(no subject)

[raven]

So mostly these days I am obsessed with The Pitt! I love the show so much, for itself, and because it's such a natural successor to MASH and other shows I have loved. I've said on Bluesky that it's the only show I've ever come across that really understands how teaching and growth and mentoring happen in a professional environment - fandom is full of academia stories, and indeed academics, and school and high school stories, but not so much the grown-up, affirming, important work of teaching someone to do your job because you, they and the job all matter. (What do I teach people to do! Not save lives. But it matters. I had a lovely, lovely email from one of my team before she went off on maternity leave that said wonderful things about my teaching, about what she'd learned from me, how her practice had changed as a result of me, at which point I had to go and lie down and cry for a while. When Robby says with emphasis, "This is a teaching hospital", it makes me think of it.

(Brief outline: Robby, otherwise Dr Michael Robinavitch, is a warm, scathing, compassionate soul who runs an emergency department in Pittsburgh, it's an ensemble cast of interns, resident doctors, patients, nurses and others and Robby is the keystone of it all in a tired, mentally ill kind of a way. Each episode of the show covers an hour, so the entire season covers a single shift. It's very good. Also Robby is played by Noah Wyle - and, as the show's executive producers lost a litigation against the IP-holders for ER, he is emphatically not John Carter. I love this. Robby feels, and is, beautifully imagined: a working-class Jewish man, who wears a magen David necklace, all because Carter was a WASP with a trust fund.)

I also love Trinity Santos, a brilliant lovely Filipina asshole of a lesbian, and Jack Abbot, who is Robby's friend and also mirror image - being to the night shift what Robby is the day - and also fascinating for himself. He's a former MASH combat medic which is what decided me for sure that the show deliberately draws on its predecessor. The Pitt isn't a sitcom, but it has the warmth MASH had; and Abbot, who is a lower-leg amputee, embodies some of its ambivalence. (And! In s2 they have someone deliver Henry Blake's "young men die" speech, with the same blocking as the original. I love it.)

Anyway I love this show. It is so rich and funny and so fucking human, all the damn time. Robby's PTSD is from covid, and his nightmares are of full PPE - and I was like, okay, do I want to watch this. Robby has PTSD from treating covid patients but my dad died from treating covid patients. But I did want to watch it, because it takes what it does seriously. I want to write a fic, about Robby and his suicidal tendencies, and the baby and Jack, and I also want it to be a daemon AU, because I am insane. I haven't written anything good in a year and like I said I am insane. Maybe I should just ask people to give me fic prompts.

Comments

[philomytha]

I keep hearing about this, and you saying it's like MASH is what has tipped me over into wanting to watch it, this sounds excellent <3

[raven]

aaaah I think you, specifically, will love it. It has so many of the things we both like. I would add a content note for you in particular tho: Mel, seen in musesfool's icon below, is one of Robby's residents and part of her story is that she's the guardian for her autistic adult sister (and part of the story is also that Mel is finding it hard to become someone who isn't just her sister's sister). It's intelligently and sweetly done, but I mention it.

[musesfool]

It's such a good show! I love it a lot!

[raven]

Me too! I love your icon!

[musesfool]

It was made by gwenhazel. This one, too!

[princessofgeeks]

It's such a good show. I am enjoying it immensely.

[raven]

Such an unlooked for delight. And I'm seeing HBO posters on buses right now which have Shane and Ilya on one side and Robby on the other, which is wiiiiiiild.

[goss]

Each episode of the show covers an hour, so the entire season covers a single shift

Oh, that sounds intriguing. I've been wondering whether I should check out the series, so thanks for the write-up about the teaching/learning aspect - adds another dimension to it that might be of interest to me.

[goss]

Each episode of the show covers an hour, so the entire season covers a single shift

Oh, that sounds intriguing.

I've been wondering whether I should check out the series, so thanks for the write-up about the teaching/learning aspect - adds another dimension to it that might be of interest to me.

[raven]

I do think you would like it. So much of the show is engaged with the specific task of teaching, and I think a lot of general media discussion of it doesn't grab on to that aspect.

[falena]

I love The Pitt! And your make a lot of excellent points about what makes it so great.

Looking forward to reading anything you might write in this fandom (but no pressure really).

[raven]

I really do want to write for it! Let's see what this weekend may or may not bring.

[msilverstar]

They jump right into the ensemble of smart, competent and imperfect people, finestkind. I do like that Whitaker gets to be less of a joke this year, and Trinity is still brilliant.

[raven]

She's so good! So underrated, I love how she develops (and I just love the run of episodes where she's asleep on a keyboard and literally everyone she knows is a dick to her 😂)

[asakiyume]

Wow, that sounds really really good. I love what you say up top about there being lots of academia stories and school stories in fandom, but not many about “the grown-up, affirming, important work of teaching someone to do your job,” and I really loved what you said directly after: “because you, they and the job all matter.”

And from your description it really does sound like a lively, various cast with various personalities and issues, and that sounds great.

Loved that your mentee let you know how much your mentoring has meant to her—people who take the time to do that are great human beings, and I’m not at all surprised that you bring that out in people.

[raven]

Thank you very much. This is a topic close to my heart - I was taught to do what I do this way, and my dad had his bunch of trainees who were always coming for dinner, and it's been part of the fabric of my life. A, my lovely mentee, honestly taught me as much as I taught her. (I think she found me, grumpy middle-aged senior lawyer, 100x more relatable when she found out how much I love Taylor Swift. 😂)

[asakiyume]

Ahaha, I love that you love Taylor Swift! I like her too. I'm very omnivorous, musically.

