i’ve been thinking a lot about whitaker’s presence this season. and the more i do, the more it feels like a very weird choice to make whitaker an outlier when it comes to the responsibility he has, how little he messes up and how little he struggles. and how that makes zero sense in a character viewpoint but also in a residency and realism sense.
besides louie’s death, there are two main things he is shown to struggle with this season. creating boundaries with amy and wanting to help everyone, and confidence issues like with langdon and sometimes with santos. none of those are patient care related; when in season one, all of his insecurities and struggles were related to patients and the work he does. and that means that somehow, in the 10 months that he has been doing rotations elsewhere and has been busy graduating, including the mere four days he’s been an intern, that this aspect of him has completely changed.
because whitaker is not at all portrayed like an intern this season, especially not an intern who started less than a week ago. he helps louie almost all by himself, he takes the med students with him, leads a speech when a patient dies, comforts santos, catches a posterior stemi, gives ogilvie and javadi career advice, and doesn’t really ever fuck up majorly besides the impending death of louie, which was not caused by a clear mistake he made. and compared to santos last season, and even nazely this season, i’m asking myself why there is such a big gap between them and him when it comes to the knowledge that we see on screen, and what the show wants us to know about how an intern functions.
he’s written like a resident much further along in his education. at least, he is given the responsibility, teaching skill, and independence of one. and even then, he doesn’t mess up nearly as much as anyone else. santos is struggling a lot more than him, so is samira. why is he not having any issue with starting residency, when residents above him struggle more? most of the things he’s doing when it comes to patient care and the sudden maturity he has gained, are not compatible with the fact that he’s just begun his residency, and with the way he was portrayed last season.
why does he save the day with an incredibly easy solution when nazely can’t figure out a case? why is he this wise man all of the sudden? if they were trying to make him a product of robby’s favouritism, they surely didn’t paint that as a bad thing. whitaker doesn’t crumble under robby’s pressure, or has a fall from grace. a lot of people were expecting that based on the crazy amount of trust, independence and teaching abilities he is given and allowed. but the realism regarding residency is bent around whitaker to get him to thrive, while realism is bent the other way around to have people like samira suffer. it doesn’t make sense. he barely messes up as an intern and is confident in teaching others, but the senior resident misses something big?
and it just tells me that the writers are using the realism line as their way to bend the story the way they wish, without having to acknowledge the biases present. yeah, it is realistic for medicine to be racist and misogynistic, and it is realistic for white men to have an easier time compared to women of colour. but this is not a thing the show makes into a point. not like they have shown to be able to do with other forms of discrimination and marginalisation. they don’t make him being confident into a thing of privilege, or samira’s struggles as a product of her marginalisation. so it is very clear that this is not on purpose. if they had to acknowledge things like privilege in medical education, they’d have to acknowledge robby’s part in it. which the showrunners have let us know isn’t happening due to willful ignorance.
all of this to say that it doesn’t make sense for whitaker to be portrayed like this. it’s contrary to his character last season. on top of it being unrealistic based on the fact that he hasn’t spent more than three months at the pitt in total(because med school rotations are only 4-12 weeks), and that he’s only been back for four days. he should not and doesn’t get to have this responsibility, and the fact that he does have it with no narrative issue or struggle is indicative of this not being written for a specific reason. well, besides him being a fan favourite and being shipped with the mc of course(sigh).
if we compare his minimal hardships and newfound confidence to the amount of struggle other characters(mainly woc) have; it’s clear that the writing bends its realism to benefit people like whitaker and langdon, but disadvantages people like samira, santos and javadi. and so their scenes get cut while he gets more of them.
