#johncarterthethird's takes

[johncarterthethird]

I am a little obsessed over Jack not approving of Noelle for Robby, alongside Dana. We've seen Noelle is totally fucking careless with Robby's privacy (sleeping with the TV on comment) and is often ...rather tactless at baseline.

Robby sharing as much as he has with Noelle is him being careless with himself. Jack knows it. Also they're married, your honour.

I know we're not meant to be normal about it but it's not just rabbot stocks up jealously; he disapproves of Robby being with someone who's so careless with him to the point that it brings out his inner 10 year old and he hip checks them hugging, right?

Even trying to ignore my rabbot brain rot, it's kinda fucking nuts

[johncarterthethird]

Doctor Al-Hashimi is being negligent in not supervising the resident she just met (and threatened) in using completely novel technology in creating legal documents, medical records.

I don't give a fuck how much you love Doctor Al-Hashimi, throwing Doctor Santos under the bus is not necessary in order to love her.

Is it Doctor Santos' responsibility to make sure the charts are accurate? 100% without a doubt. Of course she is. I'm not saying she's blameless.

Is it the soon-to-be-chief's responsibility to supervise the introduction of this total fucking garbage tool? Is she, as an attending, responsible for properly educating her residents? Is she fucking negligent for threatening a resident about negligent charts, suggesting she use a tool that only Al-Hashimi has any experience with, and promptly fucking off with nothing more to say than it's faster? 100% without a doubt. Supervising and training the residents is her fucking job. She fucking failed hard at it.

I keep saying this, but Al-Hashimi doesn't appear to have worked in a Level 1 Trauma Centre ED in the last five years. It is her first day in a brand new institution. It is Blow Your Fingers Off holiday. A neighbouring hospital has gone code black. Introducing a tool inherently unsuited to the realities of working in a L1 Trauma Centre ED (Al-Hashimi doesn't get pulled away every 5 minutes with cat 1 traumas rolling in via ambulance at her comparatively speaking glorified urgent care VA ED that doesn't receive medic runs at all) and refusing to train and supervise junior residents (who you have threatened) is fucking negligent.

We've seen Al-Hashimi shown to be both questionably qualified for this particular job and deeply skilled. She's there to do administrative overhaul while Robby's gone; that's why she was chosen. She wasn't chosen because she's a L1TC expert clinician and teacher. I think that her vastly different skills and experiences make for a really interesting character. I think she's a fucking brilliant character. I like her personality. We're six episodes in to season 2 and I'm waiting with bated breath to see how her arc unfolds and what more we'll see.

I will state again that yes, Santos should know better, but what happened with the errant appendectomy note is 100% completely foreseeable and it's why training, again on novel techniques, is important (SHE IS A JUNIOR RESIDENT), and threatening a junior resident you don't fucking know, in an environment actively hostile to the work flow of proof reading the LLM slop she's just promised will save Santos from her THREAT is simply Deeply Bad At Her Job behaviour. It is inexcusable. It is negligent. I really feel it is extremely questionable clinical, pedagogical, and managerial practice.

If you don't think Al-Hashimi deserves any credit for Santos' charting fuck up, between the threat and the refusal to train her on the tool, I think you are deeply unserious.

You can love and defend a character and see that they're not perfect. You don't need to throw Santos under the bus, either.

Side note: Doctor Al-Hashimi has said it's more accurate than dictation. I want a fucking source on that, thanks. We can hear how Santos is dictating her charts, in the language you'd expect to find in a chart; it's formulaic, it's clear, it's a skill she has honed, both reading and writing these quite specific reports. What the fuck is an LLM tool supposed to be doing with what Santos is fucking dictating, anyway? In the consultation with the patient earlier in the season, it is recording, transcribing, and next-token-predicting case notes in the style of a case note, like what Santos is heard dictating; what the LLM is trying to do with inputs and outputs is clear. What is it trying to do with Santos dictations? What is it trying to output from that? Maybe we'd know if Al-Hashimi had actually talked more beyond the spruiking speeches she keeps giving.

[johncarterthethird]

My biggest wishlist for The Pitt Season 3 is for journos to stop sexually harassing the cast by showing them and/or otherwise forcing the cast to talk about the porn drawn about the characters they portray.

If anyone needs convincing this can be labelled as sexual harassment, I'll ask this: how would you feel if journos showed graphic fan art of their characters to the women of the cast? Hip-fired quips about the comparative volume of fan art or obsession aside, does that change your gut reaction? might be pertinent to think about why that is, but I'm going to keep going.

