‘The Pitt’ Season 2, Episode 4: Friends With Farm Benefits

hello welcome back to the prestige tv podcast feed i'm joyner robinson i'm rob mahoney we're here to talk about the pit it's 10 a.m it's episode four let's get into it it is five hours to go until Mel is due. Yeah, exactly. I'm excited that we're going to get it this season. Does that feel like the three o'clock? Five hours from what? Is it the three o'clock episode? It is the three o'clock, yeah. Or the four o'clock episode? I think it's the three o'clock episode. Okay. So mark your calendars. Yeah, the deposition's coming in a month from now. The Marvel-style countdown clock can begin. We're going to get to an interview that co-creator John Wells gave to Leslie Goldberg at the inkler related to a few things, AI, et cetera, et cetera. But one of the things that he confirmed in that interview that I had sort of noticed in some of the red carpet interviews from the premiere is that they were still shooting this season up until last Friday. So, or the 20th is when they wrapped shooting on episode 15. So I think some of the conversations we had about, well, they had already shot this. This isn't necessarily reactive to responses to season one. I'm not sure that that's exactly true because given that they just wrapped so season one might have had a greater influence on the season than i had previously thought or the reactions to it at any rate but not the full-on old school tv model of it's episode three and we're reading commentary online and by episode 10 it's actually influencing the show a little more lag than that right but not given the model that they're attempting which is we're going to have a new season every year it is closer to that old school model than it is the sort of, we shot eight episodes two years ago and we're still working on the digital effects. So we have a few emails to sort of get into. How can folks reach us on this podcast? Rob Mahoney? Always at Prestigetv at Spotify.com, but especially for the pit, DrSideBangs at gmail.com. That's spelled out Dr, the full word, SideBangs at gmail.com. How do you feel about your girl Cassie getting a date in this episode? She got a couple of days in this episode. A lot of action. Some better than others, I would argue. I have some objections to the dating methods. I mean, we talked about the legality of doctor-patient interactions. I'm kind of putting that aside. Okay, I want to circle back to it. For me, it's more, this guy just came in thinking his foot was broken. And you're like, no, foot's not broken. But also, come to an art gallery with me. No, no, no, calm down. Oh, you think he's too injured to go on this date? I'm saying, I know he's game to go on a date, but can we do something where this guy can sit down? Oh yeah, there's too much walking and stand about pondering still life? He's going to need those crutches. At least, bare minimum. That's a great point. We heard from some people about Boba Guy, our number three enemy on our list. Still on Mel's mind somehow. Yeah, still thinking about him. About the legality of Mel going out with a patient. Right. So did Cassie McKay, Dr. Banks herself, circumnavigate that issue by just being like, I will be at this art gallery at this specific time. If you happen to be there, that would be interesting. Do you feel like she, you know, that will hold up in a court of law as I didn't ask a patient out on a date? A lot of plausible deniability. Okay. I didn't think it was the most artfully done in a legal sense. Right. But also, I'm not interested in prosecuting her. Like, let her get her rocks off. Also, we're not doctors and we're not lawyers. No. Just to be clear. So not only can people email us, but I want to remind them that we have social media dedicated to this very pod now. We do. Where our hottest takes get clipped for public consumption. Prestige TV pod. It's where you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. Why should folks subscribe to that? I mean, for one, the content is popping. Kai is absolutely cooking with it. You're getting great takes off. How do you feel about being a Dr. J of your own kind? Do not follow any medical advice that we might give on this. My lawyer says, please don't follow any medical advice. But hopefully people will learn some things from those social media accounts. Please subscribe. We would like that very much. Some emails we got in previous weeks was pushback from the medical community on this idea of the July effect. Tell that to the writers of the pit because they seem to be buying full in. How did you feel about it getting sort of first week in July syndrome, as I think the technical term they used in this episode? How did you feel about that getting a mention inside of this episode? I did love it. You know, just for the finger wag to the finger wag. Not to say that the debunking has in turn been rebunked. Oh, we love to rebunk. We do love to rebunk. But honestly, this reflects what we were getting in our inbox, which is some people believe this on face or believe it based off slim reporting or like some initial evidence. And then some people pushed very strongly the other way. It feels like exactly the sort of urban legendy, plausibly true bit about your industry that you might buy or might not. Right. So the evidence we get in this episode is there's a new Hottie in radiology, according to Princess. Can we do our own like betting pool on that? When do we see the Hottie in radiology? I hope before the deposition. I think within three episodes, this Hottie will be on screen. Hell yeah. What does Hottie look like? What form? what is princess's type many people are wondering princess has dropped many comments about her dating life so i have i i think she's gonna have good taste and i'm i'm excited to meet this new uh member of the team not the best at reading uh x-rays as it turns out this new guy in radiology so hot but but missed a giant piece of glass um ogilvy also new is the one who inadvisedly pulled it out. So it's a combo of two new folks sort of missing something, not knowing what they're doing. And that's what prompted the July effect comment here. So we also get Joy in this episode cutting her finger on a piece of glass, Emma dropping the vial and it going under the cart. So these are all the new kids. Rookie mistakes left and right. Just doing their job. Nothing terrible happened. The guy with the glass on his back seems like he's gonna be fine. I mean, that one was pretty bad. Yeah, it was tough. Escalating a stable patient to surgery based off not waiting for anyone to say something, not ideal. Listen, Ogilvy has been on my villain rankings and he's only climbing. So that's, I'll be curious to hear from the medical community if they are frustrated that the show seems to be confirming this idea of the July effect or not. We also got a bunch of emails from people when I did my sort of like ode to Nurse Jessie in last week's episode. I did not know that Ned Brower, who plays Nurse Jessie, was a former drummer in the band Rooney. Yes. Cool. Huge revelation. Really cool. And then also became, for 13 years, he was first an EMT and then an ER nurse himself. So he's been hired as, he's done some acting in his life. He was like on Dawson's Creek or like some other things. Was a drummer for Rooney, wild. and then is like one of the people that they hired who is not just an actor, but also there to sort of keep an eye on the medical accuracy of what's going on. And I loved this quote from an interview he gave People Magazine about this. He was told, if you see anything that looks strange or out of place, let this person know. Don't go blabbing all over set, undercutting directors and things. So Ned Brower, Nurse Jesse himself, is supposed to sort of well actually a few things, but not on a constant annoying