RECAP: ‘The Pitt’ Season 2 Episode 13 — “7:00 P.M.”

By this time in The Pitt Season 1, the emergency department was full of victims from the mass shooting at PittFest. The day shift was neck-deep in caring for patients as the night shift rolled in and immediately filled in where necessary. It wasn’t a typical switch-over between shifts. But in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, things are pretty normal, despite the computers being down for the past few hours and Westbridge patients continuously coming in.

In The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, the rest of the night shift trickles in, and the switch-over officially begins under more normal circumstances this time, giving us a better idea of how that typically happens while also introducing new night-shift characters. It’s not a fully smooth transition, however.

As the night shift starts taking over the cases, the day shift is left catching up on charts and digitizing all the cases they handled while the computers were down. While this does mean some day-shift characters get to stick around for a bit, it leaves them in repetitive conversations.

Whitaker (Gerran Howell) and Santos talk about Whitaker moving out again, something that had seemed to settle in the previous episode. Whitaker suggests that he can just stop by Robby’s (Noah Wyle) house a couple of days a week to make sure everything’s good. Santos still doesn’t verbalize that she wants Whitaker to stick around, but there’s definitely subtle relief.

The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 features the night shift, and tensions are already high.

Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and Robby have a similar confrontation in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 that they had in the previous episode, in which Robby emphasizes that he wants to leave the place in good shape, although this time he admits that he’s maybe not planning on coming back.

What makes Robby and Dana’s dynamic different in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 is how often they snap at each other, flinging insults and passive-aggressive comments throughout most of this shift. It’s actually a nice change of pace for them, a different side to their usual united front. But it does feel like we’re watching the same conversation unfold again.

The night shift takes control in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, which means doctors Shen (Ken Kirby), arriving, of course, with his iced coffee in hand, Abbott (Shawn Hatosy), and Ellis (Ayesha Harris) get to finally take center stage. But there are also new characters, like senior resident Dr. Crus Henderson and new intern Nazely Toomarian, to help fill out the rest of the night-shift ensemble. They each seamlessly slide into the ensemble, with the perfect, slightly edgier night-shift-worker energy the others bring.

Monica continues to be awful, and whether or not there will be actual consequences for her behavior is unknown.

As the two shifts intermingle, they pass along news of the ICE altercation and how Jesse and his patient were arrested. There’s a little update on Jesse: he’s likely to be taken to a facility two hours outside of town. It’s possible we won’t see him again, even with the hospital lawyers on the case.

However, there is still a lingering thread to this story, and it comes in the form of Monica, whose racism and xenophobia get more obvious by the hour. She turns her nose up at Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) and Nazely, who are speaking Armenian to each other. There are two hours left in The Pitt Season 2, and they better involve Monica’s quick and timely evacuation of the ER, preferably by way of Robby absolutely verbally destroying her.

There’s an interesting vibe to this switch over in terms of boundary setting. Compared to last season, everyone was keen to stay long past their shift, given the emergency. In The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, people like McKay, Javadi (Shabana Azeez), Whitaker, and Santos get visibly annoyed when someone from night shift asks for their help. Javadi tries to say no to an opportunity to perform a rare brain surgical procedure with the Chief of Surgery because she’s tired and overworked, but Robby insists she do it as a way to get her to believe she’s meant to be in the ER.

The mystery surrounding Al-Hashimi deepens in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, but comes a little too late.

It’s part of his mission to leave the place in good working order before he leaves, possibly for good, but it’s not entirely fair or realistic. He shakes his head at Mohan’s visible wilting of her belief in herself. He also finally clocks that something’s up with Al-Hashimi when she zones out during a procedure on a patient.

The curious case of Dr. Al-Hashimi is something that’s been mostly hinted at, with really one major clue, a few episodes back, when she called a neurologist. But it hasn’t been front and center yet, and having Robby notice and start questioning Al-Hashimi’s well-being in the last three hours of the season feels a bit too late at this point. Whatever big secret Al-Hashimi is hiding doesn’t feel like it can be solved to any satisfaction with just two episodes left to go.

There’s another great parallel in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 between Javadi and Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson), and between Season 1 and Season 2. By the end of The Pitt Season 1, Javadi was questioning whether she was meant to be a doctor, the tough first day and the exhaustion that came with it getting to her. But she came back, just as Robby emphasized in the final lines of dialogue in the first season: “Tomorrow’s another day.”

Ogilvie isn’t doing so well, putting his future at risk if he can’t overcome the shell shock.

The Pitt Season 2 began with Javadi and Ogilvie going head-to-head with each other, trying to one-up each other’s genius. But as the season went on and Ogilvie faced some major mistakes, his confidence dwindled, and the reality of working in an ER humbled him.

He scrubbed in with Dr. Shamsi on his teacher patient, but returned in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13, having lost that patient on the table. His far-off stare and indifference to his bloody scrubs are the quietest he’s been all season. Whitaker finds him and shares the story of the first patient he lost in Season 1, but the rush of the ER is what he loves about it. When Ogilvie doesn’t agree, Whitaker tells him to go home.

As Ogilvie clocks out, Javadi stays, performing a delicate brain procedure on Orlando. Who knows if Ogilvie will return for another shift, but the foil between him and Javadi is cleverly done.

The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 brings in some fresh new faces and reintroduces the night shift for a well-earned change of pace. However, some of the long-running story threads are starting to overstay their welcome as they start to hit repetitive beats.

The Pitt Season 2 airs new episodes at 8 p.m. Central every Thursday on HBO Max.

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