The Pitt Season Finale Review: Our Baptism By Fire Concludes with a Masterclass Stroke of Tears, Humor, and Hope

The Pitt concludes with incredible season finale bringing levity, heart, and emotion as beloved characters reach decisions. Our review!

The post The Pitt Season Finale Review: Our Baptism By Fire Concludes with a Masterclass Stroke of Tears, Humor, and Hope appeared first on TV Fanatic.

If you’re anything like me, you’re not ready to let go of this series yet.

Like Mohan, after getting placed in the most chaotic, immersive experience ever, my adrenaline is still racing, and I’m remotely ready for the comedown.

But alas, that’s what The Pitt Season 1 Episode 15 was all about; as the dust settled, existential crises simmered, and everyone lived to see another day tomorrow (most of them are coming back “tomorrow”).

McKay is Simply a Woman Doing Her Best, But She Remains Robby’s Blind Spot

To my relief, the seemingly blase police officer didn’t have to cart my girl away after all, and I’m thankful for that. What’s frustrating is that it required appealing to the other police — other first responders, to allow some grace.

But is this surprising? It’s often how it works, right? All it took was reminding the veteran cops about how McKay was instrumental in saving their brother-in-arms, and that was more than enough to tell the street cops to stand down.

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Yes, McKay should’ve handled things better, but it’s unfathomable that she could’ve ended that crazy shift in a jail cell.

And we got confirmation that she’s only in that damn monitor because of her custody battle with Chat and his annoying wife. Go figure.

Robby came in clutch there, but as we discussed in The Pitt Season 1 Episode 14, he still has a blind spot with McKay regarding her attitude toward David.

Maybe the thought process here is bringing up how dangerous it is to use law enforcement as a tool when handling people battling mental health issues. And there is a valid conversation somewhere in there.

But McKay’s concerns were valid, and she expressed that well when she spoke to David about what it’s like to live with that constant fear of harm as a woman. He got a taste of what an everyday reality is for women.

At her core, McKay is a woman trying to do her best, and her handling of the situation was commendable. With Robby, it’s the one spot where he comes across as truly flawed and blinded by his own biases.

He remained steadfast in that, too, which was surprising.

Santos’ Slow-coming Redemption Leaves Her More Tolerable

While I’m still not much of a Santos fan, she’s evolved on the backend of the season, and the finale was her strongest hour yet.

She could’ve gone home, but for once, we saw that she’s capable of compassion, leading her to practice medicine rather than falling to the wayside as she lives for the “exciting” stuff.

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Santos saw herself and her friend in Max, and the case was a perfect way of highlighting that underneath that exterior and her rough edges, she has decent instincts and is a great reader of people.

Her superpower has consistently been clocking things about others and solid perception. She just doesn’t handle any of it well.

Santos recognized that Max was trying to take his life.

She took charge of that case and managed to break through to him with her personal story about a man who took advantage of her and her friend (making sense of her treatment of that father she suspected of abusing his daughter) and that her friend died by suicide as a result.

Santos found redemption in saving Max in a way she couldn’t her friend. What’s interesting about Santos is that as offputting as she is generally, we have all of these little pieces that explain how and why she is this way.

Her issues with male authority are glaring compared to how easily she relents to women taking charge, and her background would shed light on that.

Santos and Whitaker: An Unexpected But Endearing End

Santos even extended some of that soft side to Whitaker when she learned about his living situation and offered her apartment to him for free.

Whitaker is such a gem, and Dana’s assessment of him cracked me up. He really is a bloodhound, a sad, exhausted little puppy who gets the job done.

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It was such a shock to learn that he’d been sleeping upstairs in the hospital in an abandoned room all this time. Everyone always thinks he’s much softer than he is, but what made me love Whitaker even more after this reveal is that he doesn’t bring any real-life issues to work.

Those two as roommates should be interesting. After a shift like what they had, it made fast … something out of them. Maybe they aren’t friends, per se, but comrades when the going gets tough.

Santos can still miss me with the condescension, though.

Case Wrap-Up Finally Gives Us Some Wins

It wasn’t a surprise that the father of the Measles patient eventually went behind his wife’s back to grant them the power to do the spinal tap. He was already on the fence about it when things started getting worse, and Robby pushed him over the edge by taking him into the morgue.

It may be inadvisable, but sometimes people need a reality check. At the very least, it meant that they wouldn’t lose another person, and Mel was excited about getting to save another life.

The crush victim made for the more exciting case of the hour, but it also had Walsh whining too much about how everyone handles things. It got pretty old.

I loved how they slowly brought the humor back into the hour, making it one of the funniest episodes. Abbot is comedic gold, but then, he’s just gold.

The teenager with the fork stuck in her nose was pure hilarity, and he and Ellis played that whole thing just right with the comedic beats.

Robby’s Emotional State Crumbles

It was a free-for-all during most of the hour as they stayed in some limbo between shifts before everyone clocked out, but it was mostly because we had to get to Robby making his final debrief speech that had me in my feelings.

