merle tumbles

Ship and let ship

[merlepsblog]

Brilliant Minds 2x15

Oh man, I missed those characters. It's a bitter-sweet reunion, knowing the show has been canceled, but it's good to have them back for a bit and I think they did a good job jumping back into things. I enjoyed this episode quite a bit! Wolf: This is going to sound weird but I am so glad he's finally at Hudson Oaks. One of my main issues with this season was that they dragged the build-up to his institutionalization out for too long, so it's kind of a relief to see things actually coming together. Also kind of amused by the fact that after all the theories about whether Wolf would actually have a breakdown or go undercover at Hudson Oaks, it turns out that it's both - Wolf THINKS he's going undercover but actually he's having a psychotic break. (I do wonder about the ethics of Carol basically admitting him under false pretenses, but I guess if he's that far gone and it's the only way she thinks he'll accept help, she probably felt she had no other choice). Wolfnichols: Considering that they barely had any screentime together, this was such a good episode for Wolfnichols. Josh still thinking he was just a "blip" on Wolf's radar (aww no)! Josh being irrationally jealous of Brad and also Charlie (lmao)! Wolf clearly having a type (sweet guys who look like jocks)! And then Josh being so tender and careful with Wolf in the office, and Wolf immediately trusting him enough to go along with him, even in the state he's in ... I finally have hope for them again! (poor Beau though ... speaking of, where's Beau?!) Open Questions: (1) So where the fuck is Wolf's dad? Now that the Sophia mystery is cleared up, it seems even weirder that Wolf has been in and out of his dad's apartment for weeks while his dad is completely AWOL. Who is paying the rent on that place? If they can't bring Mandy Patinkin back, is it just going to be releaved that his body was found and he's long dead? Is he going to get in touch via mail? Will he just stay gone forever? (2) I think the most frustrating thing for me is that I still can't make sense of Charlie's character. The actor is definitely doing with the role the best he can, but we are two thirds into the season and I still feel like the writers never really made up their mind about who he is supposed to be. I don't mind that he's flawed or morally grey, but the thing is that he seems to have two different modes: (1) Dorky, slightly douchey, but ultimately nice dude and great doctor, and (2) Scheming weasely villain, and the two sides never really seem to merge into one consistent character.

[altaryel]

Brilliant Minds returns Wednesday

[merlepsblog]

Someone else on here recently said "You guys don't actually want a night shift version" and I think the last couple of episodes proved them right. Not because the night shift characters are not interesting, but because the thing is: if you are going to spend more time with the night shift, by necessity they cannot only be the cool kids that roll in to make sarcastic comments about the day shift. They are going to be flawed and messy - yes, even - no, in particular - Dr. Jack Abbot. And apparently that needs to be said, because it's been quite interesting to see people grapple with seeing Abbot act like the guy he was always written to be, not as the perfect white knight/white savior figure they made up in their head. "Abbot would have punched those ICE guys" - Uhm, no. Abbot would have asked Jesse if he "punched the guy," which is exactly what we see him do. No, that doesn't mean that he loves ICE, just like many cops don't "love" ICE. He might even use his connections, the way Perlah does, if Jesse was someone he personally cared about enough. But look, are we seriously surprised that the guy who is proud of his Afghanistan service and works for the local police in his free time would start with "What did he do to deserve that?" "Abbot would never be dismissive towards his staff, especially not toward a woman" - And yet, as soon as he's officially on duty, he has no problem brusquely ordering McKay around and referring to Toomarian as "the intern," as if she isn't standing right there. We can discuss whether he is justified to ask McKay to help out (yes, he probably is!), but he certainly doesn't go out of his way to be nice about it, and maybe it's not great that he is not bothering to address a new hire he's in charge of by name (especially when, in contrast, we see Whitaker actively introducing her and Al-Hashimi warmly welcoming her). "But he's so nice to Mohan and Al-Hashimi" - Yeah because he likes them. Because he possibly wants to bang them (yes, both of them). Because he has favorites. He jokes around with Henderson, he's flirtatious with Samira, he glazes Dana, but he is curt and impersonal with McKay and Toomarian because they don't ping his radar, simple as that. "Abbot will sneak out and disassemble Robby's bike" - Yes, that was a nice thought and made for a lovely running joke, but no, he was really just talking to admin when he disappeared for an hour, not taking steps to make Robby stay. Now Dana is basically begging him on her knees to intervene and he is still reluctant to act. Dana is pushing Robby. McKay is willing to push Robby. Duke is ready to push Robby. Abbot actively needs to be pushed.

