as the first, partially because we only really meet a few new characters, while in Season 1, we had to be introduced to every single one. Knowing these characters ahead of time does make it a lot easier to follow.

Regardless, there still is a lot of legwork being done here. There are a lot of patients being introduced as we catch back up with where these characters are with their lives, almost 10 months after Season 1. Some things are the same, like Victoria’s butting relationship with her mother, while some drastically change, like Langdon, who on the surface seems better than before and is trying to make amends with patients he stole medicines from.

There’s a lot of introduction going on—some for the season and some for the next few episodes. The patients themselves are relatively short-term arcs within the episodes and usually deal with a lot of major social issues. This time around, the show decides to tackle a range of issues, including homelessness, dementia, brain trauma, infant abandonment, and potentially parental abuse. There will likely be twists and turns with these, but this is what we’re getting to start off, and I’m very curious to see how a lot of these go.

The season-long arcs teased feel very Robby-centric. A big part of that is Dr Baran, who seemingly likes to run things far differently than Robby. She comes in early before the day shift arrives (which Robby claims to be disrespectful) and starts to shuffle things around. She has experience with changing how hospitals operate and is looking to implement her ideas at The Pitt. These range from patient passports that include a range of information to help both the patients and doctors, all the way to simply changing the name of the Pitt, citing that it lowers expectations and patient satisfaction scores.

On the other hand, Langdon’s return also adds some foil to Robby, who is avoiding him as much as he can. Langdon wants to have a conversation, but Robby wants to push it back as long as he can. He goes as far as assigning Langdon to triage so he can interact with him less.

All in all The Pitt’s return is good. It feels very calm before the storm, which is easy to say because the last memories of the show are the storm. The truth is, you certainly need the calm before the storm but at the same time, the latter is far more exciting. However, it really is exciting to be back especially when the return feels so natural, which is always what worked best with this show.

There’s not a lot to decipher just yet, but the show does set some interesting paths to go down which I’m curious what they do with it. It’s a wait-and-see game at this stage, and if Season 1 is any indication, I’m very ready to see what they do.

The series stars Wyle as Dr. Robby, Patrick Ball as Dr. Langdon, Katherine LaNasa as Dana Evans, Supriya Ganesh as Dr. Mohan, Fiona Dourif as Dr. McKay, Taylor Dearden as Dr. King, Isa Briones as Dr. Santos, Gerran Howell as Whitaker, Shabana Azeez as Javadi, and Sepideh Moafi as Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. It airs on HBO Max, and the first episode is out on Jan 8th.

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