Robby always talks such great game because he doesn’t want people to experience what he has, but he rarely follows his own advice, and that’s such a human thing to do.

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He was still catching it this hour, though. Jake lashing out at him cut him to his core, and I wanted to hug the man, but then he had to go right into telling Leah’s parents about her death.

It was a wonderfully filmed scene of just him coming out as we heard the crying.

Not to mention, his confrontation with Langdon was exasperating. Again, I love the authenticity they bring to depicting not only addiction but what it’s like when you’re dealing with someone suffering from it.

Langdon Must Face the Music Over His Addiction

Langdon was self-absorbed the whole way through, paranoid about who knew what and then in denial about what he was going through. He argued he was managing his withdrawal, but all he had to do was go through the proper channels and ask for help.

Dana gave him the tough love in that maternal way, and Robby was just so disappointed in that paternal way that maybe he would settle in with Langdon at some point soon.

He was too busy lashing out at Robby and seeming to equate his addiction to Robby having an emotional breakdown after multiple deaths on the anniversary of his mentor’s death. They’re not the same.

I genuinely believe that with the future time jump, we can maybe get to a time when Langdon has gone through rehab, is working the system, and is doing better, and I want that for him.

Ugh, Patrick Ball has been amazing during this arc.

My Favorite Emotional Support “Old White Guys” Steal the Hour

Of course, the season finale knew to hit us where it hurt so good with that full circle roof moment between Abbot and Robby.

This time, it was Abbot’s turn to talk Robby off the ledge, and it was the best moment of the entire hour. I’m obsessed with Noah Wyle and Shawn Hatosy individually and their dynamic onscreen together.

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They are everything to me. Abbot is easily my favorite character on a series filled to the brim with characters I adore, and he got to shine by reminding Robby of just how amazing he did that day.

Robby’s breakdown made him human. It would be terrifying if he didn’t have a moment. As he told the others moments before, he was getting the grief out.

Shifts like that make him and other veterans, hell, even newbies, question if they’re still in this for the long haul, and that is the most real thing The Pitt gets well out of all of this.

Comfort in the Darkness

Abbot may be a cowboy who goes rogue and lives for the adrenaline himself, but his therapy is effective for him, and maybe Robby can get the same.

The two of them having a beer in the park with the other was such a great moment, and if Abbot wasn’t already one of the series’ most compelling and badass characters, discovering that he wears a prosthetic only made him more so.

There were many times over when it felt like The Pitt was either setting us up for a Night Shift-led spinoff or the next season focusing on them or many of its characters.

Abbot wasn’t in most of the season, yet he has so much presence, such a strong built-in backstory, and far too many layers not to explore further or in a deeper way in the future.

Does The Pitt Set Up a Possible Spinoff with Abbot (or is it Wishful Thinking)?

Come on, his line about finding comfort in the darkness? That’s like this man’s tagline for a night shift show or season! It’s too good!

The closing moments were so satisfying. Robby and the others’ genuine humor in remembering that it was Javadi’s first day made me laugh, too.

Abbot is right; that’s the epitome of Baptism by Fire. After all that, Javadi went from maybe not wanting to continue medicine to not ruling it out altogether by the end of the hour.

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But Robby doing all that and taking his walk home, earphones in, mirroring precisely what he did in The Pitt series premiere, healed me.

I’m not ready to let this show go just yet, and the wait for the second season is going to SUCK.

Park Bench Unwind Time:

• Mel making it to get her sister and still maintaining their Friday night schedule nearly made me weep. She’s such a big sister — I felt that in my SOUL.
• Mohan riding high on adrenaline and then slowly coming down with that cry session in the bathroom? Goodness, I love her. It also pleased me that she finally let her hair down as the perfect cap to it all. She doesn’t know how to relax and unwind.
• Ahem, for the people who don’t like ship stuff, avert your eyes. I get the Mohan/Abbot thing for sure now. They’d be a perfectly chaotic but balanced workplace situationship.
• The two rats appeared on that poor patient, and no one believed him. I cackled.
• Myrna is BACK! All is right in the world!

• My mother, Dana, may really be done, and I’m both sad for me and happy for her because that woman deserves a break.
• It was a stroke of genius how they brought so much humor back into this hour to ease us down after all that high intensity. There were some genuinely funny quips and moments sprinkled throughout that I lived for as someone who would joke and humor herself through the most traumatic stuff.
• On a shallow note, I’m still 100% thirsty for Robby and Abbot, and man; this finale was a great sendoff for those of us in love with these two. Thank you, writers!

Over to you, The Pitt Fanatics. Let’s discuss all the great details of this finale below! Let me hear your thoughts!

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The post The Pitt Season Finale Review: Our Baptism By Fire Concludes with a Masterclass Stroke of Tears, Humor, and Hope appeared first on TV Fanatic.