This article discusses the plot of The Pitt Season 2, Episodes 7 and 8
Sexual assault is almost as common on television as it is in real life. Teen dramas take on date rape in “very special episodes.” Genre epics like the Game of Thrones franchise use sexual violence as a tool for character development and world-building, often with controversial results. Survivor stories abound on reality TV; in some horrific cases, cameras have even recorded questionably consensual encounters as they happened. Then, of course, there’s the perennial abundance of cop, lawyer, and doctor shows. Law & Order: SVU is currently midway through its 27th season of case-of-the-week dramatization of sex crimes, with nearly 600 episodes aired.
Yet for all that the medium has already said on the subject, the two most recent episodes of The Pitt, “1:00 P.M.” and Thursday’s “2:00 P.M.,” prove that these depictions needn’t be redundant. When the Pitt’s heroic charge nurse, Dana (Katherine LaNasa), steps away from her inundated desk to perform a sexual assault examination, the show’s real-time storytelling gives viewers a startling, unabashedly educational look at a process whose slowness and need for precision are rarely captured on TV. Then, once the patient has been discharged, it delivers a devastating reality check that suggests this necessary ordeal can also, too often, be an exercise in futility.
Speed and overwhelm usually define The Pitt. As exhausted healthcare workers scramble to save the life of one critically injured person, someone else on the verge of death is being wheeled into the ER, amid a din of patients in pain and families freaking out and waves of pandemonium rolling in from a standing-room-only waiting area. The story of Ilana (Tina Ivlev), a young woman who comes in for an exam after a male friend rapes her at a 4th of July barbecue, unfolds at a pace that would feel slow in any series, but on The Pitt stands out as glacial. This isn’t just a…
