“It’s how I feel.”
Yeah. That’s how I feel, too. The Pitt never has shied away from politics, and it didn’t here, either.
Obviously, everything with ICE was the pivot point on which the entire episode hinged, so let’s talk about that first. This episode was filmed in November of 2025, before anything happened in Minneapolis and before the killings of Renée Good and Alex Pretti. Still, it’s impossible to not think about them and everything else that has happened while watching.
It’s really uncomfortable, and it’s meant to be. No one wants them in the ER, besides maybe Monica who had no issues chatting with them. But everyone else? They were an incredibly hostile and disruptive presence. It didn’t matter that one of them seemed to be semi-reasonable. Sure, he introduced himself and his partner and wasn’t wearing a mask. It still didn’t change anything.
Robby’s explosion and speech towards the especially hostile agent was a very traditional Hollywood moment. The protagonist gets to have a very impassioned and angry rant over the injustice that is happening right in front of him, and it’s usually framed as a triumphant or heroic moment. We get to watch someone say everything that we want to say, or that we wish that we would be brave enough or eloquent enough to say if we were in that position.
The Pitt has done this a few times, like with the Measles Mom last season. Notably, those moments are almost always accompanied by someone who knows Robby very well, reacting with concern and telling Robby that he really shouldn’t have done that.
He really shouldn’t have said anything here, either. As cathartic and justified and true as everything he said was… all it did was make things worse. It led to Pranita not getting any of the care she needed at all, and it led to Jesse being arrested/detained and taken away as well.
We don’t get to see any of the violence necessarily on screen. Only the aftermath. But we hear McKay’s almost panicked calls for Robby, and we see Javadi filming everything on her phone. Which, honestly, A+ for Javadi. I would have been frozen, but she was very quick with her phone, and it looked like she was getting everything that she could. I thought that her TikTok popularity was just a funny character beat, but it came in handy here. She was clearly going outside to post the video when Robby called her back.
It still doesn’t change the fact, though, that Jesse (who, I feel compelled to note, is a white male) is gone, and no one knows where they took him. He’s just gone. The patients and staff who left are gone. But everyone else can’t stop. They need to keep moving forward. They need to figure out who is going to take Jesse’s patients.
And, while all of this is happening, Emma is alone with a patient and is almost immediately attacked, which was an incredibly cruel cliffhanger to leave us on. I don’t care if there’s almost certainly no way they’ll kill her. It’s still cruel!
There’s a lot of casual cruelty in this episode, now that I think about it. The cruelty is both intentional and not. Sometimes, it’s just thoughtless. Dr. Al asked Robby what it would take for him to regain his sense of empathy, but that’s a question that can be extended to most of the ER. Both its staff and its patients.
Take everything involving Austin Green, the English teacher kidney patient. Ogilvie messed up. There is no other way to say it. He almost got Austin killed. It really shook him too, to the point where he didn’t even jump on the chance to do a medical procedure he had been asking for all episode. He also gets credit for immediately claiming fault when Dr. Shamsi walks in and just immediately assumes that it was Javadi’s mistake.
Which, seriously, what the hell?! Good on Robby for backing Javadi up and letting her show off her skills, to the point of verbally letting Dr. Shamsi know that that was what he was doing. But then as soon as the danger has passed, he turns around and immediately berates Mohan for not watching Ogilvie more closely.
It was her responsibility as a senior resident, but Robby isn’t correcting her. He’s just tearing her down and continuing to imply that it is due to her earlier panic attack. Mohan is a very good doctor. Excellent, even. But Robby is actively driving her away instead of supporting her.
He attacked McKay, too. Again, he was technically correct in reprimanding her for treating someone outside of the hospital, but the way that he did it was out of line. It does really hurt, though, that McKay missed Roxie’s actual passing.
Both scenes in Roxie’s room were completely silent, but they were arguably my favorite parts of the episode. There was some very strong acting from Shabana Azeez in particular. The sheer relief in Javadi’s eyes when McKay nodded at her that it was okay to leave the room was palpable.
McKay still has her empathy firmly intact, as does Dr. Al. She is a far warmer person than she initially appeared to be at the beginning of the shift. She is the only reason why Brenda, the mother of the overheated child, is alive. She noticed that her mental state was shaky (understandably so) but Robby brushed it off.
In his defense, he was more focused on Micah and making sure that they treated him. But he still dismissed her as not someone that he had the ability, capability, or responsibility to worry about. Dr. Al didn’t, and that was why she was able to stop her from stepping out in front of a truck.
