mindful(l)

Those aren't the same claim. And I think the latter requires a degree of certainty that I'm not sure the text itself supports. Because one thing I find myself returning to over and over is that many of the ideas which have become central to certain corners of the fandom are, in my view, beautiful interpretations. But they still read like interpretations.

Samira as Robby's younger self. Samira as his true heir. Robby projecting his self-loathing onto her. His inability to articulate his admiration of her. Her craving his approval. Their relationship being simultaneously loving, toxic, and professionally harmful. His impossible expectations of her stemming from his belief in her exceptional potential.

These are all compelling readings, truly. But I don't think they're all canonical truths. Fandom does this all the time. We all do. We find threads; we connect dots; we construct emotional throughlines; we invest in possibilities. That's part of the joy of engaging deeply with fiction. But I think problems emerge when interpretations slowly become treated as facts.

"I think this relationship is central to the show" becomes "This relationship is clearly the emotional core" which becomes "The writers abandoned their own story" which eventually becomes "The writers have revealed their misogyny".

And somewhere in that progression, what began as an interpretation becomes transformed into a moral accusation. I think that's what I've found difficult. Not criticism, not disappointment, not even anger. But the way in which creative disagreements sometimes become reframed as evidence of moral failure.

Because if season 2 failed Samira, that is a perfectly valid opinion (which I share). If someone believes her screentime was insufficient, or that her relationship with Robby lost complexity, or that the show devoted too much energy elsewhere, I think those are entirely legitimate criticisms.

But I don't know that disappointment itself proves misogyny. And I don't know that every uneven relationship or disparity between characters necessarily has the same explanation.

Take Whitaker, for example.

I've seen him increasingly reduced to the "mediocre white man who gets rewarded". And honestly, I find that reading sad. Not because he's beyond criticism - he's not - but because it seems to flatten him into a symbol. His working-class background; his upbringing in rural Nebraska; his homelessness; his theology background; his anxiety; his mistakes; his growth; his deep empathy; his bonds with Robby and Santos; his willingness to meet people where they are; his evolution from terrified MS4 to confident R1. All of that disappears, and he becomes simply an embodiment of structural privilege.

Which, to me, feels oddly ironic, because a great deal of the discourse surrounding Samira rightly pushes back against flattening complex women of colour into symbols. Yet most of the criticism of Whitaker flattens him precisely the same way.

Likewise, Robby becomes 'latent misogyny'.

Dana becomes 'internalised misogyny'.

Gloria becomes 'the profit-obsessed Black woman'.

Al-Hashimi becomes evidence.

Collins becomes evidence.

Louie becomes evidence.

Joyce becomes evidence.

Everyone becomes evidence.

And eventually the characters stop feeling like people and start feeling like exhibits in a larger argument.

I also think some theories have become almost impossible to falsify.

If Robby criticises Samira, that confirms the reading.

If he praises Whitaker, that confirms the reading.

If he trusts Langdon, that confirms the reading.

If he doubts Al-Hashimi, that confirms the reading.

If Samira struggles, that confirms the reading.

If she excels, that confirms the reading.

If she receives little screentime, that confirms the reading.

If she receives more screentime, but isn't validated in the 'right' way, that confirms the reading.

And at some point, I start wondering what evidence would count against the theory. Because if there isn't any, then we're no longer using a framework to understand the text. We're using the text to reinforce the framework. And I'm not sure that's a partiuclarly healthy approach.

Perhaps most of all, though. I wonder whether some of the intensity surrounding season 2 comes from grief. Not grief over what happened in the show. But grief over the loss of the show people thought they were watching. Because I think many viewers fell in love with a version of the pitt where Samira was Robby's successor. Where their relationship was the emotional centre of the series. Where her philosophy of medicine would eventually be vindicated. Where his inability to express affection would slowly give way to recognition. Where he would finally acknowledge that she was extraordinary.

But I'm not convinced that 's the story the writers themselves thought they were telling. And I think season 2 exposed that gap. Not necessarily because the writers betrayed their own themes, but because audiences and writers were perhaps never imagining quite the same show. Which is disappointing, and disappointment is real. But I don't think disappointment automatically becomes proof of prejudice.

And I think that's where I ultimately land. Not that discussions of racism and misogyny should stop. Not that media criticism should be gentler. Not even that people should simply accept the show's decision.

But that accusations as serious as these deserve a degree of humility. Because the pitt is a show about imperfect people trying their absolute best in a failing system. People shaped by grief, ego, burnout, race, gender, class, trauma, hierarchy, and institutional pressures. None of these things operate in isolation. And I think our criticism should be willing to embrace that same complexity.

