We need more night shift like Dr. Shen needs his Dunkin’.
Photo: Warrick Page/HBO Max
For two seasons now, The Pitt has left fans clamoring for a season or spinoff focused on the night shift and, for two seasons now, has denied us. Noah Wyle recently said at a Paley Center event for The Pitt’s season-two finale, “You’re getting just enough night shift. You don’t want any more. You think you do, but you don’t,” and, well, I disagree, and so do all the viral tweets about Dr. Shen’s Dunkin’, Dr. Abbot’s compassionate leadership style, and Mateo’s beard. In fairness to Wyle, going all in on a night-shift season would turn The Pitt into an entirely different show, and relegating it to a spinoff would probably mean getting less night shift on The Pitt proper and no one wants that. But that doesn’t mean we can’t have more night shift in season three, and if the show were to give us that, it would shake itself out of a formula that’s in danger of turning from reliable to rote.
So far, The Pitt has maintained a certain format: The season starts at 7 a.m. and ends at 9 p.m., is synced to the day shift, and rarely leaves the confines of the ED. A normal shift is 12 hours, but the mass-shooting event of season one and Robby’s delayed departure for his motorcycle trip in season two have justified the narrative’s extended length of 15 episodes. All these constraints on the story line add to our sense of immersion, as if we’re pacing the hallways alongside Dana and feeling the same lengthy wait times as the patients. But The Pitt can keep these self-imposed limitations in place while also avoiding a potential storytelling plateau by stretching season three deeper into the night shift and, in the process, give viewers the added dose of Nightcrawlers they so desperately crave.
The Pitt’s established storytelling structure follows Robby over a workday and lets his interactions with his patients and co-workers guide the narrative forward, for better and for worse. What else can The Pitt do, and who else can it center? This is the perfect time to expand the series’ timeline and find out. Those final hours of the season when the night-shift staff arrives always feel like a gust of fresh air blowing into the ED, revealing unexpected contours of certain characters and new dynamics. Did you know Dr. Al-Hashimi could speak Armenian before she started gabbing with night-shift intern Dr. Nazely Toomarian (Sofia Hasmik)? Or that Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) gives his crew a pep talk each night? These little sprinkles of personality are gratifying for viewers, and the show could use its third season to capitalize on the audience’s excitement about what the night shift brings to Pitt. Rather than committing to the established rhythm of starting the season at 7 a.m., it could start at, say, noon, with our day-shift characters already in the middle of their daily workflow, and then progress from there, giving us a 15-hour shift that would end at 3 a.m., right when the night shift begins to settle down.
To whatever increment The Pitt can adjust the clock forward, it should do so and experiment with a new way to launch us into a day at PTMC. Do we really need to see Robby’s commute for a third time? We do not. The show could better serve its world-building by giving us more of what the night shift deals with — “the weirdest and the wildest” cases, as Dr. Abbot says when hyping up his staff in the season finale, “9:00 P.M.” — and showcasing more of its nurses, regulars, and secondary staff. Who is the nighttime Louie? Who runs the gambling board when Ahmad isn’t around? What sort of chaos ensues in the waiting room after midnight? There’s a whole other world inside the ED to explore if The Pitt would just let itself do so.
Extending the season further into the night shift would also allow The Pitt to more naturally integrate this part of its ensemble into the show, instead of manufacturing scenarios like senior resident Dr. Parker Ellis (Ayesha Harris) coming in for a deposition on a medical-malpractice lawsuit on a national federal holiday, Dr. Abbot being involved in a shoot-out while he’s at his second job as a field medic, or charge nurse Lena (Lesley Boone) being a death doula by day. All these characters, day and night shift alike, could be more fully rendered if The Pitt would start an episode mid-shift, throwing us into in-progress cases and seeing how the staff interacts and works together. There’s so much ground to cover, from how Dr. Abbot handles a crisis to what could rile the normally unflappable Dr. Shen and what exactly Mateo is doing with every minute of his time. (Every minute! Needs to be accounted for!) We know Harris has been bumped to a series regular and Ellis will switch to working days; making her a bridge between her old shift mates and her new ones would help further define the respective contours of day and night shift alike.
This does, of course, present the question of how to keep Wyle, the series’ inarguable lead, in the entire season once the night shift rolls around, but The Pitt has twice already found ways for Robby to stay well past quitting time and it can do it again. Maybe after four months away, he simply can’t bear to go home. Maybe Dr. Henderson winked at Abbot so hard that Robby has to stick around to make sure he’s okay. Maybe there’s a late-breaking nighttime emergency and the day shift has to stay on, instead of a daytime emergency where the night shift has to show up early. The season will be set in November, so maybe there’s a surprise snowstorm and everyone gets snowed in. There are options, any of which would create an opportunity for the night shift to play a more pivotal role on The Pitt. Can’t we all crawl together?
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