basis. So he said that there's a few people around. And something that the actress have said is that when they're in the midst of sort of the more fraught, intensive medical procedure moments, those are usually not directed by the director of the episode, but they have medical professionals who are directing those specific moments of the episode. So I thought that was really interesting as well. It's almost like they have an action unit, you know, just kind of tag one in. But look, this does explain with Ned Brower, why he feels so natural floating in the background. Right. Calling out stats and all sorts of stuff. So the expertise bears out on screen. Clearly. I love Nurse Jesse. I'm a big fan. All right. And then we got we didn't get an email about this, but I sent you a clip from the pit crew podcast. We did get some emails from people for whom the tree of life sequence in last week's episode really worked for them. Absolutely. Really important for them. And I think you and I agreed at the time that, you know, we didn't at all object to this being a plot line. We just had some questions about how exactly it was deployed. But a piece of information that we didn't have that this Pit Crew podcast segment that I saw got into was the fact that Dr. Robbie himself is likely, though it's not confirmed, named for Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, who was one of the victims in the Tree of Life shooting. And this is a quote from a CNN article about that. When gunfire erupted, Rabinowitz was not in the basement where the congregation was gathered, but outside the room, his nephew said, quote, why? Because when he heard shots, he ran outside to try and see if anyone was hurt and needed a doctor. That was Uncle Jerry. That's just what he did. If there was a message his uncle would want everyone to take from the tragedy, Ostron said, it would be a message of love, unity, and of the strength and resilience of the Jewish people. So this idea that Dr. Robbie in the first place is an homage to this beloved member of the medical community who was part of this horrific event that happened in Pittsburgh doesn't necessarily change any of the reactions that I had to it last week, but does sort of deepen my understanding of why they would really specifically want to delve into this particular storyline. Of course. And if that namesake really is a tribute, I mean, It's a beautiful gesture toward a doctor who seemed absolutely beloved and touched so many people's lives. And I've been thinking a lot this week, Joe, about like, I mean, look, we live in a world now where an innocent man can be executed in the street by a law enforcement officer. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of first responders and like who are our first responders. And look, there are a lot of good, well-meaning people in those jobs across the board. The Pit is clearly a show that is invested in and has great admiration for medical professionals specifically who are called to service. I'm not even really thinking about people doing a job, but people like Jared Benowitz. So it's like you hear your community in danger and you run toward that danger to help people, right? People like Alex Preddy, who is you see a woman being assaulted by ICE officers and you're running toward that. And that is community to me, right? Like that's what we can do for each other. I think there's a lot of aspects of modern life that make us feel isolated and make us feel alone. And we're not. And I hope whenever our moments come, and they take different shapes, they look different for everybody, they're at different times, they're not always running into gunfire or trying to separate a skirmish. But I hope when those moments come, there's a Jerry Rabinowitz in us, that there's an Alex Preddy in us. I can only hope for that. It's really beautifully said. The reports that we're getting that Alex Preddy, who was an ICU nurse who worked with veterans, that his last words were, are you okay, is just extremely devastating as we think. No one should have lost their life that way. I think as we've been thinking a lot about the pit and what the pit has to say about the medical community and how they care about the most vulnerable around them. I've been thinking a lot as I've been watching the medical community, the nursing community, specifically in Minnesota or just around the world, talking about Alex Preddy as we've seen footage of the work that he did inside of hospitals circulate and stuff like that. It's really enhancing, that's the wrong word, but it's deepening my relationship to this show and what it has to say about these people. Well, those clips, especially of him at work, you know, sending off fallen soldiers at the VA, for example. I mean, it feels of this world. And I mean that in a complimentary, maybe sentimental way, but very sincere. Like the sincerity of the pit, I think is one of its strongest suits. And it can be a little much at times. It might like make you cringe at others, But it's like, these are the occasions in real life that call for it. And we had an emailer, Raf, who wrote in, as we were talking last week about the way the pit sometimes says the thing out loud, right? Like says the very overt feeling out loud. And this is a show that does that. But it's also like dealing with occasions, as Raf said, that's like, if there's going to be a place to do that, it's there. It's in a hospital to the people saving your life, to the people who mean the most to you. Right. And it's like the way all of that sentimentality is channeled here, but also like, again, in those clips of Alex Freddie just doing his job. It's incredibly resonant. Since we and I watched the first scene of The Pit, cover The Pit, I had a very serious medical issue last year. So my relationship and I had never had like surgery in my life or anything like that. So my relationship with medical community has, you know, I grew up as a daughter of a doctor and a nurse. So like I was sort of in that world, but I wasn't ever like really a patient in that world. So to go through that system to it was in this episode when, you know, Emma has to take some blood from joy and joy is like, I'm a tough stick. Like I am a tough stick. And so like all the nurses who sort of like were just trying to find veins on me, taking time to like comfort me, make me feel OK about what I was going through. Like I have a very different appreciation for that. I like to think I already appreciated them, but having experienced it firsthand, going through multiple surgical procedures last year, it really changed the way that I watch this show and the way that I think about it. And to your point about sort of how earnest the show can be, this is a quote that John Wells gave to Leslie Goldberg in The Inkler. He said, quote, we wanted to show how heroic these people were through a simple way in which they deal with other human beings. The North Star for us was trying to be humanistic and to show that these jobs are difficult. and yet you can take the time to care. It's a fine line. You don't want it to be earnest. You want it to be honest and straightforward, but you also need to feel that someone is taking the time to see you and listen to you. So, you know, that's something, you know, inside of this episode, Lingnan coming in to talk to Louis, you know, who's not even his patient anymore. Or Mel and Santos you know Mel a bit more in a focused way than Santos taking the time to slowly draw out of a reluctant patient the reason why she there this woman with an eating disorder That one too, especially because members of the staff kind of have wins in different ways in this episode. Whitaker has a win because he identifies something, a heart attack basically in process. Mel has a win because she identifies it, but it's