What's With All the Medical Shows?

I'm sure hundreds of books will be written about shows The Pitt and Doctor Odyssey being aired at the same time, but let me be the first.

Both shows feature the idiosyncrasies and hardships of practicing medicine, both have lead white male characters who were traumatized by COVID, both air weekly (!), both are deeply tied to the lineage of TV.

The shows serve different purposes though - while The Pitt does work well as a spiritual successor to E.R. by embedding the viewer in the chaos and overwhelm of a busy hospital floor, it also feels like there is an educational bent that is lifted directly from Emergency! I have, actually, started watching a bit of E.R. (thoughts on that later this week, probably), but the issues so far seem to be questions of personal success or culpability. The Pitt features a story that scared the hell out of my about fentanyl, I can't imagine E.R. taking quite such a didactic route. (The one kid who drank too much and got scolded felt really unearned and out of place.)

There is no such educational bent in Doc Ody (or as some fans refer to it, "Ody3" for reasons that will quickly become apparent). Joshua Jackson looks like George Clooney and old-E.R. doctor John Stamos shows up, but its real roots are in the Murphyverse of 9-1-1. It's the classic trick of entertainment masking as edutainment around hot issues. While the characters might explain to each other why plastic surgery is actually the ultimate form of self-expression, there aren't really medically-based story lines that land on one side of the issue or the other. It's all a matter of opinion. This approach ties in with the actual goal of the show - to create an escapist fantasy. The characters are there to maintain both the fantasy of the cruise ship for the passengers and also to promote the fantasy of this #crazy medical life to the viewers.

Ody3 treats its characters like contestants on a reality show. Everyone gets the time to share their backstory and motivations so the viewer can root for them. In order to care about a character, the writers think, you need to know their trauma - instead of gradually caring about the character through their actions. The Pitt has a deep ensemble cast who we go in knowing very little about, but the practice of piecing together their viewpoints and shortcomings is part of the intrigue of the show. Clearly, Santos has something happen in her past to make her take such drastic measures with potentially abusive father - and we know enough about her personality that this falls in line with how we expect her to handle it - but we probably won't know exactly what happened for a very long time. That could never fly on Ody3, where the characters are constantly talking about their emotions and confronting each other.

Which is another important distinction between the shows. Ody3 is about relationships, arguably about only the central relationship between the three main characters. The ship is just a backdrop to expose the characters to new events and subcultures, the heart of the show is whether these three medicinal practitioners are going to make it as a throuple.

The medicine practiced is like playing an ultimate sport - can you perform and appendectomy during a hurricane?! while The Pitt is kind of like, real life is plenty fucked up already, thanks.

The comparisons have gotten me to think a lot about the difference between a well-liked, critical darling show and a popular show and also which ones are "fandomy". This isn't to say The Pitt doesn't have fans, but I think a distinction should to be made between a fan of prestige television (the good shows) versus a fandom show that kind of sort of thrives on its mediocrity. It's not that the show is technically brilliant, but it's compelling. Ody3 isn't trying to reinvent television or push it in any particular way but does have a lot of fun being campy and queer. I also don't necessarily think these types of shows are mutually exclusive (Blake's 7 deserves a lot of critical acclaim for its hard scifi and character narratives but slash is so integral so its story, I believe The Pitt is gonna have a lot of great fanart) but that there is productivity in teasing out these meanings.

Ultimately, both shows are entirely of our moment. There's been a huge gap in medical shows that aren't about a prodigy or rely on some kind of gimmick. While Ody3 can't help but make our main lead patient zero of COVID (rather than having lost a mentor) the consequences of the pandemic ripple out through both shows. Ody3 is here because of 9-1-1, which is here because of Emergency (TV is VERY incestuous), which are all shows that focus on the people who are trying to listen and help. Learning how to care for people is a skill, both in and out of the OR, and maybe what we're looking for in television right now is a certain amount of empathy.

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