The following story contains spoilers for The Pitt season 2, episode 6, “12:00 P.M.”
LIKE SO MANY other viewers of The Pitt, I watched the show’s first season in a binge. And for a show that’s so fast-paced and where each episode truly bleeds directly into the next, that felt right. For those of us who got our first taste of The Pitt that way, watching season 2 on a week-to-week schedule has been a major change.
When you binge four or five episodes of The Pitt at a time, it feels quicker to get to one of the show’s signature heartbreaking emotional moments in a night or two. But watching on a week to week schedule, it can feel like a long time to that payoff. But in the sixth episode of The Pitt‘s second season, titled “12:00 P.M.,” we finally got it—and, reader, let me tell you, I was in absolute tears by the end of this episode.
Fans of The Pitt had to be on high alert all season long, as “regular” patient (and chronic alcoholic) Louie Cloverfield (Ernest Harden Jr.) was back in the ER, as he so often is. And while season 2, episode 5 ended with him flatlining, there had to be hope that he would be saved. But, alas, “12:00 P.M.” doesn’t waste much time—the episode opens with Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) and Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) desperately trying to save one of their favorite people in the hospital. And, sadly, they are not successful. We have seen Louie’s final visit.
It’s a heartbreaking moment for our characters, who did everything they could. It’s heartbreaking for Dr. Langdon, who was personally forgiven by Louie only a couple hours ago. It’s heartbreaking for Dr. Robby, who knows more about Louie than anyone else (more on that in a bit). And it’s even heartbreaking for Nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and her new nurse-in-training Emma (Laëtitia Hollard), who have to tend to Louie’s body once he’s gone.
But The Pitt zags from here. Just as life goes on, and a hospital shift goes on, so too does the episode. There are other people who need helping, and other cases that need solving. News of Louie’s death trickles through The Pitt’s staff—Whitaker (Gerran Howell) finds out in a particularly cold way when cocky new student doctor Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) lets him know that Louie has “croaked.” As if Ogilvie wasn’t already on viewers’s bad side for being a know-it-all dick.
Throughout the episode, we see the aftermath of Louie’s passing through the eyes of several different characters. It hurts, and that’s obvious. As much as it was clear that Louie was playing with fire—he was a chronic alcoholic with severe liver issues—everyone was still shocked that his time came. In one compelling moment, Dana teaches Emma how to set a recently-deceased body in a viewing room, with one hand outside of the sheet so someone can hold it if they come by.
Louie’s story gets put on ice a couple times throughout the course of the episode, but by the end of the episode, everyone takes a moment for a debrief. They talk through their memories of him, and how he was kind, and often made them happy and smile. Langdon, then, shows everyone the photo he found in Louie’s stuff after his passing of a woman. “Who knew?” he asks.
A damp-eyed Dr. Robby knew. As he tells everyone, this is Rhonda, Louie’s wife. Louie, who was working as a groundskeeper at Three Rivers Stadium, loved Rhonda. And while he never really wanted kids, Rhonda eventually convinced him. And Rhonda was pregnant—they were going to have a family. Until about a month before she was due, Rhonda and their unborn child were killed in a car accident. “Louie never really came back from that,” Dr. Robby explains.
These are the moments that make The Pitt so special. It’s the kind of moment that suddenly puts everything in Louie’s life—that we’ve seen in the show and otherwise—into a context that makes complete and utter sense. Yes, Louie simply couldn’t stop himself from drinking, but how could anyone blame him? The fact that he was able to be such a shining light even for people caring for him at the hospital feels like a revelation of his character that goes such a long way.
It’s fitting that Ogilvie—who was so cold and awful about Louie’s death within the same hour—is framed just behind Dr. Robby as he tells the story. And the episode has a perfect ending, as Nurse Emma—who herself wasn’t sure about the intensity of all of this—is the one to hold Louie’s hand on her way out the door.
This is why we watch The Pitt. There are the exciting moments, the compelling moments, the great back and forths that make us love these characters and care about what they have going on. But when The Pitt is at its very best—as it is in the “12:00 P.M.” episode—it will make us just totally break down in tears.
Evan is the culture editor for Men’s Health, with bylines in The New York Times, MTV News, Brooklyn Magazine, and VICE. He loves weird movies, watches too much TV, and listens to music more often than he doesn’t.
