This text accommodates spoilers for Season 2 of “The Pitt.”
For those who’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 serious 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 depart for a three-month sabbatical when an ambulance arrives on the finish of his shift. Contemporary off an intense argument together with his greatest good friend and night-shift counterpart, Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), Robby snaps again into work mode when he hears that the girl 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 accurately diagnoses her with preeclampsia — a situation that may have been caught sooner if Judith weren’t dedicated to a “free” and “pure” start with zero medical intervention.
So how does this connect with “ER?” Actual followers of that collection could 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 girl 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 loyal physician.
Preeclampsia is a particularly harmful situation in being pregnant, as viewers be taught from each ER and The Pitt
Okay, so to start with: what’s preeclampsia? Basically, it is a situation — based on the Mayo Clinic — that may trigger hypertension and “excessive ranges of protein in [the patient’s] urine that point out kidney harm,” amongst different points. The problems are quite a few and intensely 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 does not accurately 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 start, fetal progress restrictions, points with the placenta, and even “harm 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 does 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 almost full-term being pregnant — is affected by the situation as a consequence of quite a lot of fast elements. Nonetheless, one thing I need to stress right here is that this on no account implies that Robby is a greater physician than Mark or something like that; wonderful physicians can misdiagnose or make an ideal and fast prognosis based mostly on any variety of elements, and Mark’s incorrect prognosis 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” just isn’t 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.” In truth, Wyle seems in “Love’s Labor’s Misplaced” as medical pupil John Carter, who ultimately turns into a physician and, after working intently with Dr. Mark Greene, turns into a senior trauma attending on the present’s fictional County Normal 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” affords a fuller take a look at the lives of its physicians and surgeons as a result of it does 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” remains to be ongoing as of this writing, however I need to stress that these two exhibits are not the identical; the individuals concerned with each remained associates and located one other technique to work collectively. Nonetheless, it is fascinating that, in each of those impactful medical exhibits, a doctor is proven coping with a very harmful situation for pregnant girls … and we see the outcomes of their split-second choices. “ER” is streaming on Hulu now, and “The Pitt” is offered on HBO Max.
