'The Pitt' ICE Episode Explained by Creator R. Scott Gemmill
A scene from the ICE storyline in season two, episode 11 of 'The Pitt.'
Warrick Page / HBO Max
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[The following story contains spoilers from The Pitt, season 2, episode 11, “5:00 p.m.”]
Once again, HBO Max’s The Pitt mirrored reality: Thursday night’s 11th episode of season 2 featured an ICE storyline eerily similar to what is going on in the U.S.
The show, starring Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, who leads an understaffed, underfunded emergency room set in Pittsburgh, has had its fair share of episodes that closely resemble what is happening in the real world, with Wyle, Gemmill and executive producer John Wells all often talking about their consultations with experts to most accurately reflect the real-life issues facing health care workers.
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Last season, a measles outbreak episode aired the same week cases started accelerating in the U.S.
In this week’s episode, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents bring a detainee to the ER, not giving medical staff much information about the injury of the patient other than that she fell. The agents’ presence makes everyone uneasy, prompting many patients and staffers to leave. At one point, Robby stands up to one of the agents, and at the end of the episode, nurse Jesse (Ned Brower) gets detained for stepping in to protect the patient when the ICE agents get too aggressive.
ICE, which enforces immigration laws, has been under scrutiny since the beginning of President Trump’s second term. The agency has made thousands of arrests, led mass deportations of immigrants and clashed with protestors, leading to deaths of people including Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Fans watching Thursday’s episode may have felt whiplash watching things unfold on The Pitt in such a close echo of the news even though creator R. Scott Gemmill told The Hollywood Reporter that this episode was written more than a year ago. In their research process for the show, producers speak with nurses and doctors to see what’s going on in the medical industry, and as early as February last year, ICE began infiltrating hospitals, Gemmill says. Of course, things have escalated beyond what they could’ve imagined, with things rapidly changing every day.
Below, Gemmill talks about how the storyline came together and what was challenging about this particular episode.
There’s an uncanny timeliness with your show with last season’s measles outbreak episode, references to Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and now here we are again with an extremely timely episode. How did the idea to feature an ICE storyline start?
The episode was written quite a while ago, before things got as escalated as they have. Last night, we actually had what we call nurses night, where we had 12 nurses come in from [Los Angeles] County General [hospital] and just let us sort of pick their brains about what’s going on. [Asking them], what are we doing right? What are we doing wrong? We do that every year, and sometimes more than once a year. And we’ll do residents night next week, and we just talk about what’s going on in medicine. And one of the things that was obvious back then was the very beginning of ICE being in the hospitals. We just wanted to tell that story as part of what’s going on in medicine.
When was the episode written?
It would have been last summer, or could have been even last February when we started in the room. We usually start the room right after we finish filming [a season], and we don’t have much time off. We looked at what’s going on, and we don’t try to prophesize; we just naturally extrapolate what could happen. And that happened with the measles case. It happened with the cyberattack, and it’s happened with ICE. Things unfortunately have gotten much more severe with that than what we had ever imagined.
What made you think this issue would still be pertinent by the time the episode aired over a year later?
Pessimism, maybe. (Laughs.) No, that is something we had to think about: What happens if this is all gone? That’s a situation where it would be bad for the show because we would have to scramble, but it’d be good for the nation. What are those things where it was a win-win for us? If the ICE infiltrations went away, then that’s good for everyone. If they didn’t, then our stories remain relevant.
You mentioned this spawned fro