And that's to be expected, because ultimately, he and Robby are way, way more similar than a lot of people want to admit. They both play favorites. They both have "their guys." They both have a lot of unexamined bias. They both are attracted to women of color while being complicit in their structural oppression. They both have a temper when they are irritated. They are "two white old men poaching” Shen and Ellis' patient. They are both severely traumatized and cope with it in harmful ways. They are both determined to suppress their feelings until it kills them. Maybe literally.

And that's fine - that's what makes them interesting, complex characters. But at the end of the day, they are two middle-aged guys with a lot of manpain who were thought up by other middle-aged guys in a writers' room, and if you already can't handle Robby being an ass to people because he was abandoned by his mother and lost his mentor ... are you really sure you are prepared for an Abbot backstory that might tell us about how he became a doctor because he feels guilty for looking away when his Army buddies tortured a 12-year-old “terrorist”?

[ny-ji]

Actually.. yes, i still want it 🫶

All we're asking for is a good narrative balance, not sanitized characters

[monjustmon]

I personally have a stance where I'm not sure whether Abbot can carry a season of his own- because he is similar to Robby, but also different enough that he won't carry his suffering the same way, and his leadership is going to be, I think, very military style, which I think can be interesting.... for a little bit... but we must be shown how he carries his pain, and him being pushed to the brink, I believe, would indeed look like punching the fuck out of somebody or quietly actually making that jump (which I dont think The Pitt would portray), and him not being pushed to the brink is going to be very swaggery, as he usually appears. I get the impression he struggles more while unpressured, and I'm just not sure how compelling Abbot would be in a very critical day. The closest we've seen him in active crisis is at his introduction, where he glares at Mel and makes disparaging comments when she mentions being excited for her first day. Like. Even his crisis mode is still very steady if jerkish. Idk what could be done with that. Maybe give me an Abbot slow night, if that's possible.

I like my Abbot right now in small doses, but I am open to anything, because everything can be carried through with good execution.

I do like OP's post inmensely, though, because while I do think I have a slightly more rosy view of Abbot than them, I do become somewhat frustrated when people act like Robby is a mess and Abbot has to everything figured out. I love that our introduction to Abbot is literally him on the roof. We had a whole season to push Robby to the roof. That wasn't how we were introduced to him and now we think of Robby as our suicidal tendencies extraordinaire. Like yes, we explored that much more, and that was the focus of season two, but Robby is in active stages of crisis, this is not his baseline.

A lot of people headcanon Robby and Jack having this circular system of talking each other off the roof previous to season 1, but Jack says, "You're in my spot." This suggests to me that Jack is the one constantly being up there and Robby being his support system in getting him down. This is not a shared spot they switch their existential crisis at, not ordinarily. That's probably one of the reasons Jack was more awkward in his comforting Robby away from the edge than Robby is at comforting him.

If Jack can speak that freely and frankly about suicidality in the Pitt's second season to Robby, it is because it is something he is very very used to considering, and probably discussing with his therapist. That does put him at an advantage to season 2 Robby, who is dealing with an ongoing mounting crisis he does not know how to deal with, because Jack has already has made a choice to not kill himself and sort of understands dealing with his suicidal ideation as another part of his mainteinance.... which like. Does not mean his sustained suicidal ideation is not.... a problem. This man has had suicidal ideation that had him standing at the edge of a rooftop (maybe at the edge of streets, at the tops of bridges, there's so much we dont know) for months, if not years.

So when people write or talk about Jack as simply this cool guy that is always loose and composed and rolls with the punches... that's like. You fell for it. You fell for Jack's song and dance.

