Exhaustion. Anxiety. The fact that you are reading this article for a long time. other meeting that should have been an email. Reports of job burnout have been in the news for years, especially in fields like medicine, education, and, ahem, journalism.
And yet, television shows about people in these professions continue to chug along.
Sometimes, it's down to experience. ABC's “Grey's Anatomy,” which returns Thursday for its 21st season, has been on the air so long that character Taryn Helm (Jaicy Elliot) has left the industry to work in a bar before returning to the risky, drama-filled world of medicine. She's now co-chief resident at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
And sometimes it's about adding modern consciousness to established genres and tropes. The new version of “Criminal Minds,” appropriately subtitled “Evolution,” which recently completed its second season on Paramount+, follows in the footsteps of its CBS predecessor by being a show about criminal profilers. But it's also evident on the impact that work can have on the characters' mental health.
On NBC’s new medical drama, “Brilliant Minds,” which premiered Monday, exhaustion is omnipresent. Zachary Quinto plays Oliver Wolf, a dedicated neurologist known for breaking into locker-room speeches — “Clear eyes. Full hearts. I can’t breathe,” one of his interns, played by Aury Krebs, says earnestly — but not everyone portrayed on the show is always so confident. Oliver and the other doctors are fallible, whether freezing up during a spinal tap or completely intervening in their patients’ personal lives to facilitate a father-daughter reunion.
“Brilliant Minds” creator Michael Grassi wants audiences to know that, for the most part, this is OK. He describes his show as “a high-pressure workplace drama in which our doctors tirelessly and selflessly help patients, their health and their mental health, while simultaneously neglecting their own mental health in very real and relatable ways.”
Actor Aury Krebs plays Dr. Dana Dang on “Brilliant Minds,” which creator Michael Grassi describes as a “high-pressure workplace drama.”
(Rafy / NBC)
Grassi's team includes Daniela Lamas, a pulmonary and critical care physician who is also a writer for television medical dramas (her credits include the Fox series “The Resident”).
“People who have underlying anxiety become doctors and it becomes part of their reality,” she says. That’s why it’s important for these feelings to be a constant in the series rather than a specific story arc. “It’s not something that stands out and goes away,” Lamas adds.
The cast and crew of “Brilliant Minds” also have to keep this momentum going. Unlike, say, the 2022 AMC miniseries starring Ben Whishaw “This Is Going to Hurt,” a relentless look at the unrelenting stressors that medicine (specifically obstetrics) can have on doctors and other staff, this show is meant to run for multiple seasons.
“The humor in this show offsets a lot of the potential heaviness of some of the topics in a way that feels really real and light,” Lamas says.
At other times, positive outlooks are part of the show’s spirit. This has been seen in the hit ABC series “Abbott Elementary,” a mockumentary about the teachers and staff of a Philadelphia public school that returns for its fourth season on Oct. 9, and the new FX series “English Teacher,” another comedy about educators set in a Texas high school. Neither series shies away from talking about burnout or the many reasons people leave these professions, but both manage to mix pragmatism with optimism.
Justin Halpern, who co-created “Abbott” with Patrick Schumacker and series star Quinta Brunson (the latter of whom was, appropriately, too busy filming the show to be interviewed for this article), says they haven’t done an episode specifically about burnout because “that’s not usually how teachers talk about it.”
Being overworked and underpaid is part of the job for Gregory (Tyler James Williams), left, Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Jacob (Chris Perfetti) in “Abbott Elementary.”
(Prashant Gupta / ABC)
He and Schumacker note that there have been stories that hint at it, such as a season two episode that addressed the generational divide over whether sick days should only be used for physical health. But Halpern says that for most educators, “burnout is so prevalent and part of their everyday life that they don’t really talk about it; it’s just an accepted norm.”
Schumacker adds that in the new season some characters will “take stock of their entire careers,” while Halpern says there will also be one “about the financial stress of being a teacher.”
But they also say the naturalness of a setting surrounded by small children helps ground the series and keeps it from being too depressing. They think the show could have a different style if it were called “Abbott High.”
“When we first talked about the show with Quinta, we mentioned just the production realities of working with younger kids… and Quinta, quite rightly, said, 'If you set this show in a high school with older kids, there are [different] “There are levels of interaction and drama between kids that occur,” Halpern says. “That takes away some of the levity that can exist within an elementary school.”
But even the way we view these stories has changed.
Older TV shows like “Welcome Back, Kotter” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and even newer series like “Derry Girls,” taught us that principals and other important figures in schools rule by intimidation. But in “English Teacher,” Enrico Colantoni plays Grant Moretti, a walking ulcer-like school principal who somehow manages to handle all the overprotective parenting, feuding students, budget cuts and everything else thrown at him. He’s also the shield that endures much of the abuse so that the titular English teacher, the younger, more wide-eyed Evan, played by Brian Jordan Alvarez, continues his quest to nurture young minds.
In “English Teacher,” Enrico Colantoni plays a walking ulcer-like director named Grant Moretti.
(Richard Ducree / Special Effects)
A friend of Colantoni’s is a retired school principal. He heard his stories of death threats and harassment and says he wondered: “How can you take responsibility without any authority? How do you want to keep doing the job? It’s like you’re being paid to do something, but you’re constantly being criticized.”
“Everyone starts out wanting to save the world and give it a different perspective,” he says. “And then it all comes down to whether you influence one or two people throughout your career as a teacher or as an actor…”
He adds that “people who go into a profession for the wrong reasons don’t last long enough to burn out.”
Bernice Pescosolido, a sociologist and founding director of Indiana University's Mental Health Services Research Consortium and the Irsay Institute for Sociomedical Sciences, says burnout may be a buzzword right now, but it's not a new phenomenon. She mentions the Japanese word Caroshia term meaning death by overwork. She says other terms like nervous breakdown, anxiety and PTSD can be overused or misused, but they are also “ways the general public understands mental anguish.”
“I think there may be lives without stressors, but I doubt it,” says Pescosolido.
