The Pitt: A Season 2 Storyline Is Giving The HBO Series A Unique Challenge

If fans of "The Pitt" struggled to get through the first season without feeling some second-hand anxiety for the doctors of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, the second season might just send us all into a full-blown panic. It's no secret HBO Max's hugely popular medical drama didn't pull any punches when it came to depicting a full emergency department shift in season 1, and by the time Noah Wyle's Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch broke down in episode 13, we were all right there with him.

How the show is going to outdo that kind of intensity with its second season remains to be seen, but everything points toward an even more fraught 15 episodes. For one thing, we know season 2 of "The Pitt" takes place over a July 4th weekend, so you can imagine the emergency room is going to be filled with patients suffering from injuries sustained during their holiday reverie. But with the return of Patrick Ball's Dr. Frank Langdon following his mandated stint in rehab, there's sure to be plenty of fireworks between him and Dr. Robby. There's also the addition of a new character in the form of Sepideh Moafi's Dr. Al-Hashimi, who, according to showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, is going to be a "disruptive force." Otherwise, "The Pitt" season 2 trailer confirmed the return of several fan-favorite characters, so we'll at least be in familiar company for the most part.

But there is one other storyline involving a baby which, apart from sounding like it has the potential to be the most tragic narrative thread yet, almost made things behind the scenes as dramatic as life in a real emergency room.

In the trailer for "The Pitt" season 2 (a season which will see Noah Wyle directing and writing more episodes), we get a brief glimpse of a baby in the emergency room, before the camera shows Supriya Ganesh's Dr. Samira Mohan looking worried. Since we've all been collectively traumatized by the first season of this show, I think I speak for all of us when I say, "For the love of god, please let the baby be okay." When I say "the" baby, it seems there is only one infant in question here, but according to R. Scott Gemmill, he and the crew needed several tiny actors to bring this storyline to life, and as you might imagine, that wasn't an easy task.

Speaking at the Sublime Primetime Drama panel at the Writers Guild of America (via Deadline), Gemmill joked about how "some genius" came up with the idea of following a baby patient across the show's 15 hour-long episodes (which play out in real-time, à la "24"). "That's a whole season," the showrunner said. "You've got to use multiple babies. They can only work for 20 minutes [...] By the time the shift is over, which will be in January, this baby's going to be walking to craft service by himself."

After talking about the old Hollywood adage of never working with kids and animals, Gemmill quipped, "I'm going to go through many babies this year. So, if you know anyone who's pregnant and they want to have their baby on TV, please come see us."

Season 1 of "The Pitt" was relentlessly stressful for both the characters and viewers, with some storylines being so unbearably tragic that many of us surely needed a minute before we could hit play on the next episode. That is, of course, all part of the show's attempt to simulate the inside of a real emergency room and showcase what real physicians deal with on a daily basis. "The Pitt" has been praised as one of the most accurate medical dramas ever made, but it's not just a case of getting technical terms right and ensuring the proper dosage of morphine is always being administered. The series is laser-focused on depicting a naturalistic portrait of life in an emergency room, and that extends to the emotional turmoil endured by every doctor, nurse, and hospital staff member on the premises.

That means we saw every hard-to-stomach detail of working in emergency medicine in season 1, from a teen whose parents refuse to believe their son is brain-dead to a brother and sister who slowly come around to allowing their father to pass away in peace without any further medical intervention. These were some of the toughest TV moments to watch, and while the latter example was also deeply touching, I think it's fair to say that watching anything remotely similar happen to a baby might be a step too far. All of which raises an interesting question: Are R. Scott Gemmill and his fellow "ER" alums Noah Wyle and John Wells so committed to a realistic portrayal of emergency room life that they are about to devastate us all with this baby storyline? In some ways, it might be a bit of a cop out if they don't, considering the real reason "The Pitt" exists is because Wyle and co. wanted to give people an insight into the sheer level of pressure and tragedy endured by doctors, especially considering what they dealt with in the early days of the pandemic. But we're still hopeful the baby makes it out of the next season alive.