[merlepsblog]

I feel like I'm two steps behind but I only just realized that Jesus in Good Omens is also Alby in Half Man ... what an insane crossover potential lmao.

And for all the flaws of Good Omens 2&3, they do get points for casting an actual Palestinian actor to play Jesus, like well done.

Any recommendations for other things Bilal Hasna has been in? How's Layla?

[merlepsblog]

Is it wrong that really all I wanted was to watch Jesus recruit a gaggle of devoted misfit followers with the allure of free pizza and beautiful eyes and get lovingly railed by his buddies John, Simon, and Andrew in the backroom of their seafood co-op

[merlepsblog]

Between the Supernatural reunion on The Boys, the announcement of an animated Firefly reboot, and the Good Omens finale, all happening withing weeks of each other, I feel acutely like I'm trapped in some weird dreamscape full of things I once fiercely loved*coming back to life, but in, like, an uncanny way.

And after the end credits of the Good Omens finale rolled, Amazon started auto-playing the pilot episode of Supernatural, just to unnerve me.

[merlepsblog]

Who am I kidding, I would absolutely watch a The Pitt/All Creatures Great and Small crossover of Whitaker giving CPR to sheep and rabbits.

[kenyama12]

Dr. Nazely really deserves more appreciation.

(Second time trying this artstyle. I think I'm getting better)

(What happened to the quality?? 😭)

[merlepsblog]

This is a bit of an odd decision for me. First of all, supporting actors are typically expected to be in 50% of all episodes in a season, and he is not; he's definitely in guest star territory in terms of his appearances across the season. Perhaps more importantly, he is putting himself actively in competition with his two immediate co-workers, which will also contribute to splitting the vote both for the nomination and the actual award. People don't always have a choice in that regard - Isa, Taylor, and Sepideh, for example, can only run as supporting. If Katherine decided to run as lead, she would free up the field for her co-workers, making it more likely for one of them to get nominated/win. The opposite is true for the guys. Patrick and Gerran only qualify for the supporting actor category, so Shawn moving to supporting makes things more difficult for them. That's probably more of an issue for Patrick, who is most likely to rotate off the show first out of the three due to his character being an R4, so his opportunity to be nominated in the future may be more limited.

[merlepsblog]

Accurate reenactment of the Whitaker-Langdon breakroom scene (in the Babe universe)

View this post on Instagram

And instead of a pig, i'm picturing ...

[apfelkernchen]

Okay I love a good deep dive. And after Jack asks Robby in S2E15 “What’s in the fucking gift shop, man?” about Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump… I couldn’t help but wonder:

What is in the fucking gift shop?

First of all: the shop is called Napi’s Creations (since 2017) and they even held a naming contest to come up with it—how fun is that?!

It’s located inside the visitor center. And honestly? It looks kind of great. The whole visitor center gets a lot of love from people and even the gift shop looks really nice - at least from the one slightly pixelated Facebook photo I managed to find:

From what I can tell they’ve got a colorful mix of the usual souvenirs - jewelry, postcards, bags, shirts, dreamcatchers, probably magnets. You know standard gift shop stuff, but done well.

Now - there are older reviews (around 2014) complaining about poor quality. Shirts shrinking three sizes, that kind of thing. But that was before the shop was renamed in 2017:

Because after that?

Reviews from 2018 onward mention a shift toward locally curated Indigenous art, crafts, and souvenirs - which, I’m sorry actually sounds amazing??

So in conclusion: I think the fucking gift shop sells some genuinely cool stuff now and I would like their marketing team to get on board immediately and show us exactly what is in the fucking gift shop.

And Jack Abbot, man - maybe be a little nicer. They’re clearly trying.

[schrodingersregret]

Any of you remember this post? Guess who's now added season two?

THE PITT LINES AND SCENES DISTRIBUTION SPREADSHEET

If you're only here for the spreadsheet, there is is. Go for it. I'm going to go over the basic numbers of this season like I did with the last, and then we're going to compare the two seasons.

I'm not taking a stance in this post in particular, this is purely for numbers. If you want me to find more numbers for other distributions or things to compare, let me know.

