This week:
- An ode to the oh-so-good The Pitt.
- The worst part of my favorite show.
- The best celebrity moments from the week.
- Prepare to be (even more) Obsessed.
Scrubbing in for The Pitt Fanclub Meeting
There’s this thing called “fight or flight,” which describes your body’s physical reaction when faced with a threat, danger, or trauma.
I have no idea where a fall on that binary, or if I do at all. I mean, look around, people. There is so much threat, danger, and trauma. Fight or flight? Why choose one? There’s enough opportunity these days for the answer to be: all of the above.
That is how I would describe the experience of watching The Pitt, the HBO Max medical drama that is officially back for Season 2. As in, you can stream the first episode right now! Get those boxing gloves ready. Or maybe lace up those running shoes. If you’re like me, best to do both.
The Pitt, as I was just talking to my colleague Matt Wilstein about for a new episode of Obsessed: The Podcast (Subscribe! Follow! Listen!), is simultaneously the most comforting and the most stressful series on TV.
Each episode takes place during one hour of a 15-hour ER shift, offering a brutally unflinching look inside a powder keg: hordes of waiting patients with gruesome injuries clamoring to be seen by doctors and nurses, who cut them open in desperate attempts to save them. That’s all while they weather the emotional toll of being on the front lines of the highest life-and-death stakes takes on a person.
People flock to a show like The Pitt because that kind of drama is inherently powerful; I can’t imagine anything more fascinating than being a fly on the wall, witnessing the endless gauntlet of intensity in an emergency room.
I could also see why, with the world such that the daily news might cause your blood pressure to spike to levels that would also require medical attention, a person would have no interest in any TV series remotely upsetting or “hard to watch,” which The Pitt can often be. So when it comes to what to put on to wind down on a Friday night, and The Pitt shows up on your HBO Max queue, I completely understand: flight.
How could a series like that possibly be considered soothing? But in its unfiltered look at the hectic mania of an emergency room, you see, almost constantly, the grace and saintly steeliness these medical professionals possess. You also, with great care on the part of the show’s creative team, witness a certain generosity that’s intrinsically shared among the hospital’s staff.
That’s especially true of Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby, who, sometimes to his emotional detriment, leaves more space for the growth, pain, and healing of his employees than he does for himself. And when Dr. Robby, one of the doctors, or even the patients and their families succumb to the heaviness of what they’re experiencing, it’s a resonant, relatable glimpse of the human spirit for viewers to latch onto.
It’s a reminder to us all that, sure, it may resemble fire and brimstone out there. But there’s something in the best of us still capable of extinguishing it. In other words, when it comes to The Pitt, audiences are willing to fight through the trauma to reach that catharsis.
The Pitt has opened my eyes to the reality of the emergency room, like the miracle of science; the Season 2 premiere features a graphic scene in which so many doctors have their hands inside a man’s chest, each manipulating, pumping, and twisting a different organ, that it’s as if they’re attempting to recreate Maria Von Trapp’s “Lonely Goatherd” puppet show in the poor man’s body. Also, if I ever have a medical emergency, I will, apparently, end up naked in front of an entire staff of doctors.
So thank you, The Pitt, for motivating me to live a cautious life. Swearing off fireworks on the Fourth of July is more than worth it to mitigate the risk of having to rush to the ER and have my penis flop out of my pants as medics cut off my clothes because one accidentally exploded on me. Safety first.
Get Him Off My TV!
The Traitors is back, and TV is never more in its utopian state than it is when a bunch of Real Housewives, some figure skaters, a buncha hot boys from reality TV dating shows, the guy from Laguna Beach, and, inexplicably, Travis Kelce’s mother are gallivanting around the Scottish Highlands.
When my elementary school chorus sang, “Heal the world, make it a better place…” this was the future, no doubt, we were all envisioning.
The first three episodes of the new season are so much fun to watch that not even the presence of the most obnoxious person on TV, actor Michael Rapaport, ruins things. Though he tries his damndest, and does so immediately.
This sentient fart, who is apparently so resistant to any cultural poopouri or lighting of a match that Peacock bit the bullet and invited him to the Traitors castle, isn’t an entertaining kind of pop-culture villain. He’s just exhausting. The only semi-tolerable takeaway from his presence this season is watching how much the other cast members hate him, too.
