HBO MAX Series Review: The Pitt

When a movie or a TV series reaches of the highest levels of quality and perfection that the HBO Series "The Pitt" does, it should be celebrated with Awards, in this case, 4 wins out of 13 Emmy nominations, including best drama series and best lead actor in a drama series, Noah Wiley. From what I have seen, this series should have won all 13 Emmy nominations.

More importantly, this HBO Series of 15 episodes, demonstrates better than any medical show I have ever seen the lives of the heroes who work in the emergency rooms of hospitals. The Hospital for this series is the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, inspired by Allegheny General Hospital (AGH), Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Throughout these great 15 episodes there are flashbacks from the years during the COVID pandemic and the realization of so many deaths and the suicides of doctors and nurses during the years 2020-2022 where 1,091,715 people lost their lives. Working in an intense, high population area emergency room requires the highest level of medical expertise and stamina. The ability to make accurate life and death decisions for shifts that can last from 12-15 hours, one after another, is an ability beyond impressive. The knowledge and experience that is required that includes the many medical machines that are involved, on the fly surgical skill, the numerous medical tests, the hundreds of different drugs that for any given patient may or may not save a life, is of the most impressive parts of the depiction of impossible people who have impossible jobs.

For the actors, it must have been so difficult to remember all of the medical terms that are written down in a script, but for the real life doctors they are portraying, committing this much medical information to memory seems at times an ability almost impossible to attain. All of the people in this emergency room are extremely intelligent and high achievers, but the human aspect of dealing with so many patients, non stop medical emergencies and ultimately death, would take a toll on anyone, even after one bad day.

One of the best moments in this series was when Dr. Michael Robinavitch(Noah Wiley) collapses in an empty room after trying and failing to save a young woman who was shot. Another standout episodes includes a young girl who drowned and her young sister to reveals that her sister was trying to save her from a pool, and she has not been told her sister died.

The other standout in this series is Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who plays the charge nurse of the emergency room, her personality and work ethic keep the entire department from falling part - the acting of LaNasa in this series won her the best supporting actress Emmy. We learn that an organizer in the center of such intense chaos is mandatory for an emergency room, especially with one later episodes when they are overrun with 120 shooting victims from a nearby mass shooting.

The other standouts are all the young beginning doctors who are getting their first experiences of working in an emergency room, including Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden), Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) who are all outstanding in their roles. There are the typical fights and arguments that are expected within an environment this intense and medical egos this large, and the expected abuse the doctors with less experience have to endure from other doctors, mostly Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), who has an ongoing series of conflicts with Dr. McKay.

The longer you watch this great first season of 15 episodes, the more you realize that a life like this is not a job, where you receive a paycheck, this is something far more important. This is about courage, education, skill and the innate ability to deal with 12 hours of stress every day and then wake up the next day and do this all over again. This is a life career where if you make a single mistake someone may die. This is a level of superhero ability that very few people could pull off on a daily basis or ever consider making this a career.

For the many huge fans of this great medical drama, season two will be released in January 2026 - way too long to wait to see what will happen next.

The Pitt gets my highest recommendation of 100%. This is by far, one of the productions including movies and television I have ever seen.