The critically acclaimed HBO medical drama “The Pitt” appears to have written itself onto a political minefield — and is marching forward headfirst regardless of any backlash.
“The Pitt” follows a group of ER doctors at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Seasons are presented as a single 15-hour shift at the hospital, with each episode chronicling one of those hours.
The first season of the show dealt with plenty of controversial material, including gun violence (the first season finale involved an overwhelmed ER dealing with the fallout from a mass shooting) and COVID (a recurring theme of the first season involved main lead Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch suffering from PTSD after having worked at that ER during the height of the disease).
But none of that chatter quite compares to the controversy surrounding the second season of the show.
On Thursday, the 11th episode of the second season aired, and one of the storylines involved the introduction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
As Fox News described, two ICE agents had a detainee with an injured arm. After getting impatient with how long it was taking, the agents decided to leave, when Nurse Jesse intervened.
That medical professional is then cuffed and taken away, while Dr. Robinavitch told him not to say anything without an attorney.
The episode culminated with Robinavitch telling off the ICE agents for disrupting his ER.
“You’ve been nothing but a distraction and a disruption since you’ve been here,” he says. “I’m already short-staffed, and I just lost five nurses and half my environmental services team because you walked in.”
“You know patients come in here for help, right? Because they’re either sick or they’re injured, and documented or undocumented, they have a right to emergency care. TB, measles, fractures — none of it is getting treated because everybody’s too scared to come in,” he continued.
“But then they end up here anyway, but then it’s too f***ing late! So please, for the love of God, can you just go wait over there in the room with your detainee so I don’t lose any more patients or staff?”
You can watch a part of that interaction for yourself below:
WARNING: The following clip contains language that some viewers may find offensive. (editor up to you if you want to keep or remove this video. I embedded only the video but the caption still has an uncensored f bomb.)
rewatching this and hearing jesse say “robby i didn’t do shit” which i somehow missed the first time around????? but holy shit that line alone is so fucking devastating pic.twitter.com/NOg4OMiKO3
— mer 🪩 (@samirasmohan) March 20, 2026
Social media responded swiftly, with swaths of leftists celebrating this villainous portrayal of ICE and conservative fans of the show miffed at the one-sided take on the agency.
Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill is ignoring most of that noise, however, as he told Gold Derby.
“I have no social media, so I don’t really care what people say on social media,” Gemmill told the outlet. “Everybody else in my writers’ room is on social media, so believe me, if somebody comes after the show or has criticism, I will hear about it. But it’s always secondhand, which is the way I prefer to get bad news.”
Despite the already one-sided portrayal of the ICE agents, Gemmill apparently believes he did his storytelling a disservice by “trying to tell both sides.”
“In retrospect, I think we could have pushed a little harder,” he said. “We were trying to tell both sides of the story, trying to be fair, and yet, what’s happened subsequently is much worse than anything we would have imagined. It felt important to tell that story because of what was going on. I’m glad we did it.”
Gemmill seemed particularly delighted with Robinavitch’s anti-ICE tirade that capped off the episode.
“His performance really represented what a lot of people are feeling, which is frustration, anger, fear, and disbelief that this is happening in this country — and the helplessness of not being able to do anything about it,” he said.
He added, “It was something that was happening in the country and happening at hospitals. We basically try and portray the reality of what’s happening in healthcare today, and that seemed to be part of it. We were very careful how we told that story.”
Gemmill’s remarks suggest that he wasn’t quite as careful as some other members of the showrunning team. And HBO itself seems very aware of the polarizing nature of the topic.
According to Deadline, executive producer John Wells made sure to ask his HBO bosses about doing an ICE storyline, and was told to keep it “balanced.”
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