This text accommodates spoilers for Season 2 of “The Pitt.”
In case you’re a fan of “The Pitt,” the HBO Max medical drama created by R. Scott Gemmill alongside collaborators Noah Wyle and John Wells, you would possibly additionally be a fan of “ER.” If that is the case, you may need caught a significant parallel between these two beloved exhibits in the course of the Season 2 finale of “The Pitt.”
In “9:00 P.M.,” the season finale of the massively profitable second season of “The Pitt,” Wyle’s protagonist Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch is all set to go away for a three-month sabbatical when an ambulance arrives on the finish of his shift. Contemporary off an intense argument along with his finest good friend and night-shift counterpart, Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), Robby snaps again into work mode when he hears that the lady within the ambulance, Nicole Wolf’s Judith Lastrade, is experiencing blurred imaginative and prescient, hypertension, and swelling in her legs. She thinks she’s having a stroke, however Robby appropriately diagnoses her with preeclampsia — a situation which may have been caught sooner if Judith weren’t dedicated to a “free” and “pure” beginning with zero medical intervention.
So how does this hook up with “ER?” Actual followers of that collection might have instantly linked this second to “Love’s Labor’s Misplaced,” a Season 1 episode of “ER” that took the present from good to nice. In that episode, Anthony Edwards’ lead character, Dr. Mark Greene, treats a pregnant lady named Jodi O’Brien (Colleen Wolf) and fails to diagnose her with full-blown eclampsia, and this failure to diagnose results in her tragic demise. In each exhibits, the sufferers are experiencing hypertension however meet two completely different fates … and in each exhibits, the hazard of a situation like preeclampsia challenges a faithful physician.
Preeclampsia is a particularly harmful situation in being pregnant, as viewers study from each ER and The Pitt
Okay, so initially: what’s preeclampsia? Primarily, it is a situation — in response to the Mayo Clinic — that may trigger hypertension and “excessive ranges of protein in [the patient’s] urine that point out kidney injury,” amongst different points. The problems are quite a few and very critical. As you most likely figured from the “pre” a part of “preeclampsia,” a kind of problems is eclampsia itself, which might trigger seizures and even put the affected person right into a coma. On “ER,” as a result of Dr. Mark Greene would not appropriately diagnose his pregnant affected person, she strikes previous the “pre” interval and develops full-blown eclampsia, and that results in her demise. (Different problems are simply as critical and embrace a untimely beginning, fetal development restrictions, points with the placenta, and even “injury to different organs” that may manifest in crises like strokes.)
The sufferers in these situations on “ER” and “The Pitt” are fairly completely different; Mark assumes that his pregnant affected person has a urinary tract an infection and would not deal with her for preeclampsia or eclampsia, whereas Robby instantly clocks that his affected person — who hasn’t seen a single physician all through her practically full-term being pregnant — is affected by the situation attributable to plenty of rapid components. Nonetheless, one thing I need to stress right here is that this under no circumstances implies that Robby is a greater physician than Mark or something like that; wonderful physicians can misdiagnose or make an ideal and rapid analysis primarily based on any variety of components, and Mark’s incorrect analysis of a urinary tract an infection is a reasonably comprehensible mistake. One other necessary factor to notice is that, regardless of this obvious connection, “The Pitt” will not be meant to be a sequel to “ER.” Not even shut.
For authorized causes, there isn’t any precise narrative overlap between ER and The Pitt
“The Pitt” premiered in January of 2025, and when it did, “ER” followers have been fairly excited; in any case, R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wyle all labored collectively on “ER.” Actually, Wyle seems in “Love’s Labor’s Misplaced” as medical pupil John Carter, who ultimately turns into a health care provider and, after working carefully with Dr. Mark Greene, turns into a senior trauma attending on the present’s fictional County Basic Hospital. Nonetheless, I have to say fairly plainly that there isn’t any narrative overlap between “ER” and “The Pitt,” and I say this for very actual authorized causes.
After “The Pitt” premiered, the property of “Jurassic Park” creator Michael Crichton raised some considerations about similarities between this new collection and “ER.” There are some main similarities and variations proper off the bat: each exhibits are set in an emergency division and have Wyle as a beleaguered physician, however “ER” provides a fuller take a look at the lives of its physicians and surgeons as a result of it would not happen in a real-time conceit, which “The Pitt” does. This resulted in a lawsuit spearheaded by Sherri Crichton, the late author’s widow.
In any case, the lawsuit over whether or not “The Pitt” is an unauthorized spin-off of “ER” continues to be ongoing as of this writing, however I need to stress that these two exhibits are not the identical; the folks concerned with each remained pals and located one other strategy to work collectively. Nonetheless, it is fascinating that, in each of those impactful medical exhibits, a doctor is proven coping with a extremely harmful situation for pregnant ladies … and we see the outcomes of their split-second choices. “ER” is streaming on Hulu now, and “The Pitt” is out there on HBO Max.
