I'm Wesley Morris and this is Cannonball today.

Doctor, doctor, can you feel me burning, burning?

Despite everything going on in the world at this moment, every Thursday for the last few weeks,

I've been in what passes for a good mood because we got a new season to the pit.

And there is a particular kind of satisfaction that's hard to describe watching this thing.

It involves this strange feeling of, and it's not quite nostalgia, but I'm convinced that, like, lurking right beneath the surface of this show is ER.

And if I could just peel back the top right most edge of the screen,

just go like, like wallpaper,

I'll find all those old NBC characters right underneath.

And yet, we're not just going back to ER.

The pit is making an ancient, comforting TV genre feel contemporary and vital.

On those old shows, most patients, you know, they went home by the end of an episode.

On this show, the cases never quite close.

Here, a single day,

lasts for like 15 episodes,

which feels much more true.

And so,

I asked my editor

and my friend Sasha Weiss to come back

and help me think through

what this show's doing with this first four episodes

of its second season and why this show is necessary. Also, forgot. Why it's so good? That's first,

...