alt for da pitt

Jack doesn't do TEMS by accident. We're introduced to Abbot as a solider from the beginning. Before we've even had more than 2 minutes of screen time with him we hear Robby reading his letter to the wife of the vet they couldn't save ("...I, like Ray, am also a veteran...") then bookending the first season with his talk to to Robby on the roof ("That is what happens when you're in a war and nothing makes sense").

And that's what TEMS is for Jack! It's going back to being a soldier, to the familiarity of 'hurry up and wait' on the slow days and the life-risking adrenaline on the fast ones. Jack as a combat medic/doctor is uniquely trained and practiced not just in battlefield medicine but in being able to step back from himself and treat the people he's closest to. In the army he would've treated the injuries (big and small) of people he had met that day AND of people who he had known for weeks or months or years. (That is a skill not only unique to him in the Pitt but also very likely (part of) the reason Dana goes to him when she's worried about Robby, and why Robbys other coworkers, even ones that are close to him (Dana, Caleb, etc) can't quite bridge the gap of being able to help him, in fact they do the opposite and almost step back on purpose- because nurses and doctors are explicitly taught against treating their own family and friends.)

All that to say: Jack gets to recreate that absolutely vital part of his environment with TEMS. He knows those guys, they would've worked jobs together, they would've done training runs together, they're his brothers: and he is also the one that has to keep his cool and stay objective to run in and stick a jerry-rigged tube down one of his brothers throats under active fire when shit hits the fan.

As jack himself said, playing golf cannot substitute that.

I think if Jack was ripped away from doing TEMS (or anything equivalent) at this point in his life, it wouldn't be healing, it would drive him to the edge of insanity. His personal alternative to doing his badass doctor thing while exchanging fire would not be to join a chess club, it would be to start doing shit like robbing banks and doing cocaine and killing himself. And I think Jack knows that about himself.

Taking risks and seeking adrenaline is not immoral or a sign of mental illness and distress in and of itself (despite what tumblr may have you believe-), and I don't think that any part of Jacks healing has to necessitate him suddenly softening up and contenting himself with some risk-less domesticity, and it's odd that this has seemingly become the status-quo of fics etc about him. I think Jack doing TEMS /is/ the lesser evil for him, anything less and he wouldn't be able to find his own balance.

Last ep of S2:

"Because it comes for all of us man. You and I know it more than most. We see it every shift, but we can't let ourselves succumb to it"

-This is part of how Jack stops himself from succumbing to the it.

(As an aside, this is why I also don't think Jack is nearly as against Robbys motorbike as people think. He's worried about it because Robby has implicitly told him that he wants to die, and is visibly unwell. I think Jack would be worried if Robby said his new hobby was knitting- because he might stab himself in the eye with a kitting needle. The bike just happens to be the thing Robby might use to hurt himself.)

The Pitt doesn't do this. Its core characters are almost all deeply fucked up. But it is diverse enough to not have each of those characters be the only person of their particular group represented on screen.

For example, Samira has some major flaws as a doctor - caring but very slow, orders too many tests, can't take feedback, isn't a team player. But that's clearly not because she's an Indian woman. Have you seen Shamsi? She's efficient, bad ass, a little mean. Have you seen Victoria? She's young and smart and figuring shit out. They have flaws but their flaws are different. This helps show they aren't meant to be flaws of a group but flaws of a specific character. Samira's flaws are because she's a complex character. They aren't because the show is pushing a narrative that Indian women make bad doctors.

Did Baran continue to work an entire shift while having seizures then almost start driving? Yes. But are we meant to look at that and say people with disabilities have bad judgment and can't be trusted. No. So clearly not. We see Caleb, Mel, Becca, multiple characters with disabilities on screen. And we understand Baran to be a capable and compassionate doctor, the show goes out of its way to show us that. But it also shows her coping with shame about her disability and how that's complicated by the ways she has to navigate the workplace as a woman and as an ethnic minority. She's meant to be a complex character. We're not supposed to look at her and say people with disabilities, women, or people from the SWANA region are incompetent. If someone thinks that's the right reading here then it's time to go back to go back to elementary school literature class.

Likewise, Robby, a Jewish man with severe mental health conditions, should be allowed to be a complex character. Does he sometimes do things that are sexist? Yes. Is he falling apart and lashing out? Yes. And I think people have grasped that this isn't a statement abou5 how people with depression or PTSD are bad. There are other characters with PTSD, Abbot most notably, who handles his PTSD very differently. So we can see Robby's struggle as his own, as a complex character. But when it comes to the fact that he's Jewish, even though there are multiple other Jewish characters on screen, including Lena who is a caring death doula and nurse, and multiple Jewish patients from different racial and class backgrounds, somehow Robby becomes a justification for a whole load of antisemitic tropes to be dragged into the conversation.

I hate that the Pitt fandom sometimes makes me wish the show didn't make Robby Jewish. I want to be able to watch a show where a character is Jewish but isn't a paragon of virtue. I want to not have fans bringing antisemitic tropes to every conversation of this character or the actor who plays him.