Mel is another character that is showing a different side of herself. After two seasons of only ever being a) nervous, b) sweet, c) happy, she’s finally allowed to be angry and hurt and resentful. She organized her entire life around Becca and what Becca wanted to do. She has no life outside of her sister, and she assumed that this was mutual.
Instead, Becca has had a boyfriend for six months that she is having lots of great sex with. She’s going to the fireworks tonight with him and his parents, even though Mel was under the impression that the two of them were going to go together like always. She has this whole other life that she wants Mel to have basically no part of, considering that she’s kept it all a secret.
I would spiral, too. Especially since it’s clear that Mel has no one. Robby asking her if she has a support system and then walking away before she answers made that perfectly clear. Dana’s talk with her boiled down to, essentially, “Suck it up and get back to work.”
At least she had Langdon. I really liked how he asked Mel questions and let her come to the conclusions on her own. He didn’t talk down to her or tell her how she should feel. He just asked questions that helped pull Mel out of the spiral that she was in.
In case you haven’t realized it by now, Langdon is my favorite character. Santos really annoys me more often than not. They finally got their big scene that they had been building to all season. I’m trying very hard to take a step back while viewing their confrontation and to not let that color my interpretation of it too much.
The question that has been hovering over Langdon’s head all season has been: What do you do when someone who has hurt you comes back from rehab? It’s not a question for Langdon, but a question for everyone else, primarily Robby and Santos.
Langdon did what he was supposed to do. He went to rehab. Got sober. Joined the Physician Health Program (PHP). He got treatment and help. But that still doesn’t change what he did or how he treated Robby and Santos. It doesn’t repair the broken trust between them. It doesn’t just magically wipe everything away.
Langdon has apologized for different things to different people, and he apologized to Santos for being an asshole, for being cruel to her. That’s not what Santos is upset about, or at least not the main thing she’s upset about. She fundamentally does not believe that he has any right to be in the ER at all, that he should have lost his license and gone to jail.
Instead, Langdon almost got divorced and almost lost custody of his kids. Almost. I wanted to shake him as soon as he said that. Santos was right, that isn’t a punishment. It’s just consequences. There is a difference between the two. Langdon has faced consequences. He was not necessarily punished.
And maybe she’s right. I’m not familiar with how a case like this would be handled in the real world. Maybe Langdon’s actions were bad enough that he would not have qualified for the PHP.
I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around the idea that the full extent of what Langdon did was covered up. Or maybe I’m simply hoping that the show doesn’t take that route. Do I believe that almost no one else on shift knows that Langdon stole and tampered with medications? Yes. That makes sense to me. But for it to be a complete secret? I don’t know.
Especially since Santos has shown over the last two episodes that her perception of things doesn’t necessarily match reality. She views herself as a pariah and Langdon as still the Golden Boy, but we as the audience haven’t really seen any evidence of that. It makes me not fully trust her here. I also don’t think that she would have been necessarily kept apprised of everything that happened.
I firmly believe that Santos is saying what she thinks is the truth. I just don’t know if she’s right.
I’m also curious about why she isn’t angry with Robby. I would think, given that she reported Langdon to Robby and trusted Robby to take care of it, that any anger that Santos had over a coverup would be directed towards him. He would have been the one who didn’t properly report Langdon, after all. Instead, Santos is very comfortable with Robby, which implies that she doesn’t blame him at all.
It’s inconsistent, and I would love to know why.
Despite all of this, we got an answer to the Langdon Question from McKay when she took Ogilvie to help Kiki. You use empathy, not judgement. Addiction is not a question of being smart enough to avoid it. It happens for a multitude of reasons. You treat it. You help.
The question now is what will Dr. Al do? She obviously heard enough of their argument to look very concerned. How much does she know? She mentioned the PHP to Langdon earlier in the shift, so she knows at least that much. Did she know that he stole drugs? That Santos was the one who caught him? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Random Thoughts
Seriously, if anything happens to Emma, I will riot.
Robby’s buddy, Duke, had a suspicious finding on his X-Ray. I don’t mind his scenes, but I don’t really know if we need them. It’s clear that Robby is suicidal without Duke asking if he will still be here when he gets the scan done.
Howard made it through surgery!
There was a moment where Langdon very clearly aggravated his back when he placed Micah down on the table. I really hope that isn’t setting him up for a relapse.
Joy is on Lexapro. I love how casually she mentioned it. I know that I really disliked her at the beginning of the season, but she’s blossomed into one of my favorites.
Kiki’s leg looked so nasty. Very, very cool.
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An Honest Fangirl loves video games, horror movies, and superheroes, and occasionally manages to put words together in a coherent and pleasing manner.
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