The Pitt vs the oddball fandom
Back in 2024, Hotel Art Thief (which is actually the digital creative duo Michael Kandel and Joe Miciak) published a video mock-up of what The Bear would look like as a video game.
Hotel Art Thief has caught the Internet’s attention again this weekend with their take on HBO Max hit show The Pitt as a video game.
It isn’t clear yet whether there is a karaoke competition featured in the game, but there are lots of opportunities to “be strong for Dr Robby.”
The first season of The Pitt was quite obviously a hit for HBO Max, but it really feels like the show has entered that higher level of zeitgeist success where we are now seeing fan-driven projects like this out in the world.
Fan engagement with The Pitt has increasingly become a bigger element of the discourse around the show, which I think speaks to it being elevated from “TV success” to that next strata of cultural impact that we have seen from streaming shows like The Bear, Game of Thrones, Squid Game, etc.
A buzzy article from last week was a piece by Chicago Times TV critic Nina Metz who wrote on her own blog about the oddity of The Pitt uberfans and the difficulty many of them have separating head canon and what they expect from the show vs what the show is actually about and actually delivers.
So it’s been fascinating to see that a certain segment of viewers have a very different relationship with the show. This would be the “fandom,” who have strong opinions about how the narratives unfold and how the characters are written.
What’s going on?
On one hand, this reaction is a mark of the show’s quality; people have become so invested in the ensemble — playing an assortment of doctors, doctors-in-training, nurses and other hospital staff — that it matters what happens to them in this fictional world. Conversations on social media analyzing these narrative choices aren’t a bad thing.
Some of it, however, is … odd. Confidently asserted — hooboy, the confidence is something — but odd, nevertheless.
Such as:
By far, the weakest aspect of the writing in “The Pitt” Season 2 is that we only have 2 episodes left and we STILL don’t know the PittFest shooter’s name and motive.
Right … because this information isn’t relevant to the stories “The Pitt” is interested in telling. The show is focused on the experiences of patients and staff in the hospital on one specific day. That’s what we get. We’re left to infer the rest. That’s OK!
Another comment:
Remember the water park slide collapse and how we thought the ER was going to overflow with victims and it just... didn’t and then that plotline was completely done within like 20 min? Yeah.
Why should this storyline overtake the remaining season? People were injured due to the collapse, and then the ride was presumably shut down. It’s believable that the tragedy would be contained to a handful of people.
It isn’t clear where Metz pulled those comments from. I can’t help but suspect it was from comments on social network Threads, which seems algorithmically-driven to surface the craziest oddball thoughts on any given topic.
Metz also pulls a number of other quotes from around the place to back up her concerns about the weird expectations of fandom, but similarly doesn’t attribute them and/or where they are sourced from. It’s frustrating from a context position, but it remains an interesting article about the reception of the show.
One of the quotes Metz pulls is this quote from series star, writer, director, and co-creator Noah Wyle:
“I think audiences have become sophisticated in a whole new way when watching a show,” he said. “They’re watching the show that we’re making, and they have another show that they’re making. And when that show doesn’t align with the show that you’re making, they don’t like it as much.”
It’s actually from an interview with Buzzfeed and I think connects well with this very recent interview Wyle gave to THR about the second season and where it took his character. WARNING: Spoilers for the second season.
The team behind The Pitt got a real-life reminder of that halfway through the season, Wyle recalls, sharing that he learned from a friend of one of their directors that someone like Dr. Robby in his hospital, “who had gotten everybody through COVID and had been really an amazing figure,” went home one night and shot himself.
Wyle and the Pitt cast taped a message to the hospital staff saying they were thinking of them, and the experience amplified the importance of the story they were telling.
“That just underscored, to me, like how tragic [it] would be if Robby went through with it,” Wyle says, finding himself thinking, “We need to really explore this. We really need to take this all the way down to the studs to shout our comment.”
Portraying that, though, Wyle says was “a fairly unpleasant headspace to occupy every day, 12 hours a day, from that same emotional place that you left the day before.”
And he says it involved “fine brush work” to slowly reveal Robby’s state of mind across the season.
“You really want to make sure you’re not letting out too little or too much,” he says. “And you certainly don’t want it to seem like it’s getting gratuitous. That was my big fear. You can’t show too much in all these episodes, because it slips away at the professionalism. It becomes a little bit like, ‘OK, enough already’ to an audience member that’s very sophisticated, jaded and thoughtful.”
As for the significance of that final scene with baby Jane Doe, Wyle says it was not only “appropriate” to end the season with his character with that “innocent, abandoned life,” but also that it gives Robby the chance to “be able to tell a dark secret to somebody who can’t repeat it, who can’t respond to it, in a room that is almost hallowed ground for this kind of emotion.”
This highlights the obvious disconnect between what the show’s creatives are interested in exploring vs the fairly surface-level concerns of an audience just seeking answers to some of the questions raised in the course of treating patients. But where my eyebrows raised in that quote was with the thoughtful Wyle discussing how far into that darkness is appropriate for a TV show to explore, balancing the need to give the subject matter weight, while also keeping it light enough for an audience who appreciate the idea of it, but don’t want to get into the depression with Dr Robby themselves.
It’s a similar balance that needs to be struck between maintaining the integrity of the show and just giving the audience what they want. Which is why we’re probably not going to see a The Pitt: Night Shift spin-off anytime soon.
That said, I wouldn’t object to seeing the show flip the narrative one season with a focus on the night shift, bookended by a couple of episodes featuring the day shift.
News Desk
Jessica Chastain says that her Apple TV show The Savant, which was delayed for reasons of political concern back in September will see a release later this year (likely July). I’ll have to dust off the review that I was set to publish… hopefully I won’t have to watch it again. Read: Variety
Reginald Hudlin is developing a TV series for King Features based on The Phantom. There’s so much potential for The Phantom on screen that has never been properly mined. Read: Variety
The visual design team that keeps all of the Marvel TV shows and movies looking so boringly consistent are among those losing their jobs as part of the massive Disney layoffs announced last week. Read: Polygon
Work on the Scooby-Doo anime TV show Go Go Mystery Machine is still ongoing – it had been announced two years ago. Read: Bleeding Cool
Ethan Embry (That Thing You Do, Empire Records) has joined the cast of Prime Video show Cross for season three. I have just realised I haven’t really seen him on anything I have seen (which isn’t to say he hasn’t been working) since the early 00s. He got old – good thing that didn’t happen to me… Read: Deadline
Netflix stock fell 10% on Friday with Wall Street analysts raising questions about the future direction of the business following the rejection of the Warner Bros deal. Not an unreasonable question, Wall Street finance bros. Read: Deadline
Trailer Park
Glory debuts on Netflix May 1.
In a small-town boxing hub, two brothers investigate a shocking murder while navigating a troubled reunion with their father, a renowned coach.
The final trailer for the movie continuation of The Mandalorian has debuted. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu debuts in cinemas May 22.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
Consider becoming a paid supporter of Always Be Watching.
Connect with Dan on Bluesky. Connect with Dan on Letterboxd. Connect with Dan on Linkedin. Challenge him on the NYT word game Crossplay. Email Dan @ alwaysbewatching.com or just reply to this email.
