Due to the format of The Pitt, we only very briefly saw any of the hospital staff outside of the hospital during its first season. The hit HBO Max medical drama takes place in real time, with each episode covering an hour of the one shift shown across the season.
The finale did see Robby (Noah Wyle), Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), Javadi (Shabana Azeez), and other members of the staff gather in the park across the street from the hospital for a post-shift beer. It also followed King (Taylor Dearden) as she picked up her sister. But executive producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells don’t see the show ever going home with the characters or leaving the hospital in a significant way.
“I don’t think we’ll ever go home with our characters,” Gemmill told TV Insider during Season 1. “I think what makes this show sort of special is that it’s all in the ER and that’s what these people are like in terms of when you go there, you’re there for however long, you don’t go home with them. You don’t know. And I think anything you glean has to come from the time you’re there. And same with the doctors. I don’t know, I think going home with them just becomes a different kind of show.”
That hadn’t changed when we spoke with the EPs at the end of the season.
“The plan is to stay,” Gemmill confirmed. “I think the stories are best told from inside the hospital, and I think that’s how patients see the ER. And that’s sort of our perspective.”
Added Wells, “It’s a workplace. You go to work and we want the audience to come to work with us. That’s the whole idea is it’s like a ride along. You’re just stepping in and following them all day long and seeing what they go through and experiencing what they go through. And so as soon as you take it out of that, you begin to break that covenant with the audience about what they’re going to see.”
What do you think? Would you like to go home with the characters, or do you like only seeing them in the hospital? Let us know in the comments section below.
The Pitt, Season 2, TBA, HBO Max