Characters take time to establish, that’s a given. And we’re only four episodes in to The Pitt Season 2 on HBO Max, with 11 more to go. But I’ve hit the end of my rope with two characters in particular. No insult to the actors at all, but respectfully, new med students Joy and James suck.
To be clear, at the current time both characters are there to suck. Joy, played by Irene Choi, is locked-up and mostly unengaged, and would rather be anywhere else. James, played by Lucas Iverson, is a book-smart know-it-all designed in a lab to drive Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez) in particular insane, though James is doing a good job of grating on everyone else at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center as well. The issue is that while they are succeeding in their mission to be annoying, the third year and fourth year medical students, respectively, don’t have much else going on at the current time.
That’s in direct contrast with our Season 1 med students, whose job was in part to usher viewers into the inner workings of The Pitt, while also providing or needing explanations of the medical procedures at the hospital — again, for the audience’s benefit. More than any of the other characters, Javadi, now doctor Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), and Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) were our surrogate characters on screen, allowing us to experience The Pitt for the first time along with them.
But what elevated them beyond exposition machines was how while their backstories slowly drizzled out over the course of the season like the rest of the characters, their weaknesses and strengths were immediately clear. They were fully fleshed out, three-dimensional people the second they walked on screen. The sweet, earnest Whitaker was easiest to love simply because he kept getting hit with bodily fluids but stayed the course, trying to do the best he could. Javadi was the smartest one in the room, but lacked life experience and friends — both of which she would pick up quickly over the elongated first shift in The Pitt.
Santos, meanwhile, is the most applicable here: on the surface, caustic and abrasive, always quick with a dismissive nickname or sharp jab of a joke. But the camera would often hang on her, allowing a brief moment of self-recrimination that gave us hope there was a heart of gold, or at least bronze underneath the pissed off exterior. Spoiler alert: of course there was, and like the rest of the medical staff ultimately she wants to do the best job she can.
The issue with James and Joy is we don’t know anything more about them, and they only seem to exist to elicit reactions from the other characters. James in particular, as mentioned, is a foil to Javadi. He’s even driven the usually magnanimous Whitaker to use a 10% sharper tone than usual, but unlike Santos there’s really no reason to ride with him… Not every character on a TV show needs to be secretly nice, but James is a walking encyclopedia, and that’s it.
Joy, despite seeming to be a better doctor — or rather med student — than James, is in a way even worse, because she doesn’t want to be in the ER. Not only does she not have the relatively flimsy thread of “foil” that James has, it’s nearly impossible to become invested in a character who would like to leave at the first possible opportunity. And not in a rom-com “I want to get out of this island paradise, but hold on this sexy island man is teaching me to love???” kind of way, so much as she would peace out leaving a doctor-shaped hole in the wall before Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) could finish saying, “Hey, I think your shift is over.” And that’s all we know about her.
Less egregious, but also in desperate need of a little more going on is Emma (Laëtitia Hollard), the new nursing school graduate shadowing charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa). While it’s more pleasant to watch her be naive and learn the ropes, she’s essentially there as an exposition machine — the role our previous students filled in Season 1 — but again without much more to it than asking questions and occasionally messing up.
Like I said earlier, there’s still most of the season to go, and plenty of time to build out more of all three of these characters in the already classic The Pitt casual way, where a brief shot tells an entire story. But four episodes in, Joy and James in particular aren’t working. And if we’re going to spend more time with them, they have to have more going on than “we suck.”
The Pitt Season 2 Premiere Dates And Episode Guide:
New episodes of The Pitt premiere Thursdays on HBO Max at 9 p.m. ET. While the full episode release schedule has yet to be officially announced, the season will run 15 episodes, and we currently expect it to run straight through without breaks, with one episode premiering per week.
We also expect that it will follow the same real-time format hour by hour as Season 1. While the first nine episode “titles” are confirmed it’s always possible there could be a twist at the end of the season. So full caveat here that this may change, TBA by HBO Max.
Here’s what we expect from the full list of episodes in The Pitt Season 2 with premiere dates.
- Thursday, January 8, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 1 – “7:00 A.M.”
- Thursday, January 15, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 2 – “8:00 A.M.”
- Thursday, January 22, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 3 – “9:00 A.M.”
- Thursday, January 29, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 4 – “10:00 A.M.”
- Thursday, February 5, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 5 – “11:00 A.M.”
- Thursday, February 12, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 6 – “12:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, February 19, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 7 – “1:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, February 26, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 8 – “2:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, March 5, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 9 – “3:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, March 12, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 10 – “4:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, March 19, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 11 – “5:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, March 26, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 12 – “6:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, April 2, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 13 – “7:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, April 9, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 14 – “8:00 P.M.”
- Thursday, April 16, 2026: The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 15 – “9:00 P.M.” *Season Finale*
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