#rant.

it's late so I'm going to go through this fast and sloppy but!

there is too much focus on Robby. s1 was a cohesive ensemble show but—as a person who has been suicidal, and can see exactly what Robby is going through—this is WAY too much from him. the grand emotional moments of this season have been reserved exclusively for him and Dana, which is a goddamn shame when they already won their Emmys. it reads as a craven push for MORE emmy noms, instead of spotlighting the other performers who also deserve them.

there has been actually nothing happening with McKay, and I also think Mel, Samira, and Javadi have been botched. McKay has not had any storyline at all, beyond a vague gesture toward a lack of dating life; Samira's has been an absolute nothingburger about flopping out of the ER, and Javadi's plotline with her parents feels thin. Mel did pretty much nothing until her deposition happened, and I didn't really care for the consequence of the Becca storyline—it felt like the moral was supposed to be "look at Mel overreacting to her sister having autonomy!", without any deeper exploration of why Mel was reacting that way. Every character she talked to onscreen shamed her for reacting, instead of acknowledging that being a caregiver is just, purely, emotionally complex and difficult. it's not black and white.

the lack of complexity as a whole has been my biggest issue, and the one I can't really get over. the biggest patient case of the season for me was the Black medical student who was diagnosed with schizophrenia. I felt like the show absolutely shat the bed on that case, turning a complex, emotionally layered issue—with how he was treated and sedated by the security guards and medical staff, how his sister was brushed off for her very valid concerns about his treatment, with how the history of mental illness was shamed and hidden by the parents—into a bleak little moment of Javadi sitting with the sister, saying "some families have a hard time talking about mental health." hmm, the pitt, I wonder why Black families might be reluctant to talk about mental health and trust the healthcare system that diagnoses it? could it possibly be because that healthcare system decided the right step to treating a young Black man having psychosis was sedation and an involuntary psych hold? no WONDER the parents never wanted to talk about it. the Pitt is communicating loud and clear that having a mental health problem lands you in a bare white room and a psych hold, never explaining what steps are being taken to actually help you. and in that whole storyline, not once do we ever hear the perspective of the young Black student telling his side of the story. not once.

similarly, i think it's weird and telling that we haven't really gotten Langdon's perspective as an addict. the show has done a lot of talking AROUND addiction, but I'd like to actually hear Langdon's point of view! he's having back pain that he now has to deal with without his go-to solution. the show seems scared to face looking at what actually drives addiction, as if by facing it you validate it, so instead we have a void where Robby and Santos and Al-Hashimi discuss whether what he did was a crime, instead of looking at why and where and how pain manifests as addiction.

related note to that: I thought the moment where Langdon wanted to buy something in honor of Louie, and Dana said "you have a support system, he didn't" to justify not doing it was DEEPLY fucked up. I replayed it a couple times to see if I missed something but it seemed like Dana was implying the reason Louie shouldn't have honors taken for him was because he didn't have a support system, and that was somehow a problem he could control. sorry that's not really related to anything that just left me aghast

not related to any of the above but dr. al-hashimi confiding her seizures to a colleague who has been nothing but disrespectful to her all day is an insane move. if it pays off in the finale I'll take this back but that was absolutely bonkers. why on earth would she do that? she knows she is replacing him, she knows he'll be gone tomorrow. talk to literally anyone else about it if you must, you literally called your actual neurologist, why are you confiding to an ER guy who treats you like shit?????

several other writing moments have just been dumb. a Black woman with POTS begging for treatment while in pain is going to stop and mention, to her white doctors, that it's hard for her POTS to be taken seriously because she is Black? you think a patient in deep pain who is dependent on her doctors for even a modicum of care is going to come out of the gate with that, and not think she's going to be retaliated against with even worse care? there seems to be a complete ignorance by the writers of the power imbalance inherent in being a patient, particularly a patient from a community constantly overlooked and undermined. they are comfortable naming the statistics, but not exploring why that culture is permitted to move forward, even while perpetrating it in the show by treating Black patients and families (like the one above) as difficult for having questions or normal responses to pain.

i've completely lost the plot because I'm so in my feelings right now about patients, and being heard when you're in pain, but I guess at heart I feel the show is not treating complex issues with the full complexity they deserve. i can think of so many other little beats this season where I went "wait, what? that's where you're gonna end that?", because it felt like the takeaway was the healthcare system is always right! without any deeper examination of why people would not trust it or how its harms can actually deeply impact minority patients