I don't care that PR teams are often looped in and screen questions etc.; I fucking hate this shit and I think more people should.

I don't want to see another video of Gerran Howell being so polite and gracious when awkwardly telling an interviewer that the fan art is for fans, it's for us. He's fucking right! Leave the man alone!

If actors want to creep into fandom spaces, I welcome them! Great! If they want to send each other art, that's amazing! If they enjoy it, I am thrilled for them. It's none of my fucking business!

Not only am I sick to fucking death of watching actors try to find a way to not shit on the fans whose often extremely graphic art was not intended to be plucked out of fandom spaces let alone shoved in front of actors on camera for cheap shock value, I'm sick of interviews (especially for promoting a generally serious and thought-provoking show) being dominated entirely by frivolous fluff about porn (or the stupidest opinions from the most illiterate and sheltered ten year olds on the fucking planet, for that matter).

I'm so sick of the interviews without porn for shock value focusing on fandom discourse or shipping, rather than maybe referring to that shit as a jumping off point. There's so much to talk about with this show, including the reception of the show in all kinds of contexts, and all that shit can be talked about without it (and specifically fandom) being the sole focus of an interview, bulldozing literally everything else.

Yeah, I know, not a literal 100% of interviews and press shit is like this, and no, I'm not against fun and levity and less serious interviews (Shawn Hatosy joking with Taylor Dearden, suggesting she watch Breaking Bad kills me it's so fucking funny.) but please, can we just not dredge up fandom shit?

The Pitt does not need to spin up the parasocial hype train for views. If I hadn't seen the first season, the marketing I saw for the second season would turn me the fuck off despite the fact that I've been obsessed with Shawn Hatosy and Noah Wyle for decades. I have a problem. I realise I'm not the intended audience of this marketing, but holy shit the vibe is suffocating even the pieces with a pretence of Serious Journalism.

Oh and please don't show the press basically the whole fucking season in advance. You don't need it to drive a hype cycle and have it all be spoiled to fuck to drive engagement. That's on the S3 wishlist, too.

edited to add just to be extremely fucking clear: I love fan art I love porn (which is art!) I love sharing of fan works I love art and porn and sharing it

[johncarterthethird]

Dana breaking over not being able to reach Robby and knowing how deep in crisis he is was heartbreaking. They've been at each others' throats and even though Dana has tried a few times, Robby's reactive to her, even when she's holding herself together despite her own distress. Knowing that right now, Robby isn't going to hear her cut me to the bone.

Her turning to Abbot who comforts her and takes it on because there's not much else she can do right now was a whole lot of emotions in a very short time. We know Abbot made moves earlier. Things are spiralling.

I wonder if Abbot and Dana have been in the habit of doing handoff to each other about Robby since PittFest.

[johncarterthethird]

It is interesting that Al-Hashimi has a seizure in the first episode and continues to practice, hands on, all day.

Even after she calls her neurologist because she's clearly concerned, suggesting an exacerbation, she continues to step in to life-and-death critical procedures. That is fucking insane.

This ...hubris works well with some of the things established about her; she takes a job she doesn't have the skill or experience to do, she's there to do a fucking admin overhaul which is insane in the context of interim chief seat warming, seemingly takes Gloria's presumed word as gospel, and she marches in to this extremely unfamiliar environment unlike anything in which she's worked recently, and she has immediately starts enforcing changes despite never having even met Robby or worked a shift there. She runs a sim code on shift while the waiting room is overflowing instead of doing that shit in sim lab time. Al-Hashimi says she wants to shadow Robby but refuses to do it. Her comments about how she gets walk-in traumas at the VA ED when defending herself to Robby is insane. She is not Robby's equal, not in the ED of a Level 1 Trauma Centre; her resentment about feeling like she's being treated like a resident was fucking ridiculous. She's got her blind spots about which she digs in her heels, just as all the characters do.

She's clearly a skilled clinician, but in this environment desperately needs to find her footing to work effectively. She's not going to have the opportunity to do that, seizures or not, if she's there to do an admin overhaul while taking over Robby's other responsibilities.

She's willing to make sassy comments about never being sued and wanting to keep it that way to someone who is actually in their element while continuing to practice while she's been having seizures all day. That is fucking insane! That is interesting to me!

The way Al-Hashimi draws lines around what she considers to be safe and reasonable make for a really interesting character.

The question of whether she can do the job is bigger than just her seizures and her continuing to practice impaired.

