Doctors shouting orders. Patients tired of waiting. Hospital administration being total assholes. Gratuitous intubation. Gotta be HBO’s ER-esque hit, The Pitt, right? Yes! But it’s also The Pit: Emergency Room, highly obscure DOA drivel in no danger of gracing HBO or hitting anything but an aversion to watch.
In this vanity project, writer/director/producer Jon W. Fong casts — who else? — himself as Dr. Paul Qi, “PQ” for short. Our supposed medical superstar of Ocean Coast Hospital somehow is able to check out a woman’s stubbed toe without removing her shoe. In surgery, his main concern isn’t the patient’s life, but the rib spreader tool: “Who last oiled this thing?”
His enemy is Ocean Coast’s underhanded, overweight administrator, Kramer (Lee West, 1995’s Powderburn), who looks like Kevin from
The Office. Kramer’s scheming to sell the med center for personal gain. (The place may be in serious financial trouble, judging from the break room’s dot-matrix printed signs and banners.) Kramer’s plan entails drugging PQ’s mentor (David Jean Thomas, The Crow: Salvation) into a coma, thereby quashing a dissenting vote at the upcoming board meeting. One problem: PQ holds his mentor’s proxy power, so now he, too, is marked for death.
Prescription: kicking. PQ thwarts attempt after attempt on his life through kung fu. The Pit holds one thing for sure over The Pitt: Unlike Fong, Noah Wyle never disguised himself as a custodian to infiltrate security and whoop bad guys with a mop handle. (Maybe season 2?)
Meanwhile, no one bats an eye at the professionally suited Kramer openly conversing with some rando in a Mötley Crüe tee.
Because Fong was an actual emergency physician in California until his untimely 2017 passing, PQ and company spout “doc talk” with the best of them. But with every other element … well, it’s a good thing Dr. Fong didn’t quit his day job. My prognosis is you’ll never see another medical-themed feature in which:
• hoodlums attack a doctor and then perform chest compressions on a Resusci Annie doll
• alone, a valet loudly narrates his thoughts in real time: “OK, call 911 and start CPR!”
• a comely lady doctor miraculously performs stand-up comedy at the club without a microphone
• a prologue with thieves swallowing diamond-stuffed condoms full of grace
Stem to sternum, this botched-recipe omelette of martial-arts revenger, medical thriller and corporate espionage drama is so lacking of competence, you might not believe Fong’s expertise earned him an 11-year stint as technical adviser to NBC’s venerable ER. From all accounts, he was a terrific human, but based on The Pit: Emergency Room, I just wouldn’t have trusted him to make sound creative decisions, let alone examine my stubbed toe. —Rod Lott