The tensest moment in The Pitt Episode 3 on MAX doesn’t come from a man who was nail gunned in the chest or the adult siblings arguing about whether or not to keep their elderly, dying father intubated despite his wishes not to be. Nope, the most explosive, tragic scene takes place when grieving father Mr. Bradley (Brandon Keener) tries to blame someone for his son’s untimely death.
**Spoilers for The Pitt Episode 3 “9 AM,” now streaming on MAX**
Last week on The Pitt Episode 2, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) learned that a bright young college kid named Nicholas Bradley was brain dead after taking something laced with fentanyl, much to his straight-laced parents’ confusion. (Nick’s mother, played by The Fall of the House of Usher‘s Samantha Sloyan, was particularly upset, confounded, and unconsolable.) This week on the MAX original, we meet another victim of fentanyl poisoning, Jenna (Mika Abdalla). Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) manages to save Jenna just in time, which is cause for celebration until Nick’s father recognizes her friends as Nick’s friends, and pieces together that both co-eds must have taken the same fentanyl-laced substance.
Nick’s father erupts at the shellshocked college kids, blaming Jenna for Nick’s death. “You killed my fucking son!” he screams, as the hospital’s security officers drag him off. Jenna is able to snap back that actually Nick is the one who gave the pills to her.
It’s a moment of wild drama that defines what MAX’s The Pitt does so well: combining the furor of soap opera storytelling with real world issues like the fentanyl crisis.
Created by R. Scott Gemmill and executive produced by both John Wells and series star Noah Wyle, The Pitt follows one harrowing fifteen hour shift in an overburdened Pittsburgh ER. The doctors we meet have to juggle their own personal demons with a never-ending stream of life or death cases, all while being understaffed, under-appreciated, and overwhelmed.
The Pitt also shines a spotlight on key cases that manage to get under the physicians’ skin for various reasons. The incredibly empathetic Dr. Robby has already found himself pulled into helping Nick Bradley’s devastated parents make sense of their son’s diagnosis. After all, yesterday, he was totally fine and healthy. Today, he’s comatose, brain dead, and destined to never wake up. While Dr. Robby kindly keeps Nick’s mother’s hopes alive by ordering additional tests, his colleague, Dr. McKay is stuck dealing with triage in the waiting room…which is how she and med student Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) find themselves helping a non-responsive Jenna in her bestie’s car.
After McKay is able to revive Jenna, she and Javadi learn that the only drug Jenna took was Xanax she and some friends in a study group found via the internet. While Jenna didn’t think Xanax could be a threat, it’s clear fentanyl was laced in the prescription. Jenna’s a little shaken up and worse for wear, but she’s survived. Unlike Nick Bradley.
The first inkling that Nick and Jenna’s cases are related comes when Jenna’s friends come to visit her in the hospital. When Mr. Bradley recognizes a boy in the group, who recognizes Nick’s dad in turn, the pieces fall into place. Both kids took the same Xanax. The difference was Nick’s parents discovered him after it was too late and Jenna’s friend got her to the hospital just in time. Hence, Mr. Bradley’s wild eruption in the ER.
There are many, many ways for television shows to tackle the immense evil of fentanyl, but The Pitt does so in a way that illustrates just how unfair dying of a fentanyl overdose truly is. There’s no way to blame these kids for simply trying to get some sleep after studying too hard. Indeed, there’s no way anyone should blame anyone for dying of a fentanyl overdose. It’s an insidious killer, hidden from sight, and deadly in the smallest imaginable amounts. The Pitt deftly shows this and the unimaginably tragic fallout of these all too common deaths.
Is the end of Nick and Jenna’s story? What hot button issue will The Pitt tackle next? And can a MAX show inspire even one viewer to not risk buying dodgy pharmaceuticals?