Because sometimes I read certain corners of the fandom and come away with the impression that racism and misogyny are not being treated as possibilities to be explored, but as conclusions from which all other explanations must flow.

And, I don't know… maybe that's where I part ways.

"What's he doing up there?" Robby sighed. "It's lashing out."

"They only pay me enough to know so much," Dana said, making a show of turning back to her computer screen. It was easy knowing she was a Limerick woman. "All further questions can be addressed to the HSE enclosing a stamped addressed envelope."

The joys of being the department Clinical Director, Robby thought. He pulled his rain jacket on over his scrubs and headed back out into the grey early morning, dodging first the mini lakes that formed in the street outside anytime it rained for more than an hour straight, and then the little huddle of HCAs gathered under the entrance to the multi-storey. He pretended he didn't see they were smoking on hospital grounds just the same way that the senior management team pretended not to see all the structural work that needed to be done around here.

"How are ye?" Robby said with a nod as he passed them; he got an answering chorus of "Grand, Dr Robby, and yourself?"

He climbed the three flights of stairs up to the roof level, feeling every year of his age during the climb, and winced as he left the stairwell to be hit in the face by a burst of mizzle. A jacket couldn't do much for you when the rain was coming at you horizontally. Jack—standing over near a red Nissan Micra that Robby was fairly sure belonged to Mateo—didn't seem to be paying any mind to the weather.

"Well, Jack," Robby called across to him.

"What are you doing here?" Jack said without turning around.

"Some would say I'm working," Robby said. "And yourself?"

"Ah, I don't know." Robby sidled up next to him, and judging by how red-rimmed Jack's eyes were, he'd say it wasn't just that Jack's cheeks were wet because of the rain. "The mam of the O'Shea lad came in last night. Had a Mass card for me and said she hoped I'd come to the month's mind and that the whole family wanted me to know they appreciated what we'd done for him."

Robby winced. Some patients hit you harder than others. That was how it went. When it was a healthy fourteen-year-old who keeled over in the middle of a GAA match because of a previously undetected congenital heart defect, well, you tried your best no matter how hopeless you knew it was. Jack had managed to get sinus rhythm back twice, because he was one of the most skilled doctors Robby had ever met. He'd tried his very best, and the chap had still died, and that was a blow like a physical thing.

"Not something I want to be thanked for, you know?"

"You wouldn't be the better of it," Robby said lightly, because it wasn't so much that he agreed as that he didn't disagree, and he didn't want to be having a familiar, circular argument in a multi-storey car park at half seven of a morning. "Now can I interest you in not freezing our bollocks off up here?" He nodded in the direction of the white concrete bulk of the main hospital. "There's tea over there."

"Ah, sure go on, yeah," Jack said, and he was making a show of reluctance, playing at humouring Robby, but Robby could tell that he was just tired. He could see it in the dark circles under his eyes; in how his accent grew stronger, flattening out his vowels beneath the weight of watery Midlands bogs. Not to mention that this couldn't be good for Jack's leg.

As they headed for the stairwell, Jack said, "Some days I do wonder if I'm cracked to stay here and keep doing this. I could walk into a job at one of the private places, reel in all them sweet VHI euros. Or sneak in with all the junior doctors and head off to Australia."

Robby scoffed. "You'd miss the go of it here. The glamour. The chance of seeing your workplace on an episode of Prime Time." He looked sidelong at Jack as they crossed the street through the slackening rain, and said, half-sly, half-earnest, "Me."

"Ah, would you ever whisht," Jack said as they walked back through the automatic doors that led to A&E, and surely it was the blast of hot air from the heater mounted overhead that put that sudden tinge of pink into Jack's cheeks.

Or maybe it was the sight of a patient dancing around the waiting area, stark bollock naked and waving the county flag over his head. "Next year in Croker! Hon the lads!" he slurred in a way that said he'd probably come straight from a lock-in at Kavanagh's. Ossified, Robby's Bubbe would have said. You could practically see the alcohol fumes coming off him, like how a cartoon character would emanate waving lines.

"For feck's sake," Robby said, planting his hands on his hips.

"Or," Jack said contemplatively, eyeing the chaos as a small team of staff tried to corral the naked man into a side room, "the two of us could make a break for it."

It was Robby's turn to feel his face heat; there was something in Jack's tone that he could have sworn was Jack asking a question. "I thought you normally had your existential crises on the far side of a bank holiday weekend, not before it."

"Eh," Jack said, shrugging, watching Robby out of the corner of his eye, "sure there's maybe something to be said for trying out new things. That and tea."