The Pitt is already being lauded as one of the best TV shows of the year. If you haven’t seen it yet, it just wrapped its first season, and is available to watch on Max.
It follows Dr Robby (Noah Wyle) and his team of doctors and nurses as they undergo one hellish shift in the emergency department of a Pittsburgh hospital. This show really hammers home how difficult life is for a frontline medical professional. Within the course of one fifteen-hour shift (told over the course of, obviously, fifteen episodes) the crew experiences grief, horror, pain, and–more rarely–joy.
The Pitt is rated TV-MA
The Pitt is intended for mature audiences only, and it’s absolutely not suitable for younger children. It’s very intense, and lots of people die, including kids. Let’s break down what The Pitt shows us.
Sex and nudity: There’s no time for sex, as everyone is busy trying to save their patients. But there’s certainly a lot of nudity. We see a penis, breasts, and a childbirth up close and personal. Nudity is inevitable in an actual hospital, of course, and The Pitt aims for realism as much as possible.
Violence and gore: There is an endless amount of gore in this show. We see medical procedures complete with, and there’s really no nice way of saying this, bodily fluids squirting out of people. At another point we see the aftermath of a mass shooting, and it’s bloody and horrific. As for more personal violence, people fight in the hospital, and in one particularly shocking scene a patient decks a nurse in the face. Sadly, this is accurate to what nurses have to contend with in real life.
Language: There’s a lot of swearing in this show, including the f word.
Drinking and drugs: Drugs come up a lot. One teenager unfortunately dies of a drug overdose, and we see the devastation this causes his parents. On a lighter note, the doctors and nurses share beer in the park after their shift is over.
Frightening and intense scenes: This show is nothing but frightening and intense scenes… especially if you’re a parent. The aforementioned death of a teenager is extremely hard to watch, as is the drowning death of a six-year-old later on. When the mass shooting scene happens, Robby’s surrogate son is at the scene with his girlfriend and the latter dies in the process.
Make no bones about it: This is an immensely harrowing show. Young children won’t be able to handle it. Older teenagers on the other hand might have an interest in it, especially if they already have an interest in medicine. In fact, The Pitt might even trigger a desire to get into the medical field!
As hard-going as this show is, nothing in it is done for shock value – it tells real stories that hit close to home and raise questions. You can use this show to discuss all sorts of topics with your older teen, for example organ donation (the parents of the dead teenager agree to donate his organs), incel behavior (one patient named David is an incel with a hit list of girls) and the sacrifices doctors have to make.