The Pitt, HBO’s most-watched original series of the year, is in critical condition, and The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles is reaching for the defibrillator.
“It’s flatlining,” Coles told Obsessed: The Podcast host Kevin Fallon on Monday about the acclaimed medical drama.
The Pitt won five Emmy Awards for its dramatic, gruesome first season and garnered praise from critics, audiences, and doctors alike for its authentic portrayal of a Pittsburgh hospital emergency room.
The show’s viewership has increased by 50 percent for its second season, but Coles said its writers don’t know how to handle an audience of that size.
“I think what’s happened to it is that they have been taking too much advice from actual medical people about how to make it authentic,“ Coles said. ”You don’t want the authentic details as a viewer. You want f***ing drama, right? You want action.“
Importantly, Coles said, a show of this caliber requires “good-looking people” to hold an audience’s attention.
“If you’re going to put Noah Wyle in a show, the first thing we’re going to think about is he’s not George Clooney,” Coles said, “so you better give us something else, and that was a tornado of a show.”
Wyle, 54, who swept the awards circuit for his leading role as Dr. Robby, starred alongside Clooney for five seasons on the ’90s medical drama ER. Fallon and Coles agreed that the show missed the mark on crafting Dr. Robby’s backstory.
“He’s the lead character of this Emmy-winning show, and we know nothing about him besides that he rides a motorcycle,” Fallon declared.
“I hate to say this—and I think Noah Wyle is a good actor—I don’t think he’s a leading man,” Coles added, suggesting that the show would’ve benefitted from a more traditional Hollywood hero like Mark Ruffalo.
“I had the opposite reaction when the show premiered, where I was like, ‘Oh my God, I am so wildly attracted to this scruffy doctor man,’” Fallon said. “I was so into it.”
The show is structured around hour-long episodes that depict the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center in real time. Fallon said he grew tired of the structure, which the writers don’t always use to their advantage.
“That’s a big difference between season two and season one. You were like, ‘I cannot believe this is still the same day these, poor people,’” Fallon said. That’s how good it was. “Now, in Season 2, you’re like, I can’t believe I’m still watching the same f***ing day.”
“I understand they were trying to do something different, but now I feel like I’m trapped in the waiting room,” Coles lamented.
In the same interview, they discussed other famously disappointing second seasons, their favorite shows to rewatch, and why older shows were better able to tackle real-world issues.
“The truth is, these shows, I think, to work with a big audience, you need to have a much bigger soapy part of them. It’s about the relationships, and there just isn’t enough of it,” Coles said.
“I think it probably reflects on something HBO is going through, which is HBO isn’t quite sure who it is or what it is right now, and you can see it reflected in the drama,” Coles concluded of the newly acquired streamer.
The Pitt is available to stream on HBO Max. New episodes premiere each Thursday.
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