Would You Believe Me If I Told You This Occurred To Me About 5 Minutes After My Previous Post And I Was

kingdon isn't popular just because Mel is a popular character, Langdon is conventionally attractive, the two of them get a lot of scenes together, and the actors have chemistry

their relationship is thematically relevant to the show

the pitt is about burnout in the high stress environment of an ER post-COVID and making connections, both to do the work well and to survive it

between doctors and nurses and between them and the patients and the patients to the social worker as needed

and there are connections between other pairs of people, super young Javadi is paired with mature student McKay for a while which does open Javadi's eyes to life she's been sheltered from, Javadi gets a crush on Mateo who invites her to the park at the end of the day, Dana is the first to figure out Collins' pregnancy on her own and also speaks with Javadi on her new crush, Robby and Collins come together for a deep conversation after her miscarriage and before he sends her home, Mohan helps the sickle cell patient and the mercury poisoned influencer, Santos overtly tries to make connections to the two med students and is ultimately successful with Whitaker but she also gets protective over the daughter whose mother poisoned her father with progesterone and gets another patient to open up about their suicide attempt while Javadi over identifies with the baseball kid, lots of little new connections or longer formed ones

and then there's Mel on the verge of caretaker burnout as the only one supporting her sister

and Langdon who is basically on a different planet from his wife and gets outright rejected by Robby when he asks if they're friends

both so desperate for connection, someone on their level

and they click, they're the only ones that show up excited to be there (Mel more so than Langdon but he's not nearly as dismayed as Collins by the board when they first come in), Langdon offers Mel opportunities like the crike and Terrence, and compliments her successes and checks in with her and tells her to take breaks as needed while Mel seeks him out for his opinion and keeps up with him

they are the connection in the show, they just met and they make each other better at the job, if only all the doctors and nurses could get along this well, right?

except Langdon is an addict, through Robby the show implies the job broke something in him before the cameras even showed up and what Robby sees as a betrayal from Langdon contributes in turn to Robby's collapse on his worst day, and the parallels and what ifs come out

what if Robby had been as attentive to Langdon as Langdon was to Mel? What if Robby had allowed the connection instead of rejecting Langdon? What if Mel had shown up earlier? Would she have just burned herself out faster?

Langdon and Mel are the high point so Robby and Langdon yelling at each other and trying to tear each other down and talking more at each other than to each other can be the low point

Langdon and Mel improving their relationship in future seasons, moving beyond a day one spark to having more time and experience to deepen their relationship and making each other better doctors in the process is proving the themes of the show, that you need support and connection to do the job well and survive it

so of course people want to extend that into their personal lives so Mel is not alone with her sister and Langdon isn't in a crumbling marriage so they can have connection and support and be better people in their personal lives and not just professionally

Langdon and Mel are also shown as foils to Robby and Collins who once dated and Mel's single with a sister pushing her to make a romantic connection when the connection she's made is with Langdon and Langdon seems well on the way to divorce even before the addiction reveal

and the actors have a lot of chemistry

— Mhairi McFarlane.

So I gather that there's some disagreement on the internet over whether Dr. Frank Langdon is an evil manipulative meanie or a hapless victim of addiction as a disease but can we all at least agree that whatever fuckass dinosaur of a doctor prescribed him benzos for low back pain like it's Y2K needs to be on a prescription monitoring plan? Goddamn man, maybe look at a guideline from this decade before handing out highly addictive meds of dubious benefit like Jolly Ranchers on Halloween?

(BTW I don't think Langdon actually has serious ongoing chronic pain. I think he minorly fucked his back once and probably would have been fine in the long term with some good PT but he didn't do the exercises because it was Covid and he was too busy working. So it kept bothering him and he had the misfortune of a benzo Rx landing in his addiction-prone personality lap and fast forward to present day here we are. /headcanon)

'You... thumped?

Top 5 most sexual moments of The Pitt season 1:

5. Shen sips his iced coffee.

4. Santos stabs Garcia in the foot and Garcia walks it off.

3. Robby recites the Shema.

2. Whittaker snaps the rat's neck.

1. Abbot takes off his prosthetic foot.

Honorable mention: Langdon fidgets his way through a moment of silence for a recently deceased patient.

#which could mean absolutely nothing at all

+bonus

Workplace sexual harassment!

Bonus frowny face;

god there is nothing more embarrassing than feeling like you're going to self-combust with emotion over your special little rpf guy. he is LITERALLY just some dude. just a straight man walking around in the world living his life clocking in at his day job ho-hum. and yet here you are. down so bad it's frankly humiliating to witness. heart fucking racing. face flushed. ribcage about to explode with the unbearable intensity of your eeeeeeeeeeeee feelings. girl get a grip

AU where instead of being spies the Slough House gang are in an unsuccessful punk band called Idiot Activity. Lamb is their long-suffering manager. Taverner is head of A&R at the record label who keeps them on the books as a tax write off.

Idiot activity

The fandom is definitely sleeping on this knowledge. Every serious runner I know is ready to gnaw their own arm off after max three days without vigorous exercise.

i don’t think we’ve addressed that langdon runs marathons and takes 13 minutes in an ice bath yet. that’s fucking crazy. it also shows us how devastating a back injury would’ve been for him if he went from running marathons to not being able to run at all. kill one healthy coping mechanism and an unhealthy one develops in its place maybe.