Matching Mixed Media - Compassion, Competency, and Community as Highlighted by Noah Wyle's Recent Corpus
At the start of the month, my therapist suggested that I do a Values Sort. The activity happens in four stages. The first stage is a simple binary quiz, a swipe left/swipe right style quiz on an assorted four values. The subsequent stages ask you to select fifteen, then ten, then five. The five at the end are inevitably the five values that you… well, value the most. The five I came with were (in no particular order):
Community
Competence
Ethics
Fairness
Relationships
This in fact makes perfect sense. I’ve been spending most of May examining the relationship between these five concepts, especially in light of a tornado that came through St. Louis and has left lasting damage. It was Mr. Roger’s mother who had the famous quote: “look for the helpers. You will always find people that are helping.” Now, that is a sentiment that differs wildly for a child and an adult largely because as an adult, we need to be a helpers. We are the ones that need to put our skills to good use. Which makes it frustrating when we unable to help or help in the capacity that we want.
Doing good does not look the same between individuals. There are somethings that we are uniquely positioned to do and somethings that we are unfortunately aren’t. But thirty odd years on earth has reinforced that good does look like making community. Good does look like utilizing the skills to make sure everyone’s on an even playing field. Good looks like whatever Noah Wyle chooses to do in 2025.
Back in April, I started watching Max, sorry, HBO Max’s The Pitt because I watch a lot of medical dramas, I think in no small part to my mother being a pediatrician and being comforted by the idea of hospitals and healthcare, so much so my first job out of undergrad was as an Healthcare IT worker for Epic.
Now, The Pitt unfortunately was being sued by the Crichton estate as the show’s premise of being an ER with Noah Wyle as a lead was in fact somewhat similar to the original medical drama, ER, where Noah Wyle did in fact play a lead in an ER, and as a result, I would refer to the show as “Legally-Distinct-From-ER ER” as is tradition with several medical shows in my queue (Doctor Odyssey is “Boat Doctor.” Brilliant Minds is "What If Doctors Were Fundamentally Good?” Some shows do manage to skate by with just an abbreviation, but those are few and far between). However, as the show continued its fifteen episode run, by the fifth episodes, I found myself loving the show so much that I had to refer to it by its government name: The Pitt.
Without exaggeration, this is one of the best medical dramas to ever medical or drama, and honestly it is one of the best dramas to ever drama period. It became appointment Thursday night television, something that no series has really been for me since the advent of streaming. But the show itself was structurally brilliantly as we saw an entire ER shift occur in real time and saw a cadre of medical professionals at different walks of life deal with a wide range of cases. Every single one of the cast brought their A-game showing what is possible when competent and compassionate people work together during harrowing events. There was never a wasted moment. There was an dedication to realism that felt evident to someone who had only been around hospitals their whole life, verified by actual doctors and nurses in separate readings.
Nearly two months later, the show still is the benchmark for other 2025 television in my head. Perhaps the entire show is founded on the same values that I discovered I had. Community. Competence. Ethics. Fairness. Relationships. The Pitt manages to walk a death defying tight rope of idealism and cynicism when it comes to modern medicine, and I applaud it every time I think about it for doing so.
I will not get into any more specifics because I think you dear reader should go and watch The Pitt if you haven’t already, but I will say that the Noah Wyle’s Dr. Robby is a very stressful and somber character at the helm of the show. A season emergency medicine practitioner who is still shaken by the events of COVID. It is a serious role and one that feels draining to watch. This of course is in context to Noah Wyle’s other 2025 project, Leverage: Redemption.
Leverage: Redemption, now in its third season, is the sequel series to Leverage. The original series followed by the escapades of a former insurance agent disillusioned by corporate greed, a con woman, a hacker, a brawler, and a cat burglar working together to help a variety of people from the inherent imbalance of power caused by capitalism. You can understand why they revived the series in the early 2020s.
Now, the actor who played the original mastermind is, to put it bluntly, not a good person, so when the series was rebooted, they introduced none other than Noah Wyle as a pseudo fixer for the team (as well as Aldis Hodge’s Haridison’s foster sister Breanna as a “maker” since Aldis Hodge was busy doing Aldis Hodge things). In this latest season, Wyle only serves as a guest star presumably because he was busy with The Pitt, considering the time frame, but what I do know about television production.
A common sentiment I echo while watching Wyle play Harry Wilson play the well meaning former corporate lawyer is that “I’m glad Noah Wyle gets to have fun.” Because at its core, Leverage: Redemption is about fun. It is a fantasy series about big corporations and people who abuse power getting their comeuppance. About people who use their skills to solve problems in ways no one else can. About restoring the balance of power.
If you’re thinking, wow, that sounds like it aligns with your values of community, competence, ethics, fairness, and relationships, congrats. You are fully ingrained in my current mindset.
Noah Wyle has become my brain’s poster child for compassion, competency, and community at this present juncture of time, largely because he is currently the face of two different that embody these values, and I’m sure we could probably extend this to his earlier work of ER and The Librarians, but we’re not largely because those aren’t quite as fresh in my head.
May has been a weird month. May has been an enlightening month. May has been a challenging month. All these things are true and frustrating, and I haven’t been able to help in the all ways I want but I am working on it. And that’s all we can do sometimes. Work on it.