NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

The doctor will see you now. When The Pitt hit HBO earlier this year, many critics heralded it as the grand return of the unfussy medical drama: no big twist in the premise, no buzzy must-watch hook. Just an hour-by-hour shift at a Pittsburgh trauma center with some highly competent doctors and some very stressed-out newbies, perfect for fans of shows like ER. Really perfect. Like, “ER star Noah Wyle is in this and there’s a lawsuit about how it might be ER in another outfit” perfect.

If The Pitt meant to hook ER fans with its 15-episode first season, it seems to have worked so well that the reverse became equally true, like a rebound effect: The Pitt’s success is driving people to ER.

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From left: Noah Wyle, Sherry Stringfield, Anthony Edwards, Julianna Margulies, George Clooney, Gloria Reuben, and Eriq La Salle, circa 1997©NBC/Courtesy Everett Collection

New York stand-up Evan Samuels told Glamour, “A podcast I listen to (The Watch) was talking about how good The Pitt was, and how ER is clearly the predecessor, and how it has one of the greatest pilots of all time. I knew Pitt was going 15 weeks, so I wanted to let some build up, so I threw ER on ’cause I’d never seen it, and next thing I know me and my girlfriend have watched, like, 60 episodes.”

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A generation of viewers who maybe missed the seminal medical drama when it aired from 1994 to 2009 met Wyle for the first time as the honorable Dr. Robby, and when they were finished with The Pitt’s 15 episodes, they dove into ER looking for more.

Tracy Ifeachor in The PittWarrick Page/HBO Max

“I watched up through the beginning of season six of ER after The Pitt,” admitted NYC-based researcher Isha Patnaik. Yes, the Pitt-to-ER pipeline is real. Boeing employee Aasha Zinke recalled her roommate Catherine going on an ER binge in the same timeframe. TV writer Jenny Jaffe’s best friend Dani managed to view all 331 episodes of ER in the time since The Pitt aired. We heard similar stories from a number of other fans of The Pitt, though not all have made it to the end of the show’s 15 seasons (yet).

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The buzz around The Pitt even got previously established ER fans hyped up to revisit hospital-based drama. “I started an ER rewatch when The Pitt premiered and my friends were like ‘Why?’ and I was like, ‘IDK I just like ER and I wasn’t in a new show mood,’ but then when The Pitt ended all my friends were like, ‘I’m having Noah Wyle withdrawal’ and I was like, ‘You know what might help?’” recalled comedy writer Lauren Scharf.

Isa Briones in The PittWarrick Page/Max

Numbers-wise, the spring of ER may be no summer of Suits, but it’s definitely A Thing, even if the exact amount of Thing-ness is hard to quantify (streaming data is notoriously hard to come by). After The Pitt premiered in January, searches for the show spiked on Google. While HBO Max declined to comment for this article, the sheer availability of the show—also available to stream on Hulu and Disney+—is sure to have some kind of bolstering effect, à la the Netflix Bump.

Of course, not everyone who went looking for Pitt-like action in the halls of Cook County General Hospital found it. At least half a dozen viewers who spoke to Glamour turned off ER some time around the pilot, finding the show soapy and dated. The Pitt, for instance, doesn’t have music; ER is paced for network commercial breaks. As writer Madeline Goetz put it, “I did watch a little ER afterward and I decided I get freaked out by old-looking, dimly lit hospitals; I also found the hospital scenes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer unsettling; why is it so dark in there!!!!”

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But the one thing everyone can agree on: Noah Wyle Noah Wyle Noah Wyle. He is our very good boy. He is kind of incredible.

Noah Wyle in The PittMAX

“My first TV memory is ER, but I didn’t remember any of John Carter’s drug addiction problems, or the other comparisons to Frank Langdon’s arc in The Pitt,” said journalist Julia Alexander, comparing Wyle’s role as the young doctor on ER to the painkiller-addicted doctor played by Patrick Ball on The Pitt. Carter’s addiction is one of the standout arcs or ER, but given that the series ran for, again, 331 episodes, it is hard to keep track of all the storylines.

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Patrick Ball in The PittWarrick Page

“Watching ER again, for the first time in two decades, after becoming obsessed with The Pitt made me realize how long Noah Wyle has carried the character of John Carter with him—and how important that character has become to telling the under-discussed reality of mental heath issues plaguing our first responders,” says Alexander.

This is a topic that may surprise viewers toggling between The Pitt and ER. A main theme of The Pitt is that doctors and nurses are carrying an unfair burden, juggling the work of social services, trying to get mental health resources for the unstable and unhoused…at one point, the charge nurse is physically attacked by a disgruntled patient. Throughout the season, Dr. Robby has panic-inducing flashbacks to the worst days of the pandemic. But ER did not shy away from the toll that working in a hospital takes on healthcare professionals, and (small spoiler), the climax of the famously great pilot is beloved nurse Carol’s (Julianna Margulies) suicide attempt.

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Warrick Page/Max

Noah Wyle, whose mother was a hospital nurse, has spoken about how much these shows and storylines mean to him personally as someone who witnessed firsthand the stressful life of a health care employee. There’s a reason viewers can’t get enough of him in these roles.

So maybe give him an Emmy already?

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Originally Appeared on Glamour