As far as the story goes, I hope it won't be a rug sweep 'explanation' for all of her strange behaviour and weird attitudes despite how broadly challenging a disability it would be.

I've been generally hesitant to comment on her absence episodes all season because the writers were clearly intending for it to be a Big Thing feat. A Big Reveal and have been intentional in how little they reveal about it as the season has unfolded and I'm not all that interested in speculating about that specifically (my suspicions about potentially being injured doing MSF were wrong), especially when there's been a lot to discuss around her anyway.

How it all ties together in the final episode is going to be interesting.

[johncarterthethird]

Robby kept an eye out for Mohan and watched her begin to flounder when Orlando Diaz's wife came in, and he turned out of Duke's room to accompany her and Mrs Diaz to meet Mr Diaz.

Robby didn't make Mohan talk to Mrs Diaz alone. He left fresh-out-of-CT Duke to help her and Mrs Diaz.

Even after how much Robby has been buckling under the pressure of fucking everything, he prioritised Mohan and Mrs Diaz. Mohan wasn't really in a position to handle Mrs Diaz with the care she would usually shoot for with patients with which she's taken particular care; fucking it up would have hurt Mrs Diaz more than it needed to (there's no nice way to learn your husband is that sick) and Mohan would probably have regretted making a horrible moment worse.

Robby did what he could. He cares. We don't need him to tell Dana/us that, even when he's been behaving appallingly because he's in active crisis.

[johncarterthethird]

I am going to forcibly restrain the next person who asks why the staff didn't just restrain the combative drunk who put Emma in a chokehold at the end of S02E11

So. I'm extremely frustrated by people asking why the combative drunk golfer wasn't put in physical restraints like it's the obvious, clear thing to do the same way I'm frustrated about the why not just put Robby on a psych hold? discourse (These issues overlap heavily!) in the pitt fandom. wow what a surprise that I'm whingeing about discourse again, i know.

Restraining someone, physically or chemically, is not a neutral fucking act. It isn't a benign intervention. It is an incredibly serious thing to do to a person. It is an act of violence. It carries serious risk! It is not something to be done flippantly or 'just in case'. Restrictive practices must only be used as a last resort and in the least restrictive form.

The use of restrictive practices is a very real human fucking rights issue that impacts everyone. It impacts our societies' most vulnerable hardest. I need everyone to understand how serious this is.

I beg you, go do some learnin about restrictive practices. Go web search restrictive practices and you'll be sure to find some answers (like in legislation!) as to the question of why didn't they just restrain him? It's because it's not that fucking simple! It shouldn't be that fucking simple! Violating someone's human rights should be an absolute last fucking resort.

Not at all fun fact to get you started: in some jurisdictions, hospital bed rails being raised is considered a type of restrictive practice in some contexts. Where? Why? When? What problems can this present in patient safety? Go find out. Or don't. I think it's an interesting problem that showcases some of the really difficult questions the issue of restrictive practices raises.

Can we please just like. search the internet or ask a librarian or some shit before somewhat earnestly suggesting that everything can just be solved by simply slapping some potential human rights violations on people?

[johncarterthethird]

I'm broken over Robby saying he thought he'd have a wife and two kids in college by now.

A patient this season had a brain tumour that may have caused his erratic behaviour and the breakdown of his marriage (Noah Wyle wrote the episode). His ex being his emergency contact and clearly still loving him and having all those complicated feelings broke me.

We know Robby's exes care about him.

Janey asking Jake to ask how Robby is and how her interactions with him at the end of season 1 already ached with care. Collins put up with a lot in season 1 and still cared about him deeply. Robby was too big a fucking mess to be the partner they needed.

the corollary isn't brain tumour = mental illness for those who need me to say that explicitly

The missed connections, the what ifs, the if onlys, the bad timing; they can all be tragedies.

Robby saying there's no clock on healing and Yana saying he must he joking crushed me a little. (Noah Wyle wrote that episode, too.). The it's never too late in the finale was pointed, too.

It can be bittersweet looking back and realising that after all this time it didn't have to be this hard. Recognising it was never going to be any different for whatever reasons is hard. It's grief.

Watching Robby reckon with what he wanted, what he wants now, and how he's going to pick up the pieces is going to be as heart wrenching as watching him fall apart completely in seasons 1 and 2. I'm really excited. I'm curious to see what Robby's progress is going to look like and how that is going to be shown to us when we see it one long, exhausting, shift at a time.

He's got so many people to love ahead of him.