In last week’s episode of The Pitt, an unhoused neurodivergent sex worker received physician-assisted suicide courtesy of Obamacare. And they say television has lost its values. 

All right, I’m exaggerating, but not by much. Now in the middle of its second season, HBO Max’s Emmy-winning hospital drama is to progressives what Fox’s “War on Terror” white-knuckler 24 used to be to the Right: entertainment that scratched us exactly where we itched. In The Pitt’s enlightened universe, doctors are not just trustworthy but saintly, ever ready to intercede for you and me. Every failure is “systemic,” and few problems exist that can’t be solved with more and better government cheese. If In Treatment, HBO’s late-aughts psychotherapeutic procedural, made a certain kind of viewer yearn for the psychiatrist’s couch, expect The Pitt to do the same for the emergency room. No, we don’t really want to spend an afternoon in the care of Noah Wyle’s arch-compassionate team. On the other hand, maybe we actually kind of do?