I want to be able to see complex female characters and complex character from all racial and ethnic backgrounds and characters with disabilities represented on screen and be able to see them fuck up and be deeply flawed and struggle just like we've seen messy fucked up white characters on screen for so long.

Also we (fandom/audiences/anyone who's discussed the importance of representation and diversity in media over the years) LITERALLY fought and pushed for this kind of culture/show - this was the GOAL!!! (and my god did it feel impossible at times).

But THIS is what was pushed for: a show that doesn't tokenise its minority characters, so they don't have to Be their representation and nothing else, so they can NOT have their stories and arcs revolving around/constantly circling back to them as the queer character or the disabled character or the Jewish character - they can just be characters/people with flaws and interactions and arcs that are not all about one element of them, and so they don't have to represent an entire community on their own, they can just be individuals.

We (as fandom/audience) HAVE to let this happen! We HAVE to stop analysing things with the same perspective and language and attitude that we did in the 2010s because: things are actually finally changing and improving and going where we want and we have to go with them!!! We asked things to change: they changed! Now we have to change with them.

We asked for a show/time where every character could be analysed essentially the same way you would a cishet white guy (which is to say as what was considered the 'default' neutral base that was only influenced by backstory and current story bc he didn't have to be the weight-bearing pillar of an entire community desperate for representation)- and I am about to start begging y'all to imagine/do this unironically, because we are in serious danger as a fandom of undoing what's been done and actually projecting old biases that are trying to evolve and change back onto the things we watch.

What do I mean by this? Okay, solid example: I saw a LOT of fans arguing/complaining that the scene with Baran at the end of season 2 where she breaks down in her car after her shift and realises that she's not safe to drive due to her worsening disability was: all about Robby/that 'Robby made her cry'/that this was her realising that 'Robby was right' and it was 'vindication for Robby'. That right there? That is NOT something the show did. That is something the FANDOM did. That is misogyny perpetuated by the fandom.

The show: had a deliberate gap of multiple scenes/time to distance from Baran and Robby's conversation. The show also very deliberately took her/showed her: OUT of the Pitt/the ED/Robby's in-show domain/place where he still was (which it very very rarely does - this was an exception and a very deliberate and important one) so that she would be in a 'neutral' space/in her OWN space (her car) and in privacy/by herself so this was not being done by or for anyone else, or even so anyone else could witness it - this was a private moment purely for and about her and her coming to terms with her disability and the realities of her situation. It could not have been written/filmed/set-up to be more purely about Baran, and yet...

The FANDOM: made it about Robby. The fandom made a woman's scene and a woman's disability and a woman's story arc about a man. Because fandom is trying so hard to find instances of misogyny and bias (especially from Robby and/or Noah Wyle) that they are creating them where they do not exist/where the show has gone out of its way to avoid forging that connection/where that connection: does not exist. But y'all made it exist anyway. Because it's more important to some of you to have things to get mad at than it is to see and respond to what is actually there. So you see what you expect to see. You see what you WANT to see. And tragically what you want to see is the same thing we've been begging to get the fuck off our screens for YEARS now.

Check yourselves. Do not get sucked in to blindly assuming everything is an act of misogyny or racism or inherent bias. Yes these things still exist, yes we need to be conscious and aware of them and call them out and shut them down: WHEN THEY'RE ACTUALLY HAPPENING. We do NOT need to create bonus instances to get mad at/prove how on the ball and ready to spot Badness we are. Sometimes: a male character and a female character can have a disagreement on screen and it does not necessarily need to contain giant vats of misogyny. Sometimes it's just: two characters have a disagreement on screen and it can be analysed with just that in mind (which is what we GODDAMN WANT!!!!!).

Apply some goddamn critical thinking please. And that means apply it to: the things you are watching, and the things that people are saying about what you are watching. Go back and rewatch the scenes in question. Fact check. Actually start with the most basic 'what is it I am actually watching on-screen now and what is it telling me'. Not 'what do I expect to see/what do I think is going to happen/what do I vaguely remember based on what people have said' what ACTUALLY functionally happens on-screen?

why must his sad eyes compel me so

Slow and steady 💕

there are so many shots where robby is actively trying not to be perceived and jack is staring at him like he can't get enough of him, like every single microexpression robby makes is his & his alone, and i'm OBSESSED

even when robby literally isn't paying attention and jack is in a different room jack is looking at him, constantly assessing where he's at and what he's feeling, and it is such an intense and obvious sign of his love for robby (platonic or not) that i cannot stomach it

jack sees robby even when robby feels emotionally at his ugliest and he never even remotely flinches away from his desire to figure out what robby is feeling and it makes their dynamic so fascinating to me because you have two deeply empathetic, perceptive men who are hyperaware of each other (to the point where there are multiple times where they interact with each other or move to meet one another without even looking) and are not afraid of this obvious depth of love

*👁👁 intensifies*