“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
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Books & the Arts
/ February 19, 2026
The Pitt Shows Doctoring Uncensored
“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
The second season tackles everything from the role of AI in medicine to Medicaid cuts. But above all, it is about burnout.
Zoe Adams
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(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
Ispent much of the final year of my internal medicine residency in a windowless workroom on the seventh floor of a hospital in Boston. The desks were sticky from spilled diet ginger ale. There were vulgar inside jokes scribbled on the dry-erase board near the entryway. There was cheap champagne in the mini fridge for mimosas we’d mix at the end of a string of night shifts. We hoarded sticks of epinephrine and 18-gauge needles in filing cabinets and stuffed them in our pockets as we ran to a Code Blue. When the night was slow, we’d watch movies or TV. One show everyone seemed to be watching in the hospital, or had an opinion on, was The Pitt, a medical drama inspired by the Emergency Department at Allegheny General Hospital, a trauma center in Pittsburgh.
A couple of my peers scoffed as they watched the actors running around in scrubs under fluorescent lights on my laptop screen: Why watch work while at work? Others couldn’t look away. We agreed with the chatter among doctors—the show was accurate from a medical standpoint. But verisimilitude wasn’t what made it novel; it captured something that once felt more private. The Pitt found a way to make evident the disquieting feeling of intubating a dying patient because a family member couldn’t let go. Then the sounds: the beeps of monitors that fade into a kind of white noise, the suctioning of secretions from a patient’s airway, a gurgling that always made my stomach turn. There was a tenderness to the show, too, one that managed to skirt the overly sentimental: the moment when a patient begins to trust you, laughs with you, or when you see yourself reflected in the person you’re taking care of.
And the show was unafraid to tackle the social dimensions of medicine, an aspect of care rarely depicted in medical TV dramas. Patient cases my co-residents and I ranted about—like racial disparities in Child Protective Services involvement or the hospital boarding crisis—were given their proper due, dramatized, in accurate fashion, for millions of viewers. The Pitt was committed to showing us doctoring uncensored.
Since I completed my medical residency, The Pitt has become a global phenomenon. When the show’s star Noah Wyle wore a tuxedo made by the scrubs brand FIGS on the red carpet for the 2025 Emmys, his outfit went viral. The second season premiered to an audience triple the size of the …
Equal justice apparently isn't equal anymore.
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ February 19, 2026
The Pitt Shows Doctoring Uncensored
“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
The second season tackles everything from the role of AI in medicine to Medicaid cuts. But above all, it is about burnout.
Zoe Adams
Share
Copy Link
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Ad Policy
(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
Ispent much of the final year of my internal medicine residency in a windowless workroom on the seventh floor of a hospital in Boston. The desks were sticky from spilled diet ginger ale. There were vulgar inside jokes scribbled on the dry-erase board near the entryway. There was cheap champagne in the mini fridge for mimosas we’d mix at the end of a string of night shifts. We hoarded sticks of epinephrine and 18-gauge needles in filing cabinets and stuffed them in our pockets as we ran to a Code Blue. When the night was slow, we’d watch movies or TV. One show everyone seemed to be watching in the hospital, or had an opinion on, was The Pitt, a medical drama inspired by the Emergency Department at Allegheny General Hospital, a trauma center in Pittsburgh.
A couple of my peers scoffed as they watched the actors running around in scrubs under fluorescent lights on my laptop screen: Why watch work while at work? Others couldn’t look away. We agreed with the chatter among doctors—the show was accurate from a medical standpoint. But verisimilitude wasn’t what made it novel; it captured something that once felt more private. The Pitt found a way to make evident the disquieting feeling of intubating a dying patient because a family member couldn’t let go. Then the sounds: the beeps of monitors that fade into a kind of white noise, the suctioning of secretions from a patient’s airway, a gurgling that always made my stomach turn. There was a tenderness to the show, too, one that managed to skirt the overly sentimental: the moment when a patient begins to trust you, laughs with you, or when you see yourself reflected in the person you’re taking care of.
And the show was unafraid to tackle the social dimensions of medicine, an aspect of care rarely depicted in medical TV dramas. Patient cases my co-residents and I ranted about—like racial disparities in Child Protective Services involvement or the hospital boarding crisis—were given their proper due, dramatized, in accurate fashion, for millions of viewers. The Pitt was committed to showing us doctoring uncensored.
Since I completed my medical residency, The Pitt has become a global phenomenon. When the show’s star Noah Wyle wore a tuxedo made by the scrubs brand FIGS on the red carpet for the 2025 Emmys, his outfit went viral. The second season premiered to an audience triple the size of the …
“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
Equal justice apparently isn't equal anymore.
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“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
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Current Issue
Books & the Arts
/ February 19, 2026
The Pitt Shows Doctoring Uncensored
“The Pitt” Shows Doctoring Uncensored
The second season tackles everything from the role of AI in medicine to Medicaid cuts. But above all, it is about burnout.
Zoe Adams
Share
Copy Link
Facebook
X (Twitter)
Bluesky Pocket
Email
Ad Policy
(Warrick Page / HBO Max)
Ispent much of the final year of my internal medicine residency in a windowless workroom on the seventh floor of a hospital in Boston. The desks were sticky from spilled diet ginger ale. There were vulgar inside jokes scribbled on the dry-erase board near the entryway. There was cheap champagne in the mini fridge for mimosas we’d mix at the end of a string of night shifts. We hoarded sticks of epinephrine and 18-gauge needles in filing cabinets and stuffed them in our pockets as we ran to a Code Blue. When the night was slow, we’d watch movies or TV. One show everyone seemed to be watching in the hospital, or had an opinion on, was The Pitt, a medical drama inspired by the Emergency Department at Allegheny General Hospital, a trauma center in Pittsburgh.
A couple of my peers scoffed as they watched the actors running around in scrubs under fluorescent lights on my laptop screen: Why watch work while at work? Others couldn’t look away. We agreed with the chatter among doctors—the show was accurate from a medical standpoint. But verisimilitude wasn’t what made it novel; it captured something that once felt more private. The Pitt found a way to make evident the disquieting feeling of intubating a dying patient because a family member couldn’t let go. Then the sounds: the beeps of monitors that fade into a kind of white noise, the suctioning of secretions from a patient’s airway, a gurgling that always made my stomach turn. There was a tenderness to the show, too, one that managed to skirt the overly sentimental: the moment when a patient begins to trust you, laughs with you, or when you see yourself reflected in the person you’re taking care of.
And the show was unafraid to tackle the social dimensions of medicine, an aspect of care rarely depicted in medical TV dramas. Patient cases my co-residents and I ranted about—like racial disparities in Child Protective Services involvement or the hospital boarding crisis—were given their proper due, dramatized, in accurate fashion, for millions of viewers. The Pitt was committed to showing us doctoring uncensored.
Since I completed my medical residency, The Pitt has become a global phenomenon. When the show’s star Noah Wyle wore a tuxedo made by the scrubs brand FIGS on the red carpet for the 2025 Emmys, his outfit went viral. The second season premiered to an audience triple the size of the …
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