RECAP: ‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Episode 4 — “10:00 A.M.”

The bets are on in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4. The ten o’clock hour begins with everyone, including Robby (Noah Wyle) and Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), throwing money into the pot to explain why Westbridge is shut down. The bets range from power outages to Fourth of July celebrations gone awry, but they create a great lighthearted throughline for the episode.

Many patient stories keep staying the course. Harlow finally gets an ASL translator so her initial assessment can be done. There’s a wonderful exchange between Donnie (Brandon Mendez Homer) and Harlow here. As Harlow describes her symptoms, Donnie keeps directing his questions to the interpreter, until Harlow gets his attention and tells him that he can speak directly to her. Donnie takes the call-in well, apologizes sincerely, and then continues with his questions. In these gentle call-in scenes, The Pitt does really well.

Other things The Pitt does well is focus on some of the harsh realities of medical care in the United States. Orlanda and Lorrie Diaz both work multiple jobs but still don’t make enough to have insurance. At the same time, they make too much for Medicaid to cover the insulin Orlando needs to live.

The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 showcases how expensive life-saving medication can be.

More specifically, The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 also showcases how expensive life-saving medication can be. To afford it, Orlando tells Mohan and Joy that he’s been taking lower doses for his diabetes, but that’s how he ended up in the hospital. Mohan tells Lorrie that she’ll have Hastings stop by to discuss their coverage options and how the hospital can help reduce some of the cost.

There are a lot of great scenes with Joy (Irene Choi) in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4. Her annoyance toward Oglevy (Lucas Iverson) gets louder each hour, and it’s totally justified. When asked directly about a procedure they’re working on, Oglevy answers instead. Joy’s comebacks are killer, and Robby finds them funny, but it’s irritating that she has to deal with someone like Oglevy talking over her all the time. When she gets a cut on her finger and has to sit out for a bit so they can run some tests, Oglevy tosses her a smug look.

But karma comes for him later. His first humbling experience in the ER comes when he’s too quick to pull a shard of glass from a patient, even though McKay and Robby tell him not to. The patient almost dies, but when the coast is clear, Robby tells him off for not following procedure. It’s pretty satisfying, honestly.

Mel and Santos treat a patient whose case emphasizes the show’s lack of Black women doctors.

Santos (Isa Briones) is still behind on charting in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4, and Al-Hashimi warns Santos that if she doesn’t get caught up, she might have to repeat her R2 year. This sends Santos off for a stressful hour, and her irritation bleeds into her work. She and Mel work on a case of pneumonia. Throughout the diagnosing process, Santos is pretty checked out and keeps looking outside of the room, wanting to be at the computer so she can keep up with charting.

Mel calls her out, but also talks through her suspicions of what caused the patient’s pneumonia. It brings Santos back into the case a little more and leads to a wonderful moment of the patient opening up about her eating disorder. Mel asks the patient if she has any therapist preferences, and the woman asks for a Black woman, to which Mel says they can arrange that.

Santos congratulates Mel on the catch, and Mel points out that eating disorders go underdiagnosed in Black women, a fact that she learned growing up after doing a bunch of research on the topic when she thought she had an eating disorder. While it’s great that The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 highlights underdiagnosing among Black patients, it also emphasizes the lack of Black women doctors in the ER on the show.

There are some moments in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 that aren’t as smooth.

Louie asks for Dr. Collins, and Whitaker says she moved to Oregon to be an attending at a hospital there and also has a kid on the way, so we at least get an answer. But that still leaves Kiara, the social worker from Season 1, and Gloria on the upper management side, who haven’t been seen all season and seem to be off shift. When Black patients start asking for Black doctors, those character’s disappearances become a larger elephant in the room, no matter how accommodating the others are to their needs.

Even with Santos’ compliment to Mel, she’s still letting her stress about charting get to her in her interactions, but offers her support and advice on how to get through the R2 year, and suggests Santos start dictating her charts.

The other major case in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 is Mr. Samba, Whitaker’s patient. They perform a procedure on him that Whitaker wants to redo, but they also take readings from his back. He’s overly eager about this procedure and waves off Mr. Samba’s request to lie down again until he finishes taking readings. Whitaker’s guess was correct, and they’re able to save Mr. Samba from a serious heart attack.

There are some moments in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 that aren’t as smooth. Most of the time, the doctors’ and nurses’ movements throughout the ER are precise and clean; other times, they’re not. Whitaker asks Jesse for help with Mr. Samba, but Jesse says he has to help with a sepsis patient immediately. Then, not a minute later, Jesse’s walking into Orlando’s room to check on him. Santos’ annoyance at Whitaker also doesn’t seem to have a foundation to it, though it’s probably rooted in her stress about her charting, yet still kind of comes out of nowhere.

Still, The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 is another decent episode of this second season. There’s plenty of comedy throughout, with the bet storyline setting a lighter, more lighthearted tone for the whole episode. McKay asks out a patient named Brian, who’s been flirting with her for the past couple of episodes. There are also more hints at the Garcia and Santos relationship. And the reveal that Javadi is a TikTok star, and likely complaining about working with someone like Santos in her videos. The episode closes on the ominous return of Langdon’s waitress patient, the seriousness of which might finally get Robby and Langdon working together again.

The Pitt Season 2 Episode 4 is streaming now on HBO MAX with new episodes at 8 pm Central every Thursday. 

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