like, that's not the win. Like recognizing it is the start and the caregiving is the payoff. Making the person feel safe. Completely. To be honest. And we talked about this last week about the barriers between the barriers in the way of people getting the medical care they need. We have a family inside of this episode as it pertains to insurance, which is something very specifically that Pitt wanted to confront, how insurance companies have made it increasingly difficult for people to get the care they need. We've got Dr. Robbie inside this episode having a conversation with a therapist friend about how resistant he is to have therapy. These takes all different kinds of shapes. But if a person is carrying shame around something, which is something we talked about last week, and we have this woman with an eating disorder who is clearly ashamed to talk about it. And Mel being someone who both does and doesn't have the personal skills to get it done, she's got a great bedside manner. And then you see her try to relate to Santos. And that's a much more challenging job for anyone. I mean, Santos is a prickly customer. But I don't know. I love watching these people try to help. That's what this show is about. I have a couple more sort of John Wells quotes that I want. Well, I don't want to read. You can read the whole article yourself. Leslie did a great job with the interview. But one thing he talked about is the reason they did the format that they did this sort of every hour of a day is that they wanted to avoid. I think this is interesting in light of Dr. McKay and Robbie and Hastings, et cetera, is that they wanted to avoid sort of the soapy or romantic. Not not that wasn't like shots fired at Grey's Anatomy. They were he was just like, we did that on ER. Right. We did it for over a decade. It's been done. This is the quote. We wanted to talk about what these physicians life is. You show up with them for a shift and you're leaning over their shoulder and see what they go through on our behalf. To emphasize that when you're waiting for eight or nine hours because you cut yourself trying to slice a bagel, there's a reason you waited eight or nine hours. It's not that people are ignoring you. They're dealing with so much of humanity and so many major cases. So I love that as just sort of like a, yes, we will see some personal life stuff in here, but that, and I'm sure we talked about this in season one, but that just sort of hour in, hour out, it probably hits a bit more when you watch it in a binge. but thinking about Whitaker or anyone else and knowing what they dealt with three hours ago and how is that informing? Have they had a chance to eat? How much is Santos thinking about her charts that she has to get done and this thing that Dr. Al-Hashimi says to her? All of that is in the hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute experience of their day in this hospital. I think that's one of the strongest things that Pitt has to do. Completely. And look, in some ways, it's complicated and imperfect. We did have an emailer write in to be like, why do Mel and Langdon have the relationship they do when they spent one day together and then he disappeared for a year? I think that's a great question. It's entirely fair, but experientially, obviously those characters have been a lot, they've been through a lot together to us and with us. And so part of the magic of that escalation of one shift is you're right, you have all the payoffs within it, but also the intensification of these moments. And that's where I'm a little more open-minded about those sorts of things. Like, yes, in the grand scheme of things, Langdon and Mel spent a day together and maybe wouldn't have this kind of relationship in many other contexts. But if it was in a hospital on the day of a mass shooting event. In her first day. On her first day in this hospital, it kind of tracks in some ways. I agree. The last quote I'm going to pull from this John Wells interview has to do with AI because we've been questioning whether or not when Dr. Al Hashimi shows up, is this a sort of cautionary tale about AI or is the show on the side of AI? And I will say a lot of the pro AI emails that we got from the medical community were about specifically charting and how it can help with charting. So the fact that Santos, I'm trying to be on Dr. Al Hashimi's side, but I thought that was very, a very tough, you don't want to repeat this year on like the first day they've worked together. Like establish that relationship and then have a conversation. Don't say that in the first couple of hours of meeting someone, sort of walking down the hall away from them. You don't want to have to repeat your year, do you? Very tough. But Santos then is just off her game for the rest of the episode because she's worried about this. and this is what John Wells had to say about AI. John Wells, who used to be, I think, head of the WGA, so has been in the mix with the Writers Guild trying to negotiate around AI. He says, I'm not as concerned about AI as others are for specifically what writers do. A lot of the people I work with, their jobs are really threatened by it, particularly in post and what we do in editorial and visual effects. So he's basically like, tough shit for them. You can't replicate what I do with AI. Which is, I think, a kind of a very not I think a very privileged position for someone to take towards the latter years of their career. Sure. Who is very established and a John Wells show means something different from the newcomer who is trying to get their start. And people might think their work is exchangeable, you know, exchangeable with AI, you know? Yeah. And look, there's hugely different conversations happening between the way AI is using creative spaces versus medical ones. Like I completely different things to acknowledge and to lump them together, I think would be misleading in the creative spaces. I just frankly don't really want to participate in things that weren't touched by human hands and made by actual people in the medical field. Like I am open to the idea that it could be effective for charting, that it can be effective for diagnosis. It just has to meet certain thresholds. And I think this is one of those things that's a little different person to person about what failures are you willing to accept if they come by algorithmic determination? or they come by generative AI, right? Like if a Waymo veers off the road and runs over a bunch of kids outside of school, is that different than a human driver doing the same thing? And if so, which one feels like more, neither is okay, but like beyond the pale to you, everyone's going to feel differently about that stuff. I feel like if you're going to welcome in this level of risk, you have to be willing to deal with that level of consequence. And a huge part of the problem, like we discussed last week is like, who bears the liability for an error in AI transcription? Right. And usually that answer, even at most reputable hospitals, is like as far as the buck will pass. Right. I want to bring up something that Chris Ryan was texting me about. And so I don't want to like I'm sure he and Andy had a really good conversation about this on the watch, which I haven't we haven't had a chance to listen to. But because of when we're recording. But if you go listen to them, I don't want to step on their conversation. But I want to sort of bring it to you. He was texting me about conflict around Dr. Robbie inside of the season. And basically, it was a good episode for him to text me, do I miss Dr. Collins? Because Dr. Collins is present in this episode in a couple ways. We hear from Whitaker an update on where she is. We hear Louis say, she always helped me out. And we also hear from the woman with an eating disorder about