Watched The Pitt and ER back to back. One holds up way better.

I finally got around to The Pitt on Max and then rewatched the first season of ER for comparison. The Pitt feels so much more real with the single-take style and the noise of the actual hospital hallway. ER is good but it feels like a soap opera now with all that dramatic music and romantic subplots. Has anyone else noticed how much medical show pacing has changed since the 90s?

2 comments

2 Comments

hayden46613d ago

Neat little emotional beats" exactly - skip those and you see what a real shift feels like.

torres.sage14d ago

I saw a documentary about how ER actually influenced the way real hospitals handle trauma cases, so it was interesting to watch The Pitt with that in mind. The Pitt's real-time approach really captures the chaos of a shift, all that background noise and the doctors moving without any orchestral swell behind them. With ER, Michael Crichton was a doctor himself, but it still aired at a time when TV needed those neat little emotional beats between the emergencies. The 22-episode season schedule also meant they had to pump up the drama to keep people coming back week after week. The Pitt being on a streaming service lets them skip all that and just focus on the work, which feels like a totally different animal now.