HBO Series Review: The Pitt


When a movie or a TV series reaches of the highest levels of quality and perfection that the HBO Series “The Pitt” does, it should be celebrated with Awards, in this case, 4 wins out of 13 Emmy nominations, including best drama series and best lead actor in a drama series, Noah Wiley. From what I have seen, this series should have won all 13 Emmy nominations.

More importantly, this HBO Series of 15 episodes, demonstrates better than any medical show I have ever seen the lives of the heroes who work in the emergency rooms of hospitals. The Hospital for this series is the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, inspired by Allegheny General Hospital (AGH), Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Throughout these great 15 episodes there are flashbacks from the years during the COVID pandemic and the realization of so many deaths and the suicides of doctors and nurses during the years 2020-2022 where 1,091,715 people lost their lives. Working in an intense, high population area emergency room requires the highest level of medical expertise and stamina. The ability to make accurate life and death decisions for shifts that can last from 12-15 hours, one after another, is an ability beyond impressive. The knowledge and experience that is required that includes the many medical machines that are involved, on the fly surgical skill, the numerous medical tests, the hundreds of different drugs that for any given patient may or may not save a life, is of the most impressive parts of the depiction of impossible people who have impossible jobs.

For the actors, it must have been so difficult to remember all of the medical terms that are written down in a script, but for the real life doctors they are portraying, committing this much medical information to memory seems at times an ability almost impossible to attain. All of the people in this emergency room are extremely intelligent and high achievers, but the human aspect of dealing with so many patients, non stop medical emergencies and ultimately death, would take a toll on anyone, even after one bad day.

One of the best moments in this series was when Dr. Michael Robinavitch(Noah Wiley) collapses in an empty room after trying and failing to save a young woman who was shot. Another standout episodes includes a young girl who drowned and her young sister to reveals that her sister was trying to save her from a pool, and she has not been told her sister died.

The other standout in this series is Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who plays the charge nurse of the emergency room, her personality and work ethic keep the entire department from falling part – the acting of LaNasa in this series won her the best supporting actress Emmy. We learn that an organizer in the center of such intense chaos is mandatory for an emergency room, especially with one later episodes when they are overrun with 120 shooting victims from a nearby mass shooting.

The other standouts are all the young beginning doctors who are getting their first experiences of working in an emergency room, including Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden), Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) who are all outstanding in their roles. There are the typical fights and arguments that are expected within an environment this intense and medical egos this large, and the expected abuse the doctors with less experience have to endure from other doctors, mostly
Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), who has an ongoing series of conflicts with Dr. McKay.

The longer you watch this great first season of 15 episodes, the more you realize that a life like this is not a job, where you receive a paycheck, this is something far more important. This is about courage, education, skill and the innate ability to deal with 12 hours of stress every day and then wake up the next day and do this all over again. This is a life career where if you make a single mistake someone may die. This is a level of superhero ability that very few people could pull off on a daily basis or ever consider making this a career.

For the many huge fans of this great medical drama, season two will be released in January 2026 – way too long to wait to see what will happen next.

The Pitt gets my highest recommendation of 100%. This is by far, one of the productions including movies and television I have ever seen.

Hulu Movie Review: Swiped


The new Hulu movie “Swiped” is about the career of Whitney Wolfe, who was mostly responsible for the dating apps Tinder and Bumble.

The best part of this story is the real-life battleground of betrayal, bad people, credit stealers, and backstabbers that all of us face in this world, working for companies and trying to make a living. None of this is ever easy for anyone, least of all Whitney Wolfe who, despite her genius, had to live through huge injustice and hardship before hitting it big.

Lily James stars in the lead role as Whitney Wolfe Heard, who, at only age 22, had ambitions to be a very wealthy entrepreneur in charge of her own financial destiny – the perfect workaround from working for other people. Whitney runs into several other entrepreneurs and lands a job at a new startup, attempting to create a dating app for a smartphone. Mainly through Whitney’s great and innovative ideas, the new dating app “Tinder” was created.

Whitney mistakenly has an affair with a new hire who is her boss, and when she breaks up with him, an avalanche of injustice follows. Despite Whitney’s proof of non-stop texting abuse on her phone, she is the one who has to leave the company, even though she is the one who created all of the best ideas for Tinder, including the name of the app. What follows seems like it was the fictional ideas of a screenwriter even though this is a true life story. After a long struggle and legal battles, Whitney started her own company with the help of a wealthy investor and was a self made billionaire in February 2021, when the company went public. Real life stories like this one can inspire anyone who has been through a bad job, or a massive injustice at work.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics giving this good movie a 37% rating are way off, with my rating a solid 85% and a recommendation for a great true-life story about struggle and triumph.

Movie Review: Highest 2 Lowest


The new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” is the latest Spike Lee-directed movie. His last film was five years ago, “Da 5 Bloods”, released in 2020 on Netflix. This is the 5th collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington who stars in this film as a music mogul in New York City named David King, who is a major risk taker and has built a music empire that is either doing well or about to collapse from bankruptcy.

There are several speeches in this film about risk, success, and failure that are very well written, all ultimately about what is most important in life: how hard it is to succeed, and how easy it can be to lose everything are some of the best parts of this story.

There is a huge deal that David King is trying to make with this company that surprisingly turns into a kidnapping of David’s son, Trey, played by Aubrey Joseph, and a mistake by the kidnappers that adds many story twists and impossible decisions, making this movie a standout kidnapping story.

The acting is outstanding, including David King’s best friend, Paul Christopher, played by Jeffrey Wright, and his wife, Pam King, played by Ilfenesh Hadera. Former NBA player Rick Fox plays himself as a high school basketball coach, and there are several references to his time in the NBA and especially the great playoff matchups with the Boston Celtics.

The twists towards the end of this story and the ending are very well done and never predictable, with my only negative comment involving the too-long music montage fillers at certain parts of this film.

The rap star A$AP Rocky is great in his role as Yung Felon, with some of his arguments and speeches with Denzel Washington at the end of this movie performed very impressively. The singer Sunni Valentine plays an aspiring singer Julie Tucker, with her only appearance at the end of this film, with a great performance of her song “Highest to Lowest”, trying to convince David King to sign her to a music contract.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of 90% is correct this time. I agree with this rating and highly recommend this film.