how, like, black women go undiagnosed. and like, would it be helpful inside of this ER to have more, you know, black doctors around, you know, bring Dr. Ellis onto the day shift or something like that. Well, even in her preference too, when she finally does come to the realization that it'd be good to speak to somebody, I would love to speak to a black woman. And it makes you kind of rerun the whole scenario in your head where it's like, if Dr. Collins had been her doctor from the jump and not that you would like profile people accordingly, but would she have been more open or felt more comfortable, like with the whole patient doctor dynamic have shifted. And this is something we saw a lot in season one with Dr. Collins before she was sort of like, you know, exited the show before the mass shooting event. There were a number of cases, one very specific, I remember where there was, you know, a black woman and her son, and she was just so excited to have a black female doctor on the case. She was just like, she's like, you're amazing. Can you be our doctor for everything? And like saying to her son, You're so lucky to have this amazing woman helping you. So Dr. Robbie's reaction to overhearing Whitaker talking about Dr. Collins, I think is interesting to think about on a personal basis in terms of how much is Dr. Robbie's sabbatical connected to Heather, who he had a very tough conversation with at the end of her run on the show last season about getting pregnant and their relationship and his potentiality of being a father at one point in his life. So hearing that she's like left to do this on her own, how much is that influencing his desire for a sabbatical among other various things that are running around his head? Who's to say with Dr. Robbie? But also we haven't seen Gloria this season. I don't know if we will actually. But like what Chris's point was in texting me, he was like, do I miss someone pushing back harder on Dr. Robbie? We have Dr. Al Hashimi who's like not as a successful case here. Heather felt pretty free to push back on Robbie last season. Gloria, of course, is always coming in and hammering him in a way that we were like, oh, brother, get out of here. But like there was pushback there. Dana is usually Robbie's co-captain. She's not really pushing back on him. She'll undercut him with a joke. Right. But not necessarily question where he's going, medically speaking. Right. And then there's and then like Dr. Langdon certainly is not in a position to do that this season. Samira is not doing that at all in her role in that way. And so when is Dr. Jack Abbott getting here? I really need that. A counterbalance. We've been talking about the wins that Robbie has been having. And I don't want him to lose. I want him to do well. I care about him. But the losing is important sometimes. But I need there to be a bit more sort of like back and forth there. So Dr. Al-Hashimi, Santa's trying to bond with Robbie about how she sucks in the ambulance bay. Do we like her? Really tough, honestly. But also watching Victoria, Dr. Javadi, or medical student, Dr. J herself, kind of flourish under Dr. Al-Hashimi's attention. She's like, good job on the tap. She's like, Victoria, would you like to present? And, you know, so there's ways in which there are people sort of like flourishing under her attention. I think it's also not an accident that the people who are flourishing are like a little more methodical. And the people who are struggling are like a little more hot blooded. Yeah, a little more reactive. And that's clearly not Dr. Alashimi's speed. But what do you think about this idea of like Dr. Robbie needing someone to sort of push back on him inside of the makeup of this show? I think it's really important. And we talked earlier this season about how Dr. Alashimi is kind of a consolidation character in that way. She's appointed by Gloria. She's in theory fulfilling a similar role as Dr. Collins. The difference is from the jump, when Dr. Collins opposed Robbie or was on a different side of an issue, you could understand where she was coming from really quickly. And feel like, oh, she's right and she's checking this impulse in Robbie that is jumping to a conclusion or self-destructive or whatever it is in that moment. And they don't have that with Dr. Alashimi yet. And so until they do, it's hard to feel like in their conflicts, is this supposed to be the kind of thing where I'm even at a question as to which side I'm supposed to fall? Like one of these characters we've been through a lot with, and one of them has just kind of parachuted in with a lot of dramatic ideas about changing the world vis-a-vis the pit. I think little by little, they're doing a good job of making her a little bit more of an actual human person over the course of these last couple episodes. but it's a long way to go. And you can only hope that that long road will lead to the kind of validation in that sort of moment when Robbie does inevitably fuck up in a big way. That something Dr. Alashimi has taught or implemented or brought along over the course of the season will help us understand her perspective a little better. On that note, what did you make of their interaction around the betting board? This sort of like almost flirtatious. How did you read that? I mean, he certainly seemed to read it that way. They're like, I'll buy you a drink with my winnings. For one, I love Dr. Oshimi flaunting a little bit, flexing a little bit. This is what I'm talking about. I just want more of these moments. And it can be whatever personality type they want to write this woman to be is fine. It's just like you got to let her be a personality. And having those moments goes a long way. And maybe a long way in smoothing over her relationship with Robbie too, right? They just need to connect on something, even if it is some weird little ancillary thing around the betting pool. Exactly. On the LinkedIn front, we did get a bunch of emails from people in response to our response last week about what it means to be a person in recovery and how we might expect, and I don't disagree. There are moments of very earnest Langdon that makes a lot of sense to me. Cool with that. Because he's on this journey. 100%. It was mostly the quoting of lengthy passages that we sort of had some issue with. And then reciting them aloud in a workplace context when everyone's like, did we ask him to do this? But inside of this episode, we'll get to the MRSA moment a little later on, but we're mostly dealing with, we've got the eyelash patient once again, played by Patrick Wells, real life partner back in the mix here. Great stuff. And then we have this Louis moment, you know, that he comes in to see Louis showing us Langdon's desire to connect, to continue to make amends with Louis. someone that he feels like he definitely owes an apology to. To show us that not only does everyone in this ER know Louis because he's a repeat customer, he knows things about them. He's asking about Langdon's kids. How are your kids? And Langdon's been out for almost a year, and Louis remembers that he has kids. And so on like, is Louis going to be okay watch? I'm certainly quite worried that you know Louis is the kind of on like a story basis in this ER so many people are rotating through so quickly and we don't see people again but there are some repeat customers and Louis represents someone who the loss of whom would deeply impact all of the characters not Ogilvy perhaps because he seems like a sociopath but like almost anyone else here in the ER He's such a likable guy. He's such a likable character and person. Yeah. That it's like you have both the repeat customer element where everyone does have some kind of relationship with him. You have just like a lot of genuinely like fun or jovial or warm hearted scenes with