It’s to the point that, just hours after the premiere episodes aired, headlines like “Is Michael Rapaport Ruining The Traitors?” and “The Traitors Star Michael Rapaport Has a Long History of Being Unlikable” began appearing on major websites—to say nothing of the social media reaction.
I’m curious how the rest of the season plays out. Have we found our new TV nemesis? Or is he just an irritating reality-TV fly whose hopefully going to flit away soon?
The Best Celebrities of the Week
It’s been a banner week for my favorite celebrities being the absolute best. (I can’t articulate it, but I know you know what you mean: How satisfying it is when you have some subconscious obsession with a particular star, and then they end up doing something really great and you’re like, “Oh, congratulations, id, on being right!”)
Three marquee Kevin Fallon Hall of Famers delighted me this week:
Cher, when she appeared on Dax Shepard’s podcast and said, with regard to his marriage to Kristen Bell: “You must have something that I don’t see.”
Abbott Elementary star Janelle James pulled double duty, first when accepting her first Critics Choice Award and quipping that the advantage of losing four times previously is that she knows now that “they’re never gonna feed us at this thing. It’s gonna be just grapes and ice cream every year, but this makes up for it!” (I’ve attended that show many times…and she’s right.)
Then there’s the interview after she and Heated Rivalry star Connor Storrie announced the nominations for the newly rebranded The Actor Awards (stupid name!), when she was lasciviously asked what she thought about the steamy sex and nude scenes Storrie filmed for the series.
“That’s not what I’m thinking about,” she said. “I’m thinking about his excellent Russian accent that he does, about his characterization. I’m thinking that he is adorable. He looks like a leading man, and I’m excited to see where he goes next.” A class act.
And speaking of class acts, I’ve said it before, and I’ll be such a broken record about it forever that, if someone fixes the record, I’ll just break it again: Sarah Jessica Parker is the best celebrity we have.
She accepted the Golden Globes’ Carol Burnett Award for lifetime achievement in television, and her speech sparkled not just with charisma, but an earnestness and authenticity that we’re trained, now, to think is corny—but was so effortlessly entertaining and moving. The best!
Ch-ch-changes!
If you’re a subscriber to this Obsessed newsletter, then I’m betting that you have received somewhere in the ballpark of several hundred email blasts this week about the exciting new things that are happening with our coverage.
To quote one of my generation’s most prominent wordsmiths, “Baby, I’m sorry (I’m not sorry),” because we worked really hard on launching this stuff, and I think you’re going to like it. Please like it. Subscribe to it all anyway. Daddy’s rent just went up.
There’s Obsessed: The Podcast, which launched with Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti as the first guest and my thoughts on Timothée Chalamet’s bare a-- being spanked by Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful in Marty Supreme.
There’s the daily Unmissable entertainment newsletter, where I’ll channel my role as entertainment sherpa and serve as your guide through our must-see Obsessed coverage.
And there’s my new Substack, Obsessed by Kevin Fallon. If you enjoy what you’ve read in this newsletter—and, given how far into this newsletter you’ve read, it would be strange if you aren’t—then you’ll want to subscribe. It’s all my deranged musings that you’re reading here…but more!
The Golden Globes are Sunday night, and I’ll be all over it, writing about it on my Substack, talking about it on the podcast, and so much more. So, uh, follow along?!
More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed
Abbott Elementary star Chris Perfetti told me the secrets behind the show’s funniest moments. Read more.
HBO’s most underrated—and steamiest—show is back, and we have the scoop from all the actors. Read more.
Calling all Carrie Coonatics: The Gilded Age and White Lotus star is back on Broadway, and we have the verdict. Read more.
What to watch this week:
The Pitt: Noah Wyle continues to be flawless in every way. No notes. (Now on HBO Max)
A Thousand Blows: An Adolescence reunion like you’d never expect. (Now on Hulu)
The Traitors: Ain’t no season like murder season! (Now on Peacock)
Greeland 2: Migration: That the title for this action sequel is now ridiculously timely…what a world we live in. (Now in theaters)
What to skip this week:
People We Meet on Vacation: Yet another blockbuster novel turned into a blandly palatable movie. (Now on Netflix)
His & Hers: Stay for the big twist…if you make it that far. (Now on Netflix)
Want more must-read dispatches on all the unmissable TV and movies that have you seated? Subscribe to Kevin Fallon’s Substack.
