'The Pitt' season 2 review: No sophomore slump for TV's best drama

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The July Fourth weekend has arrived, along with an ominous development. Another hospital in Pittsburgh has just issued a Code Black, which means a lockdown for security reasons, with incoming patients diverted to Pittsburgh Trauma. And Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) had to pick this day before leaving on a three-month sabbatical?

At 7 a.m., the ER is already crushed, with Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) back from rehab (for stealing drugs) and ER charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) back to herding the cats, so to speak — the crush of patients, and sharp-elbowed new residents, like third-year med student Joy (Irene Choi) and her insta-nemesis, Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson), a know-it-all in his fourth year.

There's also new attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi, "The L Word: Generation Q") who lurks around Robby while pitching a new artificial intelligence app.

MY SAY So here's a little nonsurprise: The best show of 2025 also happens to be the best show of 2026. Admittedly we're only a few days in, and there's 350-something days left for someone else to sort out the mechanics of a first-rate TV production (writing, editing, direction, writing). For now, anyway, "The Pitt" remains unassailable.

There's absolutely nothing over these episodes (nine of 15 offered for review) that should dislodge any positive impressions left over from the first season. Put another way, if you loved "The Pitt" then, there's no earthly reason why you shouldn't again.

Wyle told Deadline last year that "our job is not to outdo ourselves [but] to do ourselves." In fact, outdoing would not have been advisable. A mass shooting arc from the first season traumatized the staff of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center and (no doubt) a few viewers too. But the tragedy especially gutted Robby. First seen this season riding recklessly on a motorcycle without a helmet through the streets of Pittsburgh, you are left to infer that the "Pitt's" senior attending physician is still scarred.

But even if Robby doesn't slow down, "The Pitt" needed to take a deep breath, and really figure out what "The Pitt" is all about — other than a one-season Emmy wonder with distant, unmistakable echoes of "ER." Because Pittsburgh Trauma is a teaching hospital, that theoretically should provide more than enough narrative tension to keep this chugging along for years to come. Teaching implies learning and learning implies incomplete knowledge, which means that someone here — nurse, doctor, student, resident or patient — is always scrambling against the clock to figure out what the hell is going on.

A helluva lot, as it turns out. I started to count the incoming patients, then quit at 33 (by the third episode) but the exercise did offer a glimpse into how this jigsaw is put together. No two patients were the same, no malady either. Snapshots quickly came and went, but "The Pitt" always makes certain to double back, so that those faceless patients morph into human beings whose busy little lives were suddenly or (in some instances) shockingly derailed. (The actors playing most of them are seasoned pros, with the best known of the lot, Michael Nouri, starring as someone you will get to know only as "Walmart Greeting Man.")

Most of all, "The Pitt" remains a master class in casting. Everyone here is superb, from Wyle on down, or on over, while the newbies — Choi, Iverson, and especially Moafi's AI-besotted character — are seamless additions. Flawed people in a flawed world, they too are humans muddling through another long day, with chaos just around the corner, or perhaps death. Sure, this is a formula, but "The Pitt" has perfected it.

BOTTOM LINE No sophomore slump here — the second season is terrific.