him Yeah It just like it brings me no joy to say that it probably the kiss of death on the pit to have that much screen time be that positive Yeah. Plus all of these potential complications around his tooth and what it could mean and all the fluid like he's just in a bad way. It's tough. I'm not I'm not optimistic and I am like sort of pretty devastated about it. um well plus i think we should say too we get with the MRSA kind of reveal at the end from someone who has returned back to the hospital right right i think all of those bounce back exactly like all of those cases are structurally interesting for a show like this because they force the doctors to reconsider their examinations to reconsider their initial diagnosis and so having someone who's constantly coming back to the hospital is a great device but then with louie you have just like all the added emotional baggage of people really wanting this guy to change his life. And he's refusing to do it to the point that he's asking for his like midday drink at the hospital. I wish I could say that I could like see a vision of this show where he makes it through the season alive, but it just really doesn't feel like it. Let's talk about Dr. J herself. So finally revealed. This is the first thing I said was I was like, Javadi is the only one I can think of, but I don't think it's her. And then we sort of went down the joy path that we were like convinced by our listeners was true we were like how dumb we were to not think it was joy but i guess it's victoria this whole time yeah it turns out joy is just disaffected and bored at work and on her phone like the rest of us i i love joy joy v ogilvy is honestly one of my favorite things that's happening this season but uh so shibana aziz plays victoria javadi and something i think that's really interesting about javadi this season is you know we met her on her first day last year her first day overwhelmed sort of spiky and defensive about how young she is dealing with her mom sort of hovering and and her reputation dealing with having to work with mateo one of the handsomest guys alive like all this sort of stuff like that well until the radiology department phones in oh wow i'm just saying he's got competition now great call okay um but what's been really interesting to me i sort of interacting with um the the the press tour that the actress have done is that Shibana, who plays Javadi, is much more of a tuned-into-social-media sort of pop girly, I guess, than I interpreted Victoria being in season one. And so I'm wondering if this sort of, she talks about, oh, I didn't peg you for an astrology girly to Whitaker. I didn't peg her for a cancer, if we're just going to flip the script on that. Okay, let's pause. I didn't pick you for an astrology girlie, Rob Mahoney. Tell me what you think about people being cancers versus otherwise. What are you? I'm not, but I am a cancer. And so this is where I'm like, do I see the through line between me and Javadi? What are the characteristics of a cancer? I mean, water sign, as I understand it, typically quite emotional. Okay. And I mean, she clearly can be, but I feel like she's a little more process driven. But maybe this is just something I'm not identifying in myself enough. Okay. Maybe I am a Javadi. Do you have any other takes on any other zodiac signs that you would care to share? I'm out of my depth, but I was just a little surprised to hear that she was a cancer based on the slim amount that I know about cancers. Okay. So it's PressTTV at Spotify.com. Yeah. If anyone listening has some thoughts on Rob Mahoney being a cancer, what that means. I'm a Libra if anyone has any thoughts about that. Maybe it's like a rising issue. Maybe like Victoria and I have different rising signs. What's your rising sign? You don't know. This is a problem. Maybe I need to find out. Okay, and if anyone has any thoughts, Kai Grady, what's your zodiac sign? I was worried that this was going to come to me. Capricorn question mark? Capricorn question mark. Yeah, I'm not an astrology girlie myself. What do the astrology girlies, no gender required, think of a Libra and a Capricorn and a Cancer making a podcast together? Yeah, we'd love to see the synergy chart on that. Yeah, what does that combination mean? I don't know if you know, Joe, this has been a big thing in the NBA world, where certain team compositions, they will chart out and be like, oh, these players are compatible because of their sign alignment. Sometimes it can tell the future. Sometimes in the spirit of astrology, it does not. It's not. Okay, interesting. To go back to Victoria Javadi, I feel like they're kind of oozing her character into the person that the actor is a little bit. That's really poorly stated. But I don't want to say oozing in any of our context. But I feel like, yeah, they're melding sort of the character. They're mapping the character a bit more onto who the actor is. And in a way that doesn't feel like, it just feels like this Victoria feels a bit, I would never have guessed that the Victoria we meet in season one would be a social media influencer. And not only a social media influencer, but when Langdon questions her about it, she's like, more than you think, Dr. Langdon, like really sassy. And that seems to be what Siobhan is like actual personality is a bit more like. And so I don't see it as a contradiction because that was Victoria's first day. You know, overwhelming, overwhelming circumstances. But I kind of like this idea that like this other side of her is emerging and it is connected to who this actress actually is in her day to day, which she seems very, very delightful. And like all of her castmates, when they're asked sort of who's the best at memes or who's the best at that, they're all like, oh, Shibana, Shibana, Shibana every single time. So I thought that was a really interesting development. How do you feel about the Dr. J reveal? I was delighted by it and in particular yeah like I love Javadi as is so I love getting these new wrinkles to her I also really enjoyed that Langdon didn't undercut it at all he kind of played with it a little bit and made some jokes but he also wasn't going to be the first to say Dr. J is not an actual doctor right no he just sort of like Dr. J great to meet you hand it off sure and apparently can be asked for by request in the ED huge news for everyone involved and for him to be like oh, I'd love to watch that video on getting along with problematic coworkers. We need that supplementary content. I really need to see it as well. Okay, great stuff. I thought this was a great reveal and a great handling of it. Let's go back to the astrology girly himself, Huckleberry Whitaker. Huckleberry and Amy and farm benefits. The way that Jabari said, what are farm benefits? It's really funny to me. We have seen a milking machine for the record, you know? This brings me to my next point. And for this, I have a visual aid. Oh, I'm so sorry to do this to you. I couldn't help myself. Have you heard of the book Morning Glory Milking Farm? No. OK, should I have? This is this is a USA Today bestseller, whatever that means. I actually don't know how USA Today manages their numbers. Was that you, New York Times bestseller, Joanna Robinson, turning your nose up at USA Today bestsellers? I just genuinely don't know what makes a USA Today bestseller versus a New York Times bestseller. But apparently they're different lists. Makes sense. OK. written by CM Nacosta, part of a series. Would you like to guess what Morning Glory Milking Farm is about? Morning Glory Milking Farm. I mean, I'm guessing this is a romance novel of some kind. Who is involved? I mean, look, the formula says a big city girl who's disillusioned with her job, going for a simpler life meets an unusually attractive man at like outside the