This text incorporates spoilers for Season 2 of “The Pitt.”
If you happen to’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 might need caught a serious parallel between these two beloved exhibits throughout 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 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 accurately diagnoses her with preeclampsia — a situation that may have been caught sooner if Judith weren’t dedicated to a “free” and “pure” delivery with zero medical intervention.
So how does this hook up with “ER?” Actual followers of that sequence could have instantly related 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 totally 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 study from each ER and The Pitt
Okay, so to begin with: what’s preeclampsia? Primarily, it is a situation — in line with 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 intensely critical. As you most likely figured from the “pre” a part of “preeclampsia,” a type 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 embody a untimely delivery, fetal progress restrictions, points with the placenta, and even “injury to different organs” that may manifest in crises like strokes.)
The sufferers in these eventualities on “ER” and “The Pitt” are fairly totally 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 practically full-term being pregnant — is affected by the situation resulting from plenty of rapid components. 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 rapid prognosis primarily based on any variety of components, 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” is just not meant to be a sequel to “ER.” Not even shut.
For authorized causes, there is no 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 spite of everything, R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wyle all labored collectively on “ER.” In actual fact, Wyle seems in “Love’s Labor’s Misplaced” as medical scholar John Carter, who finally turns into a health care provider and, after working intently with Dr. Mark Greene, turns into a senior trauma attending on the present’s fictional County Common Hospital. Nonetheless, I must say fairly plainly that there is no 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” writer Michael Crichton raised some considerations about similarities between this new sequence 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 have 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” 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 mates and located one other option 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 girls … and we see the outcomes of their split-second selections. “ER” is streaming on Hulu now, and “The Pitt” is on the market on HBO Max.