[troyswann]

I am a true devotee of The Pitt (even listen religiously to the podcast and bask in the wild level of detail they get into in the set design etc. The one background actor who literally stood in the same place at his "wife's" bedside for 9 months of shooting and how they do "rounds" each day of shooting to keep track of where each patient is. Just wild.). I totally missed the homage to Henry Blake (and am glad we didn't get a re-enactment of his last mention. *hands Robby his fricking HELMET OMFG*).

I just love how *hard* they are all trying to be helpful. And I would, of course, watch Noah Wyle in anything. I'm 5 seasons into ER and am there exclusively for John Carter, but I'm also relieved that they went another way with Robby. Damn, I think he is impossible and good and so in need of help, and is surrounded by people who will tell him that over and over until it sinks in. While I was never at his stage of the breakdown, holy heck do I viscerally feel the way he is just one tap away from losing his surface tension the whole shift. That feeling I know well.

And I so admire how committed they are to telling the stories of health care workers. The conflicts never arise because someone is evil--it's all about good people trying to fit all the broken bits of the world together as best they can, and sometimes the raw edges of those bits are painful.

If you do write The Pitt fic... well, I've already bookmarked it in my mind.

[raven]

I have written it now! 😂 Also I love everything in this comment, I was almost sure you must love the show already. Robby makes my heart just hurt, in the way the best of them do. So good and impossible and in need of such help! I am so, so curious as to where the show goes with Robby, who is, after all, their main character. Because it's not a show that believes in easy answers. They're not going to shove him into therapy and haul him back cured. I just. I have so many thoughts and feelings.

[longwhitecoats]

A wise friend once told me, "Write whatever you want!" <3 I would be delighted to give you fic prompts if you so desire. Also I would read the heck out of a daemon AU.

[raven]

Hey friend I would love Pitt fic prompts! And the daemon AU is sort of percolating at the moment, but I really do want to write it.

[longwhitecoats]

WELL if you would like more prompts even after your lovely fic:

- sequel about why Dennis is on PrEP? Dating boys perhaps??? 👀 Trinity would be the best and most insufferable wingman. Mel would be the worst and most delightful wingman. THEY SHOULD BE AT THE CLUB

- WHOMST is Victoria Javadi's hot friend with the good homemade dinner. do they smooch perhaps. Also tbh I would, selfishly, read many words about Victoria going into mental health care. Bonus Cassie McKay friendship times??? I feel like McKay needs a friend who is an adult but also still goes outside occasionally

- I'm so sad that Supriya Ganesh isn't coming back next season and now I yearn for a story about where Samira Mohan goes instead. Possibly also how she comes back from the burnout

- Apparently Katherine LaNasa originally wanted Dana to be a lesbian and now I want that for her??? I'm imagining Robby and Abbot trying to be Helpful™ in introducing her to the queer scene and it going very, very unhelpfully

- I know we only had Joy Kwon for like ten minutes but I ADORE HER and I want her to drag Trinity to AnthroCon. In my head Joy is, like, a champion-level cosplay creator and pulls hotties all over the globe who have no idea she's a doctor. Also I think legally you have to be bi to have those piercings

- I would also enjoy a story about Cassie helping Frank Langdon stay sober; sobriety friendships are, like, the foundation of society and there's very little written about it

- We know a lot less about the night shift but we DO know they are fine as hell and weird af. Zany "Nightcrawler" friendship times with Parker Ellis and John Shen? Perhaps Crus Henderson got his "Crus control" nickname because of cruising dudes? Maybe Parker used to date Yolanda Garcia and she and Trinity can go drinking about it?

- Also I would never be mad at a PWP about the Trinity/Yolanda situationship. Ramen in bed = A+

Hope some of these delight you, whether or not you write them! <3 Man this is making me want to run a promptfest for The Pitt.

[raven]

Friend you are on FIRE I would read 20k of any of these! Omg, queer Dana 😂😂 my head immediately fills with sweet late in life coming out, Robby and Abbot help her but so do the kids and it’s all SO unhelpful.

Also, I LOVE the night shift!! Why are they all so much better adjusted than Robby’s crew??

[dolorosa_12]

the grown-up, affirming, important work of teaching someone to do your job because you, they and the job all matter

This is absolutely the heart of it, you're so right!

[skygiants]

I have been meaning to watch this, and I will watch it, but until I do I have been having a lot of fun recently in conversations with other people who, like me, have not yet seen the Pitt but have seen a lot of Pitt gifsets trying to put together what we know about it secondhand. My tumblr dash tells me that there is a nice autistic woman and a man who looks like discount Sebastian Stan, and a mean lesbian, and the mean lesbian has some kind of emotional support little guy, and also Noah Wyle is there sometimes. genarti's tumblr dash tells her that Noah Wyle and Jack Abbott are there, and also there's a mean lesbian and she's having some sort of relationship drama. Together we're going to figure it out.

[raven]

What I love about this is that all of it, basically, is correct! Especially the emotional support little guy. My poor guy. He is also there.

[roga]

I cannot even IMAGINE how good that fic would be!!!

[raven]

Aww friend! I really want to write it!

[pauraque]

I've heard good things about this show, but this is the first time I've heard it likened to MASH, and it is also the first time I've seriously considered watching it!