8:00 A.M.
Season 2
Episode 2
Editor’s Rating
4 stars
****
The simmering power struggle between Robby and Al-Hashimi continues as the staff handles a couple of gory cases.
Photo: Warrick Page/HBO Max
Welcome to 8:00 AM, where the Rabinavitch v. Al-Hashimi shift soldiers on, with even more tension between our two Attendings, if you can believe it. It makes sense. Dr. Al-Hashimi has only grown more comfortable throughout the first hour; not only is she hovering, but she’s making calls in trauma rooms that directly undercut Robby, even though, thus far, Robby’s directives for his doctors have been the correct ones. And could Dr. Al roll her eyes any harder when multiple residents come to Robby with Robby-approved “gut feelings”? For Dr. Al, gut feelings drool, and algorithms and protocols rule, you know what I mean? It’s not that Dr. Al has bad intentions or is incompetent, quite the opposite, but when you show up to your first day and tell the person who has been running the show for years that you have “ideas for improvement,” how do you think he’s going to take it? I’m not saying Robby is infallible, but I am saying I am Team Robby no matter what and I would die for this man.
There are two main moments in “8:00 AM” in which their particular brands of doctoring are at odds. One is when they need baby Jane Doe to pee, and Al-Hashimi wants to place a catheter, while Robby thinks that’s an extreme first step. He has a little cold water on a cotton swab trick that does, in fact, lead to some pee in a cup, so there. (The baby has the rhinovirus but otherwise is fine, aside from the fact they can’t get her a bed upstairs.) The second head-to-head is even more testy. Barry comes in with an upper airway obstruction after eating breakfast. The regular ol’ heimlich didn’t work and all the docs involved know they’ll have to get a look inside Barry’s esophagus. Dr. Al-Hashimi wants to sedate Barry with ketamine and rocuronium in case this isn’t just a piece of food stuck in his throat and they need to intubate quickly. Robby thinks they should only give ketamine because it’s most likely a piece of food — the guy was eating before he went into distress, after all. Robby moves forward with his plan, overruling Dr. Al in front of everyone else. She backs off, but not without a snarky “I’ll leave this in your capable hands” and a warning that he better not get them sued as she walks out. Robby’s right — it was a piece of broccoli and McKay is able to remove it without a problem. Al-Hashimi’s plan would’ve had Barry intubated and on a ventilator for an hour for no reason. I have to believe that at some point the tables will turn and Al-Hashimi’s call will be the correct one, but for now the two remain at odds.
Robby and Al-Hashimi aren’t the only ones butting heads on this shift, though. Our sweet brainiac med student, Javadi, realizes that not-so-sweet brainiac med student, Ogilvie, might be some real competition for a spot in the ED residency program at PTMC. Well, I guess she didn’t “realize” as much as Santos very happily pointed this truth out to her. It is interesting that in the last episode, Javadi, as far as her mother is concerned, hadn’t made up her mind as to which type of residency she wanted to pursue. And yet, the moment Santos mentions that she could lose the emergency medicine residency, she is up, fighting for her spot. Seems like she’s made up her mind to me, but what do I know?
Javadi and Ogilvie have a real nerd off when Orlando Diaz is brought into the hospital unconscious, showing signs of diabetic ketoacidosis. As the two try to show up the other and show off to the residents and Robby with their knowledge of how to treat Mr. Diaz, none of the other doctors are impressed — Mohan’s face is all of our faces — and Robby has to explicitly remind these two that med students aren’t evaluated simply on their wealth of knowledge, but also on how well they function as a team player. I’m rooting for Javadi in this race, both because she’s an OG and not a dick. Could you imagine how Ogilvie would’ve handled Sister Gonorrhea? Though admittedly, this whole race to be the biggest nerd has only endeared me more to Joy Kwon, the other third-year med student who could not give a fuck about anything. That kind of attitude goes against the Robby ethos, but at least it’s fun. (For me, a viewer, probably not for her patients.)
Speaking of the Robby ethos, all three of our med students should be looking to our quiet king Whitaker for how to not just impress their superiors but, like, be a good doctor. Out of all the newbs last season, it seems like Whitaker has really been informed by Robby’s example, especially when it comes to bedside manner. He’s quite a competent doctor, too, especially compared to how nervous he was just ten months ago, but it’s moving to see his empathy in action and even more moving to see Robby see that empathy in action. Last week, Whitaker took a moment with his two med students to have a moment of silence for Mr. Bostick after he died (they both hated it, naturally). In the eight o’clock hour, Whitaker is tasked with taking care of Mr. Bostick’s wife, who has dementia. He has to tell her more than once that her husband has died. He brings her to see his body and still, she does not get it — he sits with her anyway. May this man never have to switch out scrubs midshift again!
