The Pitt Season 2's Format Addressed By Star As He Describes Last Season 1 Episodes As "A Different Show"
Story by Dan Zinski
Noah Wyle teases how the final three episodes of
The Pitt season 1 “
feel different,” and discusses plans for season 2. Max’s acclaimed emergency room drama has indeed been renewed, setting the stage for
The Pitt season 2. The pulse-pounding series sees former
ER star Wyle back in the medical trenches, this time running the show at a busy Pittsburgh hospital. In an interesting formatting twist,
The Pitt season 1 takes place over a single emergency room shift, with each episode encompassing an hour of that shift.
Wyle’s latest foray into the medical genre is drawing positive comparisons to
ER,
and things might get even more dramatic as The Pitt season 1 heads into its final run of episodes, as Wyle recently teased a big curveball coming (via
AVClub):
We left the window open for season two [before getting renewed] because creatively, we all feel like there’s a lot more gas in this tank. All I can say is it’s sort of interesting how we released two-thirds of the season to the press. The last third is like a different show. So don’t make any assumptions and be prepared for where the ride will take you. I’m really, really proud of it. John Wells directed the first one and he directed the last one. I think it’s a very elegant ending.
Wyle then went on to talk about plans for
The Pitt season 2, addressing whether the show will stick with its current format, and floating the possibility of a time-jump:
Well, we joke that we should stay with the format. Otherwise, it looks like we made a mistake. You don’t want to admit defeat. If we kept with a 15-episode structure, there’s something really hand in glove with having it mirror a work day or a work night. I think for dramatic purposes, it’s more interesting to plot the course a little downstream so there’s a dark period that people don’t know what happened and we can play with that. This was a very impactful day. I don’t know that anybody’s going to have any more perspective the next day than they did on this day. I think we all need a little distance from it.
What This Means For The Pitt
Season 2 Could Be The Same, But Different
Wyle heads up the cast of
The Pitt and R. Scott Gemmill serves as showrunner, so comparisons to
ER were inevitable. While the drama reaches
ER-like levels on Max’s new hit show, the wrinkle of having every episode play out over an hour of a single 15-hour shift serves to distinguish
The Pitt from its medical drama brethren, past and present.
Wyle’s teases should prime
The Pitt viewers for an emotional ride in season 1’s last three episodes (not that the season hasn’t already been quite a roller coaster). As for season 2, it’s a slam-dunk that the show should stick with its format. Compressing all the action into a single shift not only makes
The Pitt feel novel, it also raises the series’ tension to a fever pitch.