feed store or something when she goes back to deal with her like parents funeral in the small town that they grew up in okay oh wow you know your way around a plot that's not right okay but it was really admirable thank you i would now like to show you the uh cover art of morning glory milking farm uh and i do i mean it's nothing we can we'll be able to show this on the podcast it's nothing like I hope it's on the cover. You can't look at. And I would like to introduce you to a new corner, hopefully, of romance. Oh, boy. Okay. Yeah, so I wasn't expecting this. Can you describe for the listeners what you're seeing here? I would say it's a woman canoodling in very traditional romance novel fashion, as if she would be curling up with like a Fabio type. A pirate, perhaps. Absolutely. Except instead of the pirate. Yeah. It is a bull man. A Minotaur is, I think, the technical term. I mean, he does look like a minotaur. That seems fair. I got questions about the milking part, I guess. Great. I'm happy to read the plot description to you. Violet is a typical down on her luck millennial. Mid-20s, overeducated and drowning in debt. I gotta say, so far I got it. On the verge of moving into her parents' basement. Okay. When a lifeline appears in the form of a very unconventional job in the neighboring Cambric Creek. She has no choice but to grab at it with both hands. morning glory milking farm offers full-time hours full benefits and generous pay with no experience needed there's only one catch the clientele is grade a certified prime beef with all the manly meaty endowments to match milking minotaurs isn't something violet ever considered as a career option but she's determined to to turn the opportunity into a reversal of fortune hi philin have you so would you i would just like to go back to the line yeah you ever seen a milking machine in the context of morning glory milking. This wasn't the kind I anticipated, I have to say. This literally came up in organic conversation over dinner last night that someone else brought up. I have not read this book. I did check it out from the library, the audio book, because I was very curious about it a couple months ago. And I started and I said, no, thank you. I said, not for me. I said, some bridges are a bridge too far. And this is one for me. But I'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum and like monster romances are a big thing right now. So but it's not my thing, but it exists. Frankly, if there's like a supporting part in one of the audio books in this series, like I would love to be a random townsperson or something. I don't think I have the gruff to be the minotaur himself. OK, OK. So I don't know that I could play that, but I would love to participate in some way. OK. I still have questions about minotaur milking. Like, does he have is it strictly not safe for work milking or does he have udders? No, it's not safe. Then what's the profit in that? What's the business model? Well, you know what? You can read the book to find out. I'm sure they get into it. Kai Grady, Capricorn that you are, any thoughts on Morning Glory Milking Farm that you'd like to share? I think this is what will break Rob into fiction. I'm still back. All I needed was minotaur sex. So that was one avenue that I went down this morning when I was doing research for this particular episode. So there's also... Joe, you're having a very normal one. There's also parkour as almost an Olympic sport. I was trying to figure out what was the height of parkour's fame. What do you think the height of parkour's fame? We get a guy who fell through a glass ceiling onto some ferns, I guess, because he was busy making content. Vince Cole, 23, busy making content with a pal of his. Well, as Kai Grady knows, those social feeds aren't going to populate themselves. It's hard work. It's true. What do you think the height of parkour's fame was? I would say 2006. The date that Casino Royale came out? I mean, honestly, true. That's what I put in my notes. Casino Royale 2006. It's about that. It's like 2008, 2006. How does that scene play to people who weren't there? Well, Vince Cole, who's 23, was three years old when Casino Royale came out. So this is a very older sort of sport for the Vince Coles of the world. I guess that's true. really interesting when his when his partner in parkour said that it was almost an olympic sport i was very curious about this and this is this is in fact true that the gymnastics umbrella of the olympics tried to claim parkour and get it into the uh i think the tokyo games okay um and it did not work out for them but this is apparently like a controversial thing around the olympics that i didn't know and sorry we will get back to medical stuff in a second but um a various sort of like sport umbrella institutions trying to claim certain things like there was controversy uh when the canoeing federation and the surfing federation tried to claim like stand-up paddle boarding wow in the 2017 olympics so um you know i mean look stand-up paddle boarding is not surfing That's just not. Parkour did not make it. Baseball, softball, karate, sports climbing, surfing, and skateboarding did. Paris, breakdancing, of course. And this year in Milan, we're getting a bunch of new winter sports, but they're all basically skiing. There's ski mode. Do you know what that is? What is ski mode? Ski mountaineering. So basically, you have to climb up the mountain and then ski down it. So it's like cross-country skiing with incline? I guess so. And then the one that I'm really excited about, I love the Olympics, by the way. I know that you think I don't know anything about sports, and that's true. I don't believe that. I know that you're a secret sportsman just waiting in the wings to jump on your chance. I like high stakes sort of sports. That's why I like a playoff game or something like that. Or the Olympics. What could be higher stakes than that? And also the whole globe is involved in watching. We're doing double moguls this year. So you're pitting two people doing moguls, downhills mogul skiing, against each other. which I think is really exciting. That is exciting. It feels like a lot of moguls, so I'm not going to lie. Too many to you? Too many moguls, but I'm in favor of direct competition. Do you have a favorite Olympic sport? I mean, basketball, obviously. Sorry. Other than the one you cover for a living? I love team handball. Love full volleyball, not sand volleyball, which is a travesty. I'm trying to think what else. Table tennis is thrilling. Okay. In your Marty Supreme era. I mean, I'm perpetually in my Marty Supreme era, unfortunately, for all of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you love the Olympics or are you medium on the Olympics? I'm medium. I mean, look, the IOC is hideously corrupt. It's a weird institution. There's a lot of stuff happening around it. Do I feel myself swell with the glory of biathlon? I can't say that I do, but I do respect it. Do you feel like maybe swell with the glory of the biathlon should be the logline on a new romance novel that you do a voice for a town person for, perhaps? That one I'm willing to play the lead. Okay, great. Great. Anything you want to say about Ogilvy and the Glass Shard? I mean, the great humbling of Ogilvy, I would think. One would hope. One would hope. If there is a path to us liking this character or not hating this character at any juncture, this kind of thing had to happen, right? I still don't know if it's going to be enough. It still feels like a long road to get there. Everybody hates this guy, not only including us, But the look that Dr. Bangs and Robbie give each other as joy cuts him down. Yeah. I mean, just brought me the greatest delight. Possibly my favorite part of the episode is when Robbie gives Whitaker the double fist bump