If Whitaker represents the youthful version of Robby’s empathetic side, it’s probably Santos who best represents his gutsy version of treating patients. She, not surprisingly, is one of the doctors Al-Hashimi sees Robby ask to trust her gut — and Santos, as we’ve seen both last season and here, mostly operates on trusting her gut. Sometimes that’s great and her gut is right (please see last season’s REBOA), but sometimes she takes it too far. Robby has decades of experience to help inform his decision-making; Santos is mostly riding on confidence. It’s certainly what The Pitt is pointing out with her 9-year-old chin lac patient, Kylie. She’s following protocol, but it’s clear she believes Kylie’s father is abusing her. Multiple people, including Robby and our social worker of the season Dylan (Kiara isn’t working today!) remind Santos not to jump to conclusions. She promises that isn’t what’s happening, but she also threatens to track down the dad if he doesn’t show up soon, so, like she’s not the most convincing. Last season, Santos was dead on when she figured out her patient had been molesting his daughter, which, in addition to her own past, is informing her here — maybe her gut is right, or maybe her gut is leading her into an absolute shit show. Who’s to say?
Seeing these doctors clearly growing thanks to Robby’s mentorship must be awkward for Langdon, the discarded protege. Langdon is still out in the “Exile Island” that is triage and still being ignored by Robby (and Santos, for what it’s worth), but this doesn’t stop him from continuing to make amends where he needs to. And hey, even if his mentor has ditched him, we can’t forget that in just one shift Langdon found his own mentee in Mel King.
Those two get a very sweet scene in this episode: The guy who was flirting with King in the previous episode continues to flirt (still unbeknownst to her), but when he sees two cops walking through the ED, he books it, knocking King off her seat, sending her crashing to the floor with her head to mostly break the fall. (The guy robbed a liquor store the night prior and was hiding out in the ED.) When Langdon sees Perlah icing King’s head, he brings her to a room for a real exam to make sure all is well. He also uses the one-on-one time to talk to her about where he’s been. King obviously knows what’s been going on, but tries not to pry. Langdon wants to be upfront with her: He was in rehab for his addiction to benzos. He is adamant that it never affected his work and that he’s clean, but he knows he let a lot of people down. “You never let me down,” she tells him so earnestly my heart could just burst. But he did, he responds — he should be an example, “not a cautionary tale.” When the cops come in to ask King about her patient who fled and inform her that she might have to testify as a material witness, you can see her flood with anxiety. (As if she needs another court case to think about today!) Langdon picks up on it immediately and so he ushers out the cops, tells Dr. King to rest for a few minutes, and, on his way out, he turns off the lights and closes the door to block out the noise, remembering how she had taken care of an autistic patient with a lot of anxiety last season. It remains impossible to dislike Frank Langdon.
• Aw, The Pitt is back and happy to be disgusting again! We get multiple maybe-shield-your-eyes patients in this episode: When Mohan cuts into our unhoused guy Digby’s arm cast, they find a whole bunch of maggots underneath; We watch the complete relocation of a man’s open arm dislocation, complete with King having to stick her four fingers inside the guy’s arm under his protruding bone; and yes, King and Santos have to help Mr. Randall get rid of his eight-hour erection. There is so much blood in that penis.
• The episode begins with Dr. Al-Hashimi still frozen over baby Jane Doe, but when Mohan asks what’s wrong, a clearly teary-eyed Dr. Al pretends nothing happened. We get no other developments on this …yet.
• Most of Santos’s jokes don’t land for me, but calling Javadi’s nun with conjunctivitis due to gonorrhea “the immaculate infection” really tickled me. Sister Grace is going to be just fine. And, lest you think she’s out living a double life, rubbing her face in something unholy on the weekend, she works at an unhoused shelter handling sheets and laundry without gloves, but Mohan’s hooking her up with a supply of some.
• Did everyone catch Robby’s quick line asking Santos if she’d been to the trauma counselor this week? Does everyone who worked during the mass casualty event have to check in with a counselor still? Caleb, the doc from psych, also seems to know Robby pretty well. I love how The Pitt isn’t dwelling on the aftermath of PittFest, but it clearly has left a mark on the place.
• The Pitt can’t just dangle the fact that Mel King has a 17th-century French woman alter ego she whips out at Ren Faires and not give us more details. We have been through so much, we deserve more.
• McKay is still working on her possible head trauma patient Mr. Williams. This time when she goes to check on him, he couldn’t be nicer to her. What’s up with this guy? McKay starts calling family to see if there’s a history of psych problems they don’t know about.
• Big news everybody: Dr. Robby is getting laid! Seemingly on the regular! With a hot nurse! Nurse Noelle Hastings is currently the case manager at PTMC — she informs docs when certain patients need to be transferred out, so not completely well-liked — and she and Robby are secretly doing it. Dana is not thrilled, so I am wary of this coupling, but if anyone needed to get some after last season, it was our big guy.
• Not Robby casually dropping a line from Henry IV, Part 1 — he contains multitudes!
VULTURE NEWSLETTER
Keep up with all the drama of your favorite shows!
Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice