Midwest Gun Dad

Thoughts from being subjected to The Pitt: This is the worst example of millennial snark writing ever made. My first thought was “nobody actually talks like this,” but after 15 years of all media sounding exactly like it, I guess people do talk like it now. Especially quirk chungus types in healthcare. So is it realistic? Did it write itself into realism? What is real anymore? Why do we let these people write anything? When media consumption is the most important life activity to something like 70% of people now, how are slop-cannon writing crews not relieved of their tongues by angry mobs? I have no answers. All I know is that this show is perfectly designed to induce psychic pain in me specifically. The plots themselves are ridiculous of course, way worse on the absurdity scale than even Gray’s Anatomy (which can at least be fun). I’ve only caught a few minutes of The Pitt here and there, always against my will, but literally every single subplot is something along the lines of “illegal immigrants need emergency healthcare but ICE is trying to interfere! Good thing our Mixed Race Lesbian knows The Law better than them!” or “this evil white guy overdosing on cocaine (rich btw) ATTACKED a NURSE for NO REASON. Now they’re making sure he gets arrested while making snarky comments about him being able to post bail because he plays golf — but he can’t stop them from kicking him out of school, even though he threatens to sue!” Every single one is downstream of “and then everybody clapped” posts on bluesky, stolen from 2015 tumblr. But I digress. Aside from the insane libtard revenge fantasies, I really have to revisit the writing here. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen outside of lolcow AO3 fanfics. My Immortal-tier, if My Immortal showed an even narrower spectrum of emotions and characters, and the writers knew even less about how the world worked. Everybody speaks with precise technical language all the time, like how a 12 year old would write an Epic Genius Doctor. Have any of them ever been in an ER? You could tell me the show was generated by an LLM trained exclusively on therapy transcripts and Reddit and I’d believe you. I don’t know if humans are capable of producing that level of cringe. It’s new technology at the very least. But they really do run with the bit, the hyper-professional language especially, to the point that it goes all the way down to minor bureaucratic things. We’re treated to social worker monologues about how the hospital’s app works. About employee benefits that let the staff file a request for therapy. About how to approach differently-abled lesbian relationship dynamics. The overall vibe and effect is “corporate training video where they’re allowed to say ‘fuck,’ but inexplicably all use the verbal cadence of a really bad anime dub voice actor.” It’s like someone animated the mind palace of a 28-year old “HR professional” who thinks JK Rowling is “really problematic” but still thinks Harry Potter is real life. Horrifying, horrifying stuff. And even if you make it past that, the central premise isn’t even entertaining! The characters are strongly unlikable, and even more than that, *boring.* Everybody is condescending and cruel and painfully unfunny, despite a clear intent to show them as quick-witted. But at the end of the day, The Pitt tells you, they’re Helping People. They’re The Adults In The Room. Everything would collapse without them. Maybe it should. I remember an old shock video, from when the internet still had those, of a guy sucking himself off. The Pitt is that on steroids. 30ccs of them, applied intravenously, as its writers rub their cutting scars — sorry, *epidermal lacerations* — from middle school and fantasize about getting back at the Republican boogeymen they think pull the world’s strings. They deserve their misery, and they’d deserve the subjugation they desperately think is real.