Oh yeah And then just leaves Ogilvy hanging He wanted it so bad Really really good stuff Couldn even scrounge up a single fist bump after all that No. Okay. Mr. Samba. Jean Jean Samba, 54, with a heart condition. This was a really good season one callback. because, as you might remember, Whitaker lost a patient, Mr. Bennett, due to a cardiac incident in season one. A patient that he was attending to, who he was bonding with, who they basically put in a gurney in the hallway, and while he was there, he died. And later in the season, there was another patient, Harvey Chang. That's when they got the ECMO machine out, that like really insane, very cool machine that they use to sort of try to keep someone's like lungs and heart going when their body can't. And when that happened, Whitaker was asking, like, why couldn't we do that for Mr. Bennett? And Langdon said that Mr. Bennett needed to have CPR within five minutes, an initial rhythm of V-fib or V-tac or the ECMO wouldn't have worked. So the fact that, please forgive all of my bungling of jargon, but the fact that Whitaker was not only a little bit more on it than Santos was about sort of thinking about the possibilities of a heart condition inside of this particular patient. But when Jesse comes in, he's like, oh, you already put the pads on for the defib paddles? And he's like, yeah, just in case. And to me, that's him saying, like, if we need to do defib, like, we need to not have anything standing in our way. I need to not have another Mr. Bennett incident happen. And so this was just like, this is why he gets the double fist bump from Robbie. But this is like a great win in Safer Whitaker and also just like some season one trauma hanging over him as he handles this patient. What do you think about that? I mean, tracks, absolutely. In terms of doctors being unusually attuned to the very specific things that haunt them. Yeah. And the ways you're willing to go the extra mile to attach the defip pads to be ready for the thing that's probably statistically not going to happen. But if it does happen, you don't want to be in that position again. And I thought that's why this episode overall, last week to me, was so much about the patient cases. And it was so much about identifying with these people we don't really know and finding these quick emotional connections with them in ways that were really effective in some, a little clumsy in others, you know, a mixed bag. This one was all about the doctors. It was all about past cases, past wins, current expectations, current pressures, how you're paying off, like the costs of precociousness, the costs of ambition. Like it was so much more of like a workplace drama this week in ways that I thought worked, but also just like I constantly was like trying to find my footing overall in this episode because of it. Interesting. I thought this episode was, for me, much more successful than last week I didn't have any moments that I really bumped on the way that I did Last week, it all felt just a bit smoother to me But I hear what you're saying I guess the only way, the place that I would push back on that Is the Diaz family, right? Orlando Diaz, his wife Lori and their daughter And the insurance case here That we have Lori Diaz who comes in And this case has been percolating for a couple episodes now. We've got the full family here now. Lori comes in having not been able to get the bus that she needs to get there. She's wearing her work shirt. And we get this conversation between Noel Hastings and Samira. Samira already knows this, but it's for the benefit of us at home. Why can these people who have multiple jobs not afford health care? Here's the very specific crack they fall into inside of this very flawed system of why they can't have the coverage they need. this and how can we figure out a way through the system? This is something I'm going to be really interested to track. What can Nurse Hastings do? What can Samira do? What is the solution here for this family? Orlando talks about he's not taking his medication that he needs in the dosage that he needs because they can't afford it. We talked already in this episode and previous episodes about shame, the shame in Lori's voice when she's like, we can't afford this ER stay. What are we going to do? Should we just leave? Sort of thing. And Samira's like, we'll figure it out. This was just very at the core of what the pit wants to tell us. Definitely. And you could see it all over their faces when she walks into the room and sees her husband. We can't do this. In the moment, it's inarguable. You're in a hospital bed. You're in a hospital room. But it's like, how is this all going to make sense financially and realistically for our family? And I thought they do a great job of carrying that dread, that tension, that anxiety throughout the whole case. Also another case where, as you mentioned, Samira Mohan's like a little bit overpromising. And it's one of these things that we see with doctors across the board in the show. There's like some cases they're very hesitant to do it. We see it with Javadi in this episode where she's hesitant to almost like say too much about what Jackson's potential diagnosis would be. the law student who's had this episode. And his sister's there. Exactly. And it's like, let's wait and see the tests. Whereas Samir is saying, we will find a way. When she has to know on some level, they might not find a way. And to the family's credit to this point, the clearest sense of any kind of way forward is the closest thing we have in this country to a working insurance system. And that's GoFundMe, unfortunately. This is the final quote that I'll read from this John Wells interview, right? when he was talking about the response to season one. Was he surprised that season one was such a hit? And he says, it turns out that people are really concerned about this. Things have gotten very dramatic within the healthcare system and all the changes that people have been trying to do to the Affordable Care Act for years. I was surprised that the serious subject would immediately resonate. And every week as the show dropped, there were more people who were tuning in and talking about it. Healthcare professionals started to talk about it. So this is part of their mission statement. They want to talk about, he mentions violence in hospitals towards healthcare workers. We got that, of course, with the Nurse Dana plotline, how difficult urban hospitals were getting, changes in healthcare, after effects for healthcare workers after COVID, and the massive flaws inside of the incredibly corrupt insurance system in the US. And so this family and their journey through the ER and what can we do to help you almost game the system, How can we figure out a solution is something that, you know, I presume we'll be tracking as we go forward. I would hope so. I mean, this certainly has the legs of one of the cases that could go three or four episodes, if not more. And we're in need of those at this point in the season. Like we've closed a lot of cases. They've turned over a lot of beds. A lot of the patients that we know already have been discharged, have been moved on or like have moved on to another part of the hospital. Right, right. I think in terms of things that are looming, there's this case clearly going forward. there's a side mention of the abandoned baby. I know. One of the patients is like, what about that baby? Many people are asking, what about the baby? You guys remember that baby? Other than that, I'm trying to think of like- Harlow with the ASL interpreter. Yes, of course. And we see that one introduced this week. Yeah. I guess technically Boba Guy is still at large. It could be hiding in a supply closet somewhere. Most other things have been closed up to this point. And that's why