‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Episode 2 Recap: “8:00AM”

Once Dr. Al-Hashimi snaps out of her mystery baby reverie, leaving Dr. Mohan’s WTF? face in the dust, she returns to her main mission in the ED. Sure, mentorship and teaching – the tone the incoming senior attending takes with the med students continues to be professional, but expectant in a way Dr. Robby’s isn’t – but also time management and technological maintenance. Last time we heard about the “patient passports,” and here in Season 2 Episode 2 of The Pitt (“8:00AM”), Al-Hashimi’s showing off an app that uses generative AI to reduce time spent on staff charting. OK, cool, that has always been a burden. But then there are creative solves and individual investment, the main drivers of Robby’s ethos. This is emerging as the principal point of friction between two very driven, very different senior physicians. In the moving space of two minutes on the floor, both Santos and Mckay’s report-ins on patients are a mix of astute treatment options and the intangibles Robby encourages. Like this, from Cassie: “58-year-old guy, scaphoid fracture, Epistaxis, non-focal neuro…but my gut is telling me something’s not right.”

Her gut? The two-headed attendings share a glance loaded with their philosophically opposed methodology, and now it’s McKay’s turn for a WTF? look.

(TC 2:00-04: [Al-Hashimi and Robby’s shared glance, quiet opposition over “gut”]) 

Let’s get a rundown on some of the other patients visiting the Pitt. Whitaker, with smarty pants Ogilvie and the cynical Kwon under his supervision, is dealing with draining Louie’s distended belly while having to repeatedly tell an elderly woman with dementia that her husband has passed away. Javadi gently informs a nun that she somehow caught gonorrhea. Langdon, still on a sometimes awkward come-clean apology tour with his colleagues, has a woman who superglued shut her eye and “The Bickersons,” NASCAR-loving relatives, one with a July 4th brunch bacon grease burn, who can’t stop fighting. And Mel King, still consumed with her looming “med-mal” deposition, is just about to tell Flirty Leg Wound Guy about her interest in renaissance faire cosplay when he bolts at the sight of Pittsburgh PD. It’s bad that he apparently robbed a liquor store. It’s worse that he knocked Mel down, and we might never hear more about her alter-ego as a 17th century Frenchwoman.    

(TC 15:35: [Mel knocked to floor while when cops chase her patient])

“Belay that order, sailor.” Coming around the corner is another new Season 2 character, Noelle Hastings (Meta Golding), a nurse and “bed control” case manager. When have we known Michael Robinavitch to acknowledge insurance and billing concerns when it comes to a patient under his staff’s care? That’s right, never. Unless the hospital transfer order’s coming from someone who seems to be his romantic partner. McKay is a very empathetic doctor. She also has a highly-tuned bullshit detector. She warily navigates “Noelle” and “Robby’s” familiarity with each other before departing the conversation. 

It gets even more awesomely dicey. Robby acts distracted when Noelle asks him to pause his post-shift motorcycle trip for one more night, she tells herself she should stop whatever they’re doing once he leaves their talk, and then Dana’s all-seeing eye, full of protective concern for Robby, falls on the scene. 

“Hastings.” (Cold.)

“Evans.” (Colder.)

“Hope you know what you’re doing.” (Even colder.)

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m a big girl.” (The coldest, basically a fuck you.) 

Developing!

(TC 20:36-38: [Dana, sharply, to Noelle] “OK, big girl…”])

Dana’s charge nurse protective streak has many facets, especially when it comes to fresh-faced new RNs she actually likes. Mr. Digby (Charles Baker), the unhoused man who required a decontamination shower last episode, has been gowned up and given a bed. And now for the reason why he was admitted: an “itchy” cast that has seen much better days. Dana grabs Emma Nolan to assist and deploys a saw, buzzing through the greying gypsum plaster to reveal a reddened, pussy forearm…absolutely swarmed by maggots. Yikes! After everything Dana Evans has seen on the job, after she’s taken on considerable personal risk, she clearly loves having Emma around as a project for her own sense of mentorship. The young nurse’s eyes bug out at squiggling, churning larvae. “Bet you never saw that in nursing school!”

We’re very intrigued with this Robinavitch-versus-Al-Hashimi situation. It’s clear they respect each other as peers, but it’s just as clear their respective approaches to patient treatment will continue to be opposed. And obviously part of this is also Robby feeling threatened, with Dr. Al encroaching on his little emergency department fief, and how he likes to run it. Outside in the ambulance bay, he’s getting some fresh air when she comes at him again with her thoughts on generative AI in the medical workplace. Robby’s generating his own comeback to dispute the numbers she quotes – ER docs spend nearly twice as much time charting than they do at the bedside – when a bus rolls up with a screaming college kid, condition unknown, pulling at his stretcher’s restraints. A tazing by campus security and 5 Midazolam didn’t even phase him. You can see Robby’s gut immediately forming a treatment plan on the fly, and it probably isn’t what artificial intelligence would advise. “Wanna tell me some more about your ideas?” he asks Dr. Al-Hashimi. She checks her complaints at the ambulance door. “Maybe later.”

Nurse’s Desk for Season 2 Episode 2 of The Pitt (“8:00AM”):

• When Langdon explains his ten-month absence to Mel, while treating her after the fall/patient escape, it’s full of the professional-personal bond they have developed. She’s startled by his benzo use admission, but accepts it with grace, and Langdon looks out for Mel’s neurodivergence by quieting the med bay once the cops show back up and start yapping about her testifying at the escaped robber’s eventual trial.

• Check out the big brain on James. Ogilvie’s know-it-all nature is all over this episode – he spits medicalese like it’s Twista raps and even speaks Farsi with Dr. Al-Hashimi – which Santos notes is setting up a battle of the geniuses between him and Victoria Javadi, the Pitt’s reigning prodigy. Dr. Robby preaches teamwork when the Gen Z’ers’ competitive ACT-uallys threaten to derail patient treatment.   

 (TC 35:48: [Ogilvie and Javadi at once] “6 ½ gloves! 7 ½ gloves!”)

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.