The Pitt took home its second consecutive Emmy last night for best drama series. This kind of repeat win is not unheard of in American television awards, which are so used to falling into loops and compulsively awarding the same title. But, sitting in the studio of El món a Rac1 to comment on the awards, I was struck by the comment from Isabel Garcia Pagan, deputy director of this house: “I liked the first season quite a bit, possibly due to the romanticism of ER and company, but in the second I thought… ‘we are repeating ourselves.’” She is not wrong.
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R. Scott Gemmill’s medical drama has a characteristic structure: each season uses 15 episodes to narrate the 15 hours of a chaotic emergency shift at a Pittsburgh hospital. The concatenation of cases can become predictable and, of course, there always has to be a catastrophe or some element linked to current events during that shift: this time they had to work without using the computer system and ICE came in to take patients away. There was no novelty factor nor the desire to overdo the doctors’ dramatic arcs.
That ‘The Pitt’ repeats itself with its second season may not be bad: it is the secret to why it is so liked
However, saying that The Pitt is a repetitive series does not necessarily seem like a flaw to me but rather proof that we have a classic series on our hands. And the thing is, no matter how much our idea of what a series is has transformed (and deformed) in the last three decades, we used to watch fiction for its predictable nature: we simply wanted to return to familiar characters and spend some time with them within an already familiar structure.
It is useful to contrast this victory with the defeat of Pluribus in the same category, Vince Gilligan’s science fiction series with a plot as original as it is stimulating: humanity is infected with an alien virus that eliminates individuality (meaning the entire population shares the same consciousness) and a woman, who is unaffected, is forced to confront the kindness of the neighbors.
Each episode seeks differentiation, narrative and production challenge, and genre combination. And, despite having seen it (Gilligan took the Emmy for writing and Rhea Seehorn for best actress), voters said: “Hey, very interesting, but let me vote for the series that requires less mental effort when I sit on the couch and doesn’t give me silences to fall asleep to.” Pluribus settles in the same category as Severance: the series with ambitions that falls short precisely because of its excess originality.
The ironic thing is that ten years ago this mentality would have been unthinkable: any title that smelled of generalist drama deserved some condescension, as if it were lesser, and they would never have recognized an old-fashioned medical series. But it makes sense: television fiction is so focused on short series and the lack of consistency in their broadcasts (and US broadcast TV is increasingly lighter) that The Pitt is appreciated for being classic, good, and consistent.
‘Widow’s Bay’ on paper is original, being a horror comedy, but it never gets too ambitious, having clear (accessible) references
This discourse can also be applied to the victory of The Curse of Widow’s Bay in comedy, Katie Dippold’s creation about a cursed island where its inhabitants are forced to live with inexplicable events and tragedies. On paper, its status as a horror comedy makes it a different series, yes, but it contains the eccentric everyday life of Parks and Recreation, the school of series with picturesque towns like Northern Exposure, and a straightforward, clear plot development.
Imagining another The Curse of Widow’s Bay, in fact, is possible: one with longer episodes, more silences, and narrative outbursts to accentuate the eccentricities and its adult nature, giving itself more importance, ensuring it makes the list of great series. But Dippold’s secret is that she is discreet, prefers fewer minutes and less scattered plots, and achieved a balanced and solid series. She does not aspire to be a masterpiece but is content to be good entertainment and to evoke sympathy with her gallery of characters.
The Emmy awards, among so much offer and so many airs and so many short seasons, stuck with the series that made things easy for them and whose characters they remembered and felt they knew at the time of voting. And their mandate, pending a return to more curious (or directly snobbish) grounds, is clear: “We want classic series (and well made).”
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