Adult Swim's Medical Show Is A Hilarious Palate Cleanser For The Pitt Fans

While the movie business has experienced a concerning degree of commercial and critical turbulence over the first three months of 2025, television has stepped up to provide entertainment seekers an impressive array of captivating new series, as well as stellar new seasons from returning shows. "Severance" just stuck the landing at the end of its celebrated second season, "The White Lotus" is back doing its darkly comedic thing with possibly its strongest cast to date, and "The Studio" is a brilliantly brutal Hollywood satire that takes no prisoners in showing viewers how the showbiz sausage is made.

Hence, it's a very high compliment to suggest that the new Max hospital drama, "The Pitt," might be the best of the '25 bunch thus far. Created by R. Scott Gemmill, a TV writing veteran who got his start on "ER" before taking the showrunning reins on "NCIS: Los Angeles," the show is a riveting hour-by-hour depiction of everything that goes down in the hectic emergency room of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. "The Pitt" is not for the faint of heart, but even those with weak constitutions might be willing to take this rough ride because the series is just that compelling.

Since everyone's buzzing over a hit medical procedure in a way I haven't seen since the premiere of "ER" (which "The Pitt" was not spun-off from) back in 1994, now might be a good time for frazzled viewers to soothe their nerves with an uproarious parody of such shows — one that ran for seven seasons and had a murderer's row cast of comedic talent. You can watch it right now on Amazon Prime Video, and, no, I'm not talking about "Scrubs."

Created by Rob Corddry for Adult Swim, "Children's Hospital" comes across as a spoof of medical dramas, but it quickly bolts all over the place in a wildly absurdist fashion. Each episode is only 11 minutes, yet Corddry and his collaborators make you feel like you've just inhaled a full meal of inspired silliness. That the series is frequently inspiredly ridiculous should come as no surprise once you realize David Wain, the man who gave us such comedy classics as "Wet Hot American Summer" and "They Came Together," is part of Corddry's creative team.

The show is set at, you guessed it, a children's hospital, and stars Corddry as a Patch Adams-esque doctor who wears clown makeup that is distressingly close to notorious Illinois serial killer John Wayne Gacy's Pogo the Clown. The main cast also includes Lake Bell, Megan Mullally, Rob Huebel, Ken Marino, and Henry Winkler, while guest stars like Jon Hamm, Jordan Peele, and Ed Helms drop by to get in on the wholly unpredictable shenanigans.

If you're looking for a series that's grounded in reality even a little bit, "Children's Hospital" will likely leave you reeling. Once it gets into its second season, it becomes something of a comedic laboratory where the writers get to do inexplicably awesome things like base an entire episode around Spike Lee's "Do the Right Thing" (replete with a "Fight the Power" closing credits sequence where the cast pays homage to Rosie Perez's ecstatic dance performance that opens Lee's movie). You just never know where "Children's Hospital" is going to go from one episode to the next, and that makes it a rare gem among sitcoms.

The only downside is that, right now, you'll have to pay to rent "Children's Hospital" on Amazon Prime Video. Alternatively, you can buy a whole seasons for $7.99, which is the cost of a matinee movie ticket. Trust me, you will get your money's worth in laughs.