Max's The Pitt is the next in a long line of medical dramas, but it's unique for one significant reason. The TV series, created by R. Scott Gemmill, John Wells, and Noah Wyle, feels a lot like an ER reboot and matches the 1994 classic in tone and theme. Of course, times have certainly changed, and The Pitt aims to explore the challenges of modern emergency medicine. Like most medical dramas, this series features a cast of characters, each of which has their own complicated relationships with their colleagues, jobs, and patients. Still, The Pitt takes advantage of its unique opportunity to be different.

The Pitt handles its story with a unique, time-stamped approach, the general premise here is pretty standard—though it's far more graphic than other medical dramas.

The Pitt Does Not Shy Away From Graphic & Gruesome Medical Scenes

The Pitt's Home On Streaming Opens More Possibilities

Medical dramas like ER and Grey's Anatomy certainly reel audiences in with their emergency-room drama, but the actual gruesome ailments these patients present are typically left to the imagination. The Pitt, however, is different. The Max series' very first episode provided audiences with graphic images of burned hands and, even worse, a degloved leg, which was enough to make anyone's stomach churn. Typical network medical dramas can't get away with such a thing, but as a Max series released on streaming, The Pitt can bring the terrible reality of the ER to audiences' home screens.

New episodes of The Pitt release on Max every Thursday.

The Pitt's Medical Gore Adds To Its Realism

Max's Medical Drama Aims To Be Realistic

Of course, The Pitt doesn't feature such graphic and gruesome medical scenes simply to make audiences gag. The Max series is wholly focused on realism. The hour-long episodes don't jump through an entire shift at the ER but instead explore a single hour in these doctors' lives (the episodes of The Pitt are named for the hour they explore). This allows audiences to look into the unending chaos of the modern emergency room, with several patients (some who live and some who don't) on the rotation within only 60 minutes. Naturally, their injuries have to look realistic too.

The Pitt has gone to great lengths to portray the ER realistically, and it couldn't do this without the gritty, bloody, ugly truths of the human body.

To make these atrocious moments all the more unsettling, The Pitt doesn't depend on a dramatic musical score to get audiences to feel for its characters. There are no voiceover monologues or montages exploring the doctors' relationships with one another. As the characters of The Pitt attempt to save their patients' lives, only the sounds of background chatter and emergency room chimes and alarms can be heard. The Pitt has gone to great lengths to portray the ER realistically, and it couldn't do this without the gritty, bloody, ugly truths of the human body.