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Pulse & The Pitt -- a review

While I’m not a big fan of medical shows, I decided to give Pulse, the new medical drama on Netflix, a try for one basic reason: its lead actress, Willa Fitzgerald. She was memorable and charming as officer Roscoe Conklin in the first season of Reacher on Amazon Prime. She made a great sidekick for the lead character, vagabond adventurer Jack Reacher. Thanks to Reacher being a drifter, the series changes its supporting cast every season, leaving Willa free to get cast in Pulse as Danielle “Danny” Simms, a third year resident working the ER at Maguire Hospital in Miami.

Pulse starts out very good, with a major hurricane bearing down on the Miami area, and eventually rolling right over the hospital itself. The hospital, newly built, was designed to withstand massive storms like this, but that doesn’t mean everything is just hunky dory. Despite being protected from the hurricane, there are still major problems for the ER staff to deal with. And the episodes with the hurricane are very suspenseful, and even funny (two of the surgeons officially call the time of death on one of their cars, which was totaled in the storm).

The problem is that the hurricane storyline only runs about a third of the way into the first season of Pulse. And, once it’s over, Pulse basically devolves into the very sappy and stupid ’young doctors in love’ medical show that I’ve always avoided. Not even Willa Fitzgerald’s ample charms could win me over with Pulse--not even when she strips down to her underwear to go for a swim in the surf, thanks to the witless writing that discredits its own characters by making them do dopey things for no good reason. Although the Pulse crew deserves kudos for hiring real life paraplegic Jessey Yates to play Danny's sister.

But, just when I thought I was done once more with medical shows, along comes The Pitt. Not a reality series starring Brad Pitt (“You’ve been pitted!”), it’s another medical series, this time on MAX (coming out before the streamer abruptly decided to wisely change its name back to the much better HBO-MAX). The Pitt takes place in an ER at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. Noah Wyle stars as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, an attending physician in this ER, which is given the nickname “the Pitt” by its overworked, hardened staff.

And, right off the bat, The Pitt is just so much better than Pulse in many ways. First off, The Pitt borrows the storytelling formula of the TV series 24, in that each hour long episode takes place over the course of an hour, with all of the episodes in the season forming a shift in one day. This works incredibly well, showing that a LOT can happen in an ER within a single, exhausting day. The writing is also superb, treating its characters as if they were real human beings. Add to this the great acting from a solid cast, and the viewer feels like they’re spending time with real people, instead of Pulse’s hot bodied morons.

Fiona Dourif, the daughter of Brad Dourif (and who appears in an episode of this show as her father), shines as Dr. Cassie McKay, a single mom raising her young son, and who has a checkered past, which is implied by the ankle monitor that she's forced to wear. And, after seeing her talents get totally wasted on the first two abysmal seasons of Star Trek: Picard, it was also good for me to see Isa Briones shine here as Dr. Trinity Santos, an overconfident first year doctor who’s still very charming in her own brusque way.

There are no ‘hot body’ shots of the doctors, no stupid people doing stupid things because the only thing the writers know how to employ are tropes. To be sure, the doctors and nurses in The Pitt mess up just like ordinary people, and their motives and reasons are realistic, if not always sympathetic. The Pitt is gritty without being maudlin, and dramatic without turning into a soap opera (and it's also very funny, as well). Both the show and the hospital it depicts are great examples of how things work very well when the people running things know what they’re doing. I was pleased to hear that The Pitt has been renewed for another season. I'm looking forward to spending another shift with these guys. --SF

Pulse is available on Netflix, in their train wreck section, while The Pitt is on Max, soon to be HBO-Max. At least until that goofy streamer changes its name again.

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