you have to, you know, the waitress with the foot pain that may or may not be MRSA coming back. Like we're starting to kind of refresh what is happening in the ED. And we've got the betting board that we're watching sort of like what's happening there. That's not a patient, but like that's an ongoing. Well, that's how you refill the ER. Is the other hospital shut down? We got to fund all the ambulances here. I will say one thing that's kind of noticed and I don't think followed up in this episode, Pamela Perry comes in on one of those ambulances with abdominal pain after eating chilaquiles. This is the biggest tragedy of the whole episode. Well, it's not a tragedy. This is a fact-checking moment. Chilaquiles wouldn't hurt a fly. I really agree. Has never harmed anybody. I really agree. I know that this is like your Tex-Mex, but I love chilaquiles. As you should. It's like one of the best breakfast options. Melking would not eat it because it involves eggs. But that's okay. I really agree with you. More for us. Do not vilify chilaquiles. I resent the implication. We will not stand for that. This is my July effect moment. It's like, how dare you invoke chilaquiles in this fashion? I make chilaquiles, well, often, but it's my New Year's Day. We have people over. I make chelicules. It's really good for volume serving people. That's beautiful. MRSA. Let's talk about it. This is the last thing we're going to talk about. I learned about Olympic sports, milking farms, and MRSA for this podcast. You really can't do it all. Methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus. I really nailed that pronunciation for sure. MRSA. I believe it's one in 30 people have MRSA like on their body at any given moment. And it is not a problem to have this bacteria on the surface of your body. The problem is when it gets into the deeper layers of you. And that is why it often shows up in a hospital setting when you're getting sort of like various things penetrating your body phrasing. So like if it can get... Save it for the milking part. This is a resistant bacterial infection. If it turns into sepsis, it can be fatal. Okay. And it's highly contagious as well, which is why Langdon and Donnie are like, oh, fucking shit. It could be MRSA, right? The pain and the warmth coming off of her skin and all that stuff, these are sort of classic MRSA indicators. They mention cellulitis. That's the layer of tissue below the skin. So when MRSA gets there, or I believe it's in the lungs and the esophagus, that's when you encounter true problems. So it shows up in nursing homes and hospitals a lot, and increasingly in other places because we are doing a bad job of taking care of ourselves. And it has to do – my understanding is this idea of methicillin-resistant staph is, I believe, connected to – press htb at Spotify.com. I am not a doctor. I merely watched some YouTube videos this morning about MRSA, fun fact. But it has to do with our over-treating things with antibiotics. and so we are you know for one thing hand sanitizer like which we see them use constantly in the hospital but the way in which we're sort of like irresponsibly over using antibacterial substances is causing more and more resistant strains of bacteria in the world I believe that to be true if that is a myth press you to be at spotify.com and I'm certainly happy to correct the record I hope it's a myth. As someone who is hand sanitizing a apparently distressing amount, I really hope that's not true. I've never seen you. Maui Rubin's a huge one. I've never seen you do it though. Carry with me almost at all times these days. We all responded to COVID differently. This has been a real before and after transition for me. It's true. All right. Anything else you want to talk about? Did we get it all? One last thing, Joe, and we've mentioned this in earlier pods, but it felt especially prominent here. Dana has been missing stuff all day just like weird little mistakes where in this episode it's like said there were two patients going to be rolling in from the ambulances when three were called in an earlier episode she like tries to debrief mckay on her patients that are not her patients it's like there's little things happening that okay feel flagged at this point enough enough an accumulation of something happening with dana what's your do you feel like it's uh related to that sort of like ptsd email that we got that's what you think that to me it feels like very in line with exactly and maybe Maybe I'm just primed to see it now since we got that email, but it does feel like we're seeding that idea. Interesting. How do you see that playing out? Or do you... I'm not sure. You don't care. I mean, frankly, this is one of those things where this ER does not work without Dana. She's such a binding element for all of the disparate parts of it that if she does have her own Dr. Robbie, I need to huddle in a ball in PEDS moment, I don't know how anyone gets by without her. That's true. It could be another tough thing that they have to confront of like not only whatever's going to happen that's going to force Robbie and Dr. Alashimi to come to a head or come together. But in addition to that, if Dana is at all indisposed, that's brutal for everyone else. Speaking of brutal and unless we there is one thing we did not like linger on that I think we should. What's that? which is let's go back to like patron saint of this pod dr bangs and uh the broken coccyx and how she had to oh yeah that should we just like we should touch on that i think i don't want to touch on that not even with gloves that's not my job she didn't want to touch on that even with gloves and like medical grade uh lubricant you're you're like no thank you i mean i will give him credit like the idea of undergoing that for the sake of keeping your social calendar intact for For the sake of love. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, at least a certain kind of entertainment. Yeah. The man, like he has his priorities straight in a sense. I just want to shout out this actor who once again, I mentioned was a heartthrob of the eighties, was on the OC, has done a lot of things. Is a heartthrob of today. I don't know if you heard how many dates he has. I think the bravery of showing us his, his butt was, I just was like to applaud it. you know it's very pure suit um and you know was it was a thing we saw on this show not everyone will recognize it but we applaud butt bravery here we do all right um that has allegedly been another episode of the prestige tv podcast um morning glory milking farm by cm na costa is the first in a series there are more coming so phrasing did not mean to say that so what's the series called? Does that have a snazzy title? The Cambric Creek series, I believe. That's disappointing. Real missed opportunity. Okay, well, PrestigeTV is Spotify.com or DrSideBangs at D-Mail.com if you have a better title for this book series. We also solicited nicknames for Dr. Santos and Rob, you determined that we have not yet found the winner. Yeah, I think some very promising, well-intentioned leads, but nothing that's really making me feel like the search is over. Okay, so we would like to continue to receive those emails. I would love to. Any corrections of medical mishaps we might have made, wag those fingers. We love to learn. Thank you to you, Rob Mahoney. Thanks, Joe. Thanks to you, Kai Grady, for getting on the mic multiple times this episode. And thank you to Justin Sales always for his work on this feed. And we'll see you back for Industry. Jody Walker will be back with us. Industry is very good this season. It really is. If folks aren't watching it. So tune in for that. I would say there's like a similar amount of stuff going into orifices on both shows somehow right now. What a promise to make. See you soon. Bye.