<em>The Pitt</em> Episode 14 Recap

Looking for a recap of episode 13? We have you covered.

If you've been following along with Esquire's coverage of The Pitt, you'll remember that I took a special interest in last week's introduction of the EZ-IO. It's a power drill used in emergency medical procedures. Even for someone like me—who interned (true story) at The University of Pittsburgh medical school's alumni magazine, but has little healthcare knowledge otherwise—I immediately looked up the device. Then, I found the paper referenced in the episode, which depicted Dr. Mohan using the tool to relieve intracranial bleeding.

Right on cue, the doctor who performed the procedure himself and published said paper reached out to me—and I had to talk so him. So, before we recap the episode this week, I want you to meet Doctor Marc Grossman, who is now the EMS medical director for three hospitals in New Hampshire. "We were teaching the Boston paramedics how to do search and rescue," he told me. "My friend called me and he's like, "Did you watch The Pitt? I said no. And he explained to me. I was like, geez. I didn't get a chance to see it until Saturday. I got probably thirty text messages and phone calls from my friends, like, 'Is that your case?'"

You can listen to Dr. Grossman talk about the case in detail and view the paper here, but he relayed the basics to me. In 2021, Dr. Grossman was the ER Director of Parkland Medical Center in Derry, New Hampshire. A seventeen-year-old girl was in a motor vehicle collision when her boyfriend flipped his car in the middle of a snowstorm. He quickly realized that her brain was bleeding. She would die if he did not act immediately.

The hospital couldn't fly her somewhere to perform neurosurgery because of the weather, so Dr. Grossman called the Boston Children's Hospital, who put a neurosurgeon on the phone. Lacking proper equipment to perform the appropriate procedure—a burr hole drill—Dr. Grossman had an idea: the EZ-IO. Unconventional, sure. But the patient's mom told him, "I trust you. Please take care of my baby." Dr. Grossman drilled into the girl's skull and saved her daughter's life. She made a full recovery, too.

"I got out of my shift at 7 o'clock in the morning," he said. "I go home and it was just like on the show—it's unusual for me to completely break down. I completely broke down, curled up in the corner, completely mentally and physically exhausted."

Beautiful, right? It's an incredible reminder of the miracles our healthcare professionals perform every damn day—it's just that The Pitt is finally taking inspiration from real cases and bringing it all to the mainstream.

"It's such an impressive thing that they're doing," Dr. Grossman told me of The Pitt. "I'm so happy that they're doing the show so that people understand what we're going through. Post-Covid, everybody's kind of a jerk and the expectations are unrealistic. And it just comes down on the ER. It's our problem. There's too many ambulances, a lot of sick people, anti-vaxxers, things like that. And we're just taking care of whoever comes in. It's very touching and it's so great that people actually get a chance to see what we're dealing with."

Not to bury the lede, but I also interviewed Noah Wyle for this episode! I'll reference our chat a couple times in this recap, but you can read the full interview here.

Let's move on to this week's episode, which finally sees the carnage of the Pitt Fest shooting begin to slow down. And please forgive me for the shorter-than-usual recap—I'm sorry, but Dr. Grossman deserves the spotlight today.

Once again, please give Noah Wyle his flowers for his performance in The Pitt.

My Two Favorite Characters Unite!

I love every character in The Pitt, truly, but I have to put Dr. Robby and Whitaker at the very top of my power rankings. Episode 13 saw PTMC's leader finally break down; the combination of his stepson turning on him, his hellish caseload, and working on the day of his mentor's death finally caught up to him. In The Pitt's penultimate episode, we see the boy wonder, Whitaker, outright shocked to see such a dent in Dr. Robby's armor. He pleas with him to return to the ER floor. They even share a spiritual moment together, which is something that Wyle spoke beautifully about in our interview.

"The waves are just crashing over his head and he's finally going under. Somewhere between then and when we find him, he's trying everything he can to get himself out from underneath it," Wyle told me. "The only thing that he can think of to do is to recite a very simple and basic prayer. And that's when Whitaker finds him—somebody who's on the opposite end of the professional spectrum. Different faith, different age. Watching those two guys try and negotiate this moment that was private and is now public was a really interesting and fun thing to play."

Elsewhere in the episode, Dr. Robby is enraged all over again when "Dr. Google Bullshit" storms into PTMC, trying to stop Mel from giving her son a spinal tap on the basis of false information. Also, we spend more time with a night shift player, Dr. Ellis (Ayesha Harris), who is pretty damn awesome? She has some fun banter with Santos, trying to figure out the situation with Langdon. Speaking of Mel, as she helps the traumatized, near-wordless patient, she continues to act as a stellar beacon of empathy in an unimaginable environment. Kudos, Mel!

I’m loving the arrival of Ayesha Harris’s Dr. Ellis to the series.

The David Saga Reaches Its End

In episode 14, we finally reach some sort of resolution—if you can even call it that—regarding the Pitt Fest shooter. Turns out, Dr. Robby was right. David was not the shooter. We learn that the assailant was found dead. We never even hear their name. I feel like this is another crucial piece of writing from The Pitt's creative team; in real life, how often do we grasp any form of resolution in these moments? Mass shootings are exactly what The Pitt is showing us in this episode—senseless, terrible, and wholly unimaginable.

Still, David remains in custody within PTMC—he won't (and nor should he) get off the hook for creating a list of names of women he wanted to hurt. The Pitt is clearly interested in investigating the crisis many young men in America are facing—men just like David. It's something that Adolescence admirably explored in great detail, as did Esquire recently.

"David is not feeling seen or heard, and he's slipping through the cracks," Wyle said. "It triggers all sorts of paranoia and feelings of judgment and bias. We wanted to play that out to have it be misunderstood that he was not actually responsible for this shooting and yet still will be punished for what in essence is a thoughtcrime. In reality, it’s cautionary behavior that needs to be addressed. It speaks to this very interesting place we're living in where there is a problem and I'm not sure what the right remedy is."

It's Dr. McKay's Turn For TV Mess

Did you forget that The Pitt is, in fact, a TV show that aims to entertain? (I mean this as a total compliment, but I feel like we've been watching a documentary over the past two weeks.) One of The Pitt's long-running bits—Dr. McKay's legal woes—finally pay off this episode when the police put her in custody. Why, you ask? Because she dared to stop her ankle monitor's incessant beeping in the middle of a mass casualty event.

One final thought for this week: I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that The Pitt would reach the peak of its fight to save as many Pitt Fest victims' lives in the season finale. But now, it clearly seems like PTMC will resume its normal (but still incredibly chaotic, of course) operations as the season comes to a close. It feels quietly subversive. In real life, when something as tragic as this happens, all of the healthcare providers don't pack it all up and go home. They show up the next day. They keep working. In the finale of a truly stellar—and utterly critical—season of television, The Pitt will no doubt keep its promise to show us nothing but the truth.