The Pitt Episode 3’s Worst Decision Feels Like A Dark Disaster In The Making

This article discusses school shootings, misogyny, and suicide.

Max’s medical drama The Pitt doesn’t shy away from darkness, but its most disturbing storyline seems like a tragedy waiting to happen. As a fast-paced medical drama that has been compared to ER, The Pitt was always going to touch on serious and dark topics. In just three episodes, The Pitt explained the nationwide nursing shortage, touched on the lingering trauma healthcare workers experience from the COVID-19 pandemic, and included a patient with sickle cell disease in The Pitt. It’s certainly no stranger to tragedy, but The Pitt episode 3 is building up one storyline to be the darkest of all.

In the premiere of The Pitt, Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) admitted Theresa Saunders (Joanna Going) and her son, David (Jackson Kelly). Theresa was vomiting uncontrollably, and once Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) was brought in, the doctors quickly learned that she had made herself vomit because she was worried about her son. As Theresa explained, she had found one of David’s notebooks filled with girls at his high school who he wanted to “eliminate,” but she couldn’t force him to go to a therapist because he recently turned 18. It’s a very dark setup for an ongoing story, but The Pitt episode 3 just accelerated David’s path to disaster.

The Pitt’s Darkest Storyline Is All Too Real

The Pitt Seems To Be Setting David Saunders Up As A School Shooter

Based on David’s list, both Dr. Robby and the audience are led to assume that he’s planning on committing a mass shooting at his high school. He had the hospital’s social worker, Kiara Alfaro (Krystel Mcneil), talk to David, but he avoided all her questions and ran away from the hospital. If The Pitt is setting up David as a school shooter, it’s easily the show’s darkest storyline, and one that’s all too real. Gun violence on school grounds is an extremely pressing issue in American society, and almost everyone has some degree of experience with it.

Just in 2024, by December 16, there were 83 separate school shootings in the United States that left 38 people dead and 116 injured (via CNN). The issue has been present for decades, however, and the number of school shootings per year has increased almost every year since 2008, except for 2020, when many schools were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Pitt is tackling a very present issue in American life, and the fact that it’s a medical drama could provide a new and worthwhile angle on the problem. The Pitt episode 3, however, also included a head-scratching decision about David’s story.

Why Dr. Robby Didn’t Call The Police On David In The Pitt

Dr. Robby Didn’t Want To “Ruin” David’s Life If He Could Get Him To Talk To Someone Instead

As real and terrifying as David’s story in The Pitt is, Dr. Robby didn’t call the police on him or notify any authorities, but simply asked David’s mother to try to contact him. Later, Dr. McKay even said that it was better to be safe than sorry with an issue as dangerous and serious as a potential school shooter. However, Dr. Robby said he didn’t think it was necessary to involve the police yet, and he also didn’t want to ruin David’s life. Admittedly, all Dr. Robby has to go on is Theresa’s secondhand knowledge of a list of girls David wanted to hurt, and she also said that David didn’t have access to any guns at their house. Still, it’s troubling.

Dr. Robby’s Decision Feels Like It Will Lead To A Terrible Ending

Dr. Robby Could Have Intervened Before David’s Story Leads To Tragedy

Even though Dr. Robby feels like there’s no reason to get the police involved in David’s situation yet, it feels like his choice is putting The Pitt on a path to disaster. Dr. McKay’s worries about not wanting to be wrong in this situation seem like a much more reasonable and responsible reaction than Dr. Robby’s plan. That plan seems to boil down to having Theresa call her son on the phone or try to lure him back to the hospital with a fake medical emergency or a plea, but if David really is at risk of being a school shooter, Dr. Robby should have done more to intervene.

David may even be the reason Dr. Robby goes to the roof of the hospital in tears, as some trailers for The Pitt have shown.

If Dr. Robby continues with his current plan, David’s story could easily end in tragedy. By the end of his shift, Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital could be inundated with teenage shooting victims. Even if David doesn’t end up committing a mass shooting, he clearly has mental health issues, which suggests a dark personal ending for him by the end of The Pitt. At this point, it seems tremendously unlikely that David’s story could end in anything other than disaster. David may even be the reason Dr. Robby goes to the roof of the hospital in tears, as some trailers for The Pitt have shown.