A quietly radical depiction of care for sexual assault

SEXUAL ASSAULT IS ALMOST AS common on TV as it is in real life.

- BY JUDY BERMAN

LaNasa, Hollard, and Moafi on their way to care for a rape survivor in the ER

Teen dramas take on date rape in “very special episodes.” Genre epics like Game of Thrones use sexual violence as a tool for character development. Law & Order: SVU has aired nearly 600 episodes of case-of-the-week dramatizations of sex crimes.

Yet for all that the medium has already said on the subject, two recent episodes of The Pitt, “1:00 P.M.” and “2:00 P.M.,” prove that these depictions needn't be redundant. When the Pitt’s heroic charge nurse, Dana (Katherine LaNasa), steps away from her inundated desk to perform a sexual-assault examination, the show’s real-time storytelling gives viewers a startling, educational look at a process whose slowness is rarely captured on TV. Then, once the patient has been discharged, it delivers a devastating reality check that shows how often this ordeal is an exercise in futility.

Speed and overwhelm usually define