I did twenty-four characters in total. Here is the first pie chart related to actual line distribution. In this I included the "other" category to account for the total amount of lines in the show.

The season had a total of 10.58k lines. This chart rounds to the point ones place, but the spreadsheet goes to the point tens, if you're interested in a more detailed distribution.

Our top five contributors (excluding other):

Robby - 14.8% of the total lines with 1.56k

Dana - 6.2% of the total lines with 659

Langdon - 5.4% of the total lines with 575

Santos - 5.4% of the total lines with 571

Whitaker - 5.3% of the total lines with 557

How does that compare to our scene total?

These were determined by the scenes in which a named character has at least one line. The character appearing in the scene does not count. This is specifically for speaking roles in scenes.

There are 523 scenes total within the show (if you want to know, 2x11 has the most at 44 and 2x15 has the least with 26). Again, full breakdown across episodes in the spreadsheet.

Who's our top five? It changes a little, but honestly, not much.

Robby - 41% of all scenes, 214 total

Dana - 24.9% of all scenes, 130 total

Al-Hashimi - 22.9% of all scenes, 120 total

Langdon - 22.2% of all scenes, 116 total

Whitaker- 22.3% of all scenes, 106 total

The fact that it stays almost exactly the same whereas as it did last season

I think this is all really interesting to me, so now let's get into how these compare to last season. All under the cut.

Here's where the cool cats are.

Alright, first we're going to look at the two charts side by side, and then into statistical changes between sesasons.

I love staring at these. It's a really interesting change between seasons, really.

Alright, on to the differences between seasons.

SEASON ONE IS HIGHLIGHTED IN RED. SEASON TWO IS IN PINK. IF THEY HAVE LESS LINES/SCENES IN SEASON TWO, THEY ARE IN PURPLE. IF THEY HAVE MORE, THEY ARE IN BLUE.

MICHAEL ROBINAVITCH

S1: LINES - 1744/17% || SCENES - 260/49.2% S2: LINES - 1561/14.8% || SCENES - 214/41% DIFFERENCE: LINES - -183/2.2% || SCENES - -46/8.2%

DANA EVANS

S1: LINES - 525/5.1% || SCNES - 122/23% S2: LINES - 659/6.2% || SCENES - 130/24.9% DIFFERENCE: LINES - +134/1.1% || SCENES - +8/1.9%

FRANK LANGDON

S1: LINES - 621/6% || SCENES - 117/22% S2: LINES - 575/5.4% || SCENES - 116/22.2% DIFFERENCE: LINES - -46/0.6% || SCENES - -1/+0.2% While technically he is up in his scene percentage, he is in one less scene so I still highlighted in purple. The change is just due to a smaller amount of scenes this season.

SAMIRA MOHAN

S1: LINES - 455/4.3% || SCENES - 107/20.2% S2: LINES - 402/3.8% || SCENES - 95/18.2% DIFFERENCE: LINES - -53/0.5% || SCENES - -12/2%

CASSIE MCKAY

S1: LINES - 560/5.5% || SCENES -89/16.8% S2: LINES - 502/4.8% || SCENES - 98/18.7% DIFFERENCE: LINES - -58/0.7% || SCENES - +9/1.9%

MEL KING

S1: LINES - 502/4.9% || SCENES - 119/22.5% S2: LINES - 413/3.9% || SCENES - 84/16.1% DIFFERENCE: LINES - -89/1% || SCENES - -35/6.4%

TRNITY SANTOS

S1: LINES - 534/5.2% || SCENES - 112/21.2% S2: LINES - 571/5.4% || SCENES - 104/19.9% DIFFERENCE: LINES - +37/0.2% || SCENES - -8/0.3%

DENNIS WHITAKER

S1: LINES - 473/4.6% || SCENES - 100/18.9% S2: LINES - 557/5.3% || SCENES - 106/20.8% DIFFERENCE: LINES - +84/0.7% || SCENES - +6/1.9%

VICTORIA JAVADI

S1: LINES - 300/2.9% || SCENES - 80/15.1% S2: LINES - 360/3.4% || SCENES - 85/16.3% DIFFERENCE: LINES - +60/0.6% || SCENES - +5/1.2%

Also because I know this is a character people will want to know..

