scribblin's and such

As someone who's been able to dive directly into s2 of The Pitt fresh off of finishing s1, it's been fascinating to see how Frank Langdon in recovery is somehow both seismically different from his pre-rehab self and yet still so similar in so many little ways. This man has clearly gotten therapized six ways to Sunday since the last time we saw him, something which (i) was very badly needed and (ii) seems to have provided him with a lot of genuine benefit and scaffolding for self-improvement. There are a number of different textual elements of s2 that can be used to exemplify this shift within Langdon, but I think it may be most succinctly captured by the difference with which he approaches patient care now as opposed to in s1; where before his focus seemed to be predominantly aimed at jumping between flashy cases at Mach speed, this time around he's actually making a real effort to be a thoughtful and considerate doctor writ large. He's consciously patient and attentive with the more "pedestrian" cases he's handed this season (beads-in-nose kid, eyelash glue girl, etc., and of course Becca) in ways that he almost certainly never would have dedicated the time or effort to be in s1, and what's more is that this shift in behavior doesn't feel jarring or disingenuous because of the morsels of softness we did see out of him in s1 underneath the layer of vaingloriousness that's now been stripped off. Langdon can in fact be good when he wants to be, and he really, really wants (and has) to be right now, both because he is a legitimately well-intentioned person and also so that he can try to keep what remains of his life intact in the wake of his dismissal and nascent reinstatement.

But. BUT! The core spark of that indomitable Langdon ego still persists into s2 despite it all! We see him bristle at Robby putting him on triage like it's something beneath him despite this being his first shift after the better part of a year away! He seethes when Whitaker intervenes with the med orders he tries to submit for Louis despite the fact that Louis was literally Whitaker's patient! He leaps right back into the saddle of trying to educate Santos from the position of a superior like it's nothing despite her clear misgivings and the ocean of bad blood between them! These interactions also carry obvious baggage on the part of the other characters involved so there's a lot of hay to be made from those angles, too (though not within the scope of the current post), and in the case of the last two examples, Langdon is also clearly trying to do what he thinks is the correct thing in his role as a senior resident - but that's what makes this all so much more murky and compelling. Full stop: Frank Langdon is not a bad person. He clearly very much wants to do good and be good. He wants to be a good doctor, and now that he's out of the miserable pit of active addiction, we are getting a chance to see that really shine to the fullest. But with that being said, Langdon's still got this kneejerk tendency to be proud and self-centered and reactive when challenged that clings to the way he handles things. If we want to wander away from the explicit text of the show a bit and engage with more subtextual elements (as well as some word-of-God from Patrick Ball), these tendencies are clearly borne from a gnawing existential anxiety that Langdon carries about needing to be needed and be seen as maximally competent in everything he does, which is a deep-seated issue that predated (and very likely fed into) his addiction. He NEEDS to always be okay and great and never falter. He NEEDS people to see him as excelling rather than just meeting the baseline. He NEEDS to get a A+ in hospital in order to live (sidenote while we're here: PBall, we are gonna need to take it out to the parking lot over your decision to put Favourite Daughter by Lorde on your Langdon playlist). And while a lot of the sharpest edges of Langdon's issues have been tempered by the 10 months of work that he's had to do on himself, these underlying kernels still remain, which is painful and wonderful and real! You can't take the bite out of Frank Langdon that easy!

In light of these points, I absolutely love the degree to which the show is letting Langdon's return to the ED play out in such a messy and half-cocked sort of way. Just as his addiction didn't automatically make him the absolute devil, being in recovery doesn't automatically make him an absolute saint, and Langdon's clearly still got a long road ahead of him both in terms of mending fences externally as well as facing up to his lingering internal issues. He's still frequently falling back on putting up a facade that everything is fine (hello, lying by omission about the state of your marriage!) and flinching away from reckoning with the full scope of the bad shit he did in s1 (hello, not acknowledging within your apology to Santos that the whole reason you crashed out on her was because she clocked your med theft!). I think PBall's quote about Langdon's s2 Achilles Heel coming from the fact that he needs to be on the front foot about everything INCLUDING addiction recovery is particularly salient and encompasses a lot about why he's still tripping up the way he is. It's an INCREDIBLE choice to have him insist in the midst of his apology to Mel that his addition never affected his work (because my man, please be so for real, it definitionally did)! It's an AGONIZING choice to have him so doggedly determined to foist an apology on Robby that he literally ends up cornering him screaming on the helipad! It's a DIABOLICAL choice to have him start snapping at Santos again in the midst of attempting to apologize to her because of the fact that she flat-out refuses to buy that he's genuinely trying to be better (which is a whole separate issue btw)! Despite the aforementioned therapization, this man is clearly still so bad at sitting with any feeling of inadequacy or rejection, and at the end of the day those feelings are literally inevitable in his present situation. Like yes, Langdon absolutely deserves an honest chance for healing and growth, and yes, addiction is a disease and not some sort of moral stain on his soul, but there are also things he did during active addiction that other people are under no obligation to forget or forgive. Santos may never forgive him for how awfully he treated her on her first day when he was supposed to be her teacher! Robby may never forget the venom Langdon spat at him in the ambulance bay when he knew Robby was vulnerable! Albeit alluded to off-screen, his relationship with his wife may now be damaged in a way that can't be repaired! He's going to have to forever carry the knowledge that he was stealing medication from the very patients whom it was his duty to help! The kicker within all of these things is that they epitomize the sort of failure that Langdon may never really be able to walk back - and while he may claim that he gets this (like he does while arguing with Santos), this concept is also fundamentally anathema to his personal suite of perfectionistic neuroses.