Television becomes our feminist preacher

The HBO television drama series, The Pitt, is brilliant entertainment. The show has won a stack of awards for its authentic, gripping portrayal of the grisly medical cases staff confront in a Pittsburgh emergency room.

In the second series we witness this constantly overwhelmed, high-stakes environment during a chaotic July 4th shift, with staff juggling life-or-death traumas amid bed shortages, diversions from other hospitals, and other crises. The heroic staff routinely cope with these relentless dramas with rough, gallows humour, sarcastic one-liners, and dark banter that keeps morale afloat amid the chaos.

But suddenly the mood changes. We are told of a new patient in triage – a "sexual assault survivor." The atmosphere snaps into hushed solemnity: jokes vanish, voices drop, and the entire team shifts to gentle, deliberate, almost reverent tiptoeing.

Somehow, in the overflowing ER - where beds are scarce and staff stretched thin - there's instant allocation of a private room, specialized lighting, and three dedicated professionals for hours of solemn and meticulous evidence collection.

Dana, the charge nurse, treats Ilana, the survivor, with utmost care and sensitivity as they take fingernail and mouth swabs. "You're in a safe place now … We're here to help and support you," she whispers, oozing empathy.

At the culmination of the medical examination, the young nurse who is assisting announces in a tremulous voice: "You are so brave."

Earlier in the proceeding there is a disquieting moment where Ilana disrupts preparations for the internal examination, sits up and blurts out, "I don't want to do this anymore…He's my friend… it was just dumb … he was drunk, he didn't mean it. It didn't mean anything."

Confronted with the girl's ambivalence, the medical staff are reassuring: "Your feelings are valid and we're here no matter what you decide." Having agreed to proceed with the examination, later Ilana expresses renewed concern about her friend: "He'd lose everything. It was stupid, he was so drunk. Maybe it is not worth ruining his life over something like that… didn't feel huge in the moment."

And what happens? The woman from the local rape crisis group intervenes: "That's a normal feeling right now – minimizing to cope. But what happened wasn't ok, drunk or not. You don't have to decide alone," she says, telling Ilana she can do anonymous third-party reporting if she wants to take action later. "Ilana, what happened to you wasn't a mistake – it was a crime, no matter the circumstances," she adds later in the episode.

I spent days thinking back to this plotline which struck me as both bizarre and revealing. For a start there is the tonal whiplash, the sudden shift from frenzy and gallows humour to what seems like a solemn rite, akin to a religious service.

It comes across as a laborious exercise in moral posturing, reeking of performative empathy, as the ER's raw, unfiltered brutality is paused for a sanitized, educational interlude that virtue-signals the show's progressive credentials.

Then, with rape elevated to 'MOST VITAL' status and demanding undivided attention amid the chaos, the victim's minimization has to be portrayed as a tragic flaw rather than an appropriate compassionate instinct. There's no room for ambiguity, let alone forgiveness, or even the possibility of mistake, in a script that prioritizes ideology over nuanced humanity.