JACK ABBOT

S1: LINES - 209/2% || SCENES - 42/4.2% S2: LINES - 219/2% || SCENES - 37/3.6% DIFFERENCE: LINES - +19/0% || SCENES - -5/0.8%

Alright, do with this information what you will. Also here's the complete list of characters in the chart.

Michael "Robby" Robinavitch

Frank Langdon

Dana Evans

Samira Mohan

Cassie McKay

Melissa "Mel" King

Trinity Santos

Dennis Whitaker

Victoria Javadi

Baran Al-Hashimi

Perlah Alawi

Donald "Donnie" Donahue

Princess Dela Cruz

Jesse Van Horn

Emma Nolan

Yolanda Garcia

Joy Kwon

James Ogilvie

Duke Ekins

Nazely Toomarian

Jack Abbot

Parker Ellis

John Shen

Crus Henderson

And some sheets include "Other" as a category

[helvyeah1]

“we shouldn’t be doing this”

[merlepsblog]

Gerran: I've had friends in the UK, who obviously didn't see the Pitt for a while but have seen the memes or whatever, go: "What even is this show about?" They've seen me depicted as cowboy or in various outfits, and they are like "You are a full-on cowboy in this? Why are you always topless???"

Gerran, about his UK friends experiencing The Pitt exclusively through Hucklerobby fanart (he also says a lot of nice things about fandom again) Via The Contending

[merlepsblog]

This is a question for the hivemind: Are there any interviews with Gerran Howell from his Pitt era (2024-2026) where he discusses his time on Young Dracula? I have seen a lot of interviewers bring up Catch-22 and Ludwig, bio blurbs usually mention 1917, and he himself has discussed Freedom's Path and Crusade in Jeans; his appearance on Casualty has been mentioned and even his role in an obscure 30-second public service ad about the dangers of drowning ... but I'm starting to think he implemented a speaking ban on the topic because how is it that he played the fucking title role in a BBC series for 8 years and no one ever brings it up when they talk about his path to acting? When you listen to Noah Wyle, you'd think he picked Gerran off the street like Henry Higgins did with Eliza Doolittle, and Gerran just keeps telling everyone about his mom's friend who cast him as background actor in school productions. What am I missing? Is there some weird lore or BTS drama attached to that series to make it a taboo topic somehow? Initially I just thought it was just because, well, Americans and their ignorance of European media, but now Gerran keeps being interviewed in the UK and I haven't really seen anyone mention it there either. Someone please help me not feel like a conspiracy theorist anymore.

[merlepsblog]

Platonic here, inappropriate there, no but actually the funniest thing about the Whitaker-Amy situation is that these two pictures are just ten months apart. Amy lost the "love of her life," had a baby, and is at risk of having to sell her home, but ten months of hanging with Whitaker was enough to transform her from a devout, staid woman in the most unflattering 1970s maternity blouse into a fashionable smiling young person with a proper haircut. She even dyed her hair! She lost the cross necklace! That's the power of vintage funk! The avocado diet glow-up! Listen, I don't know if this is Whitaker stealthily queer-eyeing his new friend, or if his dick is truly magical, but either way this woman is living her best life.

[littlecrabstar]

omg she’s gonna owe him a favour in the big ole 2026

[merlepsblog]

Gerran: You know, "romance" is thrown around quite a lot, and I think it's what a lot of the characters assume it is. But it's actually a lot sadder than that, really. And maybe more selfish, you know? I think he's found an outlet to be of help, you know? And of course the homesickness. But for Amy as well. I think they have both found something they both lost, which is quite sad, and they just come together, you know. At least not on Whitaker's side - you know, I always think Is there some romance there? I don't think there is for Whitaker. Maybe for Amy, which would be even more tragic, you know. Maybe. I can't speak for her. We kind of had some discussions about that. But yeah, I think it's quite innocent for Whitaker.

Via AwardsWatch