What The Pitt’s Big Emmy Night Means For The Future of TV
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This is not an Emmys recap: The less said about the dreadfully boring broadcast—which, true to host Nate Bargatze’s joke about hosting the 77th Emmy ceremony instead of a cool number like the 75th or 80th, seemed even more mailed-in than usual this year—the better. But as mid as the show itself was, it may end up being one of the most consequential nights for the immediate future of television. The Pitt—the half-procedural half-serialized Max original that restored old ER vibes, in spirit with EP John Wells and by literally putting Noah Wyle back in scrubs—more or less swept the drama categories, defeating presumed locks like The White Lotus and critically-acclaimed favorites like Severance. And as we know about those brilliant folks calling the shots in Hollywood, if something works, the only solution is to spam the marketplace with it. Which is to say, by this time next year, a good chunk of new TV may be greenlit in our favorite Pittsburgh Trauma Center’s image.
What does that mean, exactly? In the aftermath of premium cable’s reign and then Peak Streaming, TV has looked a little less like, well, TV. The budgets rival a modest blockbuster, the cinematography looks fit for a Dolby theater, the casts are often a murderer’s row of Oscar nominees, and the wait between new seasons is about as long as it takes to make a sequel.
The Pitt, by design, feels like a breath of old air circa 2002. It is blessedly low-concept, looks great without looking glossy, proudly embraces episodic and procedural tropes—even the nature of its serialization, with each installment representing one hour in one day, hearkens back to 24, an aughts staple if there ever was one. It’s even being produced in the spirit of old TV: following an April season finale, season 2 is already filming with a January release date. Sure, in the peak network TV era, seasons turned over in the span of a grade-school summer vacation, but in 2025 nine months still feels like a feat. (Only half-hour shows—mostly sitcoms, like Hacks, The Bear, and The Other Two—have reloaded as quickly.)
Sunday’s Emmys haul has officially cemented The Pitt as a commercial and critical hit; anyone who wasn’t on the bandwagon is surely about to spend fall binging before season 2 And now that it’s both the people’s and the industry’s favorite, I wonder if network bosses are going to be looking for their own Pitt now to ride the wave. Not necessarily a medical show, but something that feels lo-fi and retro by design. (The Pitt is also one of depressingly very few zeitgeist shows that don’t concern the one percent or casually wealthy.)
