[This story contains spoilers from season one of Maxs The Pitt, including the finale 9:00 p.m.]
Noah Wyles Dr. Michael Robby Robinavitch ends his day at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, the site of Maxs The Pitt medical drama, somewhat the same way it began: walking with his earbuds in, listening to Baby by Robert Bradleys Blackwater Surprise.
But Robby is not the same as he was 15 hours earlier. In between those soundtracked journeys to and from the hospital, he has dealt with everything from numerous fentanyl overdoses to discovering both that one senior resident (Patrick Balls Dr. Langdon) is hiding drug use and that the other (Tracey Ifeachors Dr. Collins), suffering a miscarriage on the day, tells Robby that she had an abortion a few years ago, implying that she got pregnant during a relationship with Robby. This is all before a mass shooting at a music festival plunges the hospital into chaos, with a deluge of patients and a shortage of blood, as the doctors and nurses literally work overtime treating the victims, including the girlfriend of Robbys ex-girlfriends son, Jake (Taj Speights), who dies despite Robbys dedicated treatment. The tension ratchets up as Robby and his staff deal with an accumulation of personal and personnel issues amid ongoing traumas with increasingly higher stakes.
Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill says the season was crafted this way in part to put more pressure on Robby, including the decision not to bring Collins back for the mass shooting, even though Langdon returns, after Robby lets her leave early and tells her to turn off her phone.
Having Langdon come back has more impact in some ways, because Robby doesnt want that, Gemmill says. So having Langdon coming back, as opposed to Collins coming back, is unfortunate, because it leaves him in the lurch. If she were to come back, she just goes back to work. Langdon coming back, it puts Robby in a real awkward spot, because he needs him. He needs his extra set of hands and his medical prowess, but on the other hand, he also knows that hes a drug addict. And so if something goes wrong and it gets out that Robby let the drug addict work, even during the mass casualty, it could be his career. So its really just about putting the screws to Robby, and we also wanted to get Robby to a point where he has his meltdown. We just had to keep upping the ante and the triggers and get him to that point. And so having Langdon come back is just another example of that, and letting Langdon work, and even though there were no repercussions specifically about that, its still underlying Robbys angst as it just keeps bubbling and building towards an explosion.
Its enough that by the end of hour 13, Robby has a breakdown and ends up sobbing and collapsing to the floor in the hospitals makeshift morgue.
When asked why it was this moment that caused the experienced physician, working on the anniversary of the death of his mentor Dr. Adamson, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wyle first quips of everything Robbys been through, Isnt that enough?
Turning serious, he explains why Robby cant hold it in any longer.
I think weve removed a lot of the bearing walls from his scaffolding. Collins going home, Langdons betrayal, strained relations now with Jake, [his girlfriend] Leah (Sloan Mannino) dying, all happening in the room where Adamson died and he pulled the plug on him five years ago on this day its just too much, Wyle tells The Hollywood Reporter. But its not these individual things. As he starts to recount everybody whos died on this day, hes remembering everybody whos died under his care. These things go into little compartments, and you hope that you can keep them separate, but on this particular day, at that particular moment, it is system failure, and they all come spilling out, and its the aggregate of all of his career coming down on him in that moment everything that hes trying to keep behind a professional mask and veneer comes spilling out, and its at the most inopportune time, which, for somebody like Robby, brings attendant guilt and shame and feelings of inadequacy and like hes letting people down, or that hes weak on top of everything else.
Robby continues to struggle with these emotions in the final two episodes of The Pitts first season and, after he ends up crying on the roof at the end of hour 15, fellow attending Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) tries to provide some support, including gently offering to connect him with his therapist.
And by the end of season one, Wyle says, Robby cant go home and pretend to himself any longer that he doesnt have a problem.
So its really a question for season two: problem identified, season two treatment, Wyle says of whats next for Robby. Whether or not he buys into it, what mode he would buy into, what effect it would take doctors dont make the best patients. Theyre really better at diagnosing problems. And were going to have a couple of doctors coming back and having to grapple with not only Robbys got Adamson, but now everybodys got Pitt Fest, so to a degree, everybodys got an Adamson that theyre gonna have to contend with. So how he goes about getting help, how we depict a physician seeking or accepting treatment, how the rest of our practitioners, whove now been through this crazy experience, digest it and synthesize it in their own lives and careers, is going to be a big focus of season two.
Indeed, showrunner R. Scott Gemmill, who like Wyle spent years working on ER, adds that Robby grappling with his past trauma and a larger journey of healing will be part of The Pitts already announced second season.
I think the best thing that could have happened to his character was the meltdown, because until then, he wasnt dealing with it, Gemmill tells THR. If no one had seen the meltdown, he could probably go back to his own ways, which is again, denial and avoidance. But because Whitaker (Gerran Howell) saw him, and then ultimately we learned that somebody else saw him, so that even Langdon knows about it, so at that point, Robby knows his secret is out and realizes that he has to come to terms and deal with this and part of this second season will be about seeing Robby and what steps hes taking to deal with his past trauma, and even the most recent, the mass shooting, but part of it is his journey of healing.
Gemmill recently revealed that season two would take place 10 months after season one, over the July 4 weekend. The time jump, for Robby and other characters, gives them some time to deal with the issues that emerged at the end of season one.
When we come back a lot of story has transpired between our characters, and so we get a chance to catch up, whereas if wed done the next day, everyone would still just be dealing with their PTSD and the grief about it, so we wouldnt have as much story to tell, Gemmill says. And this just seemed like the best way to re-engage the audience and let them play a little bit of catch-up as they probably see some new faces.
Beyond that, Gemmill teases of the July 4 time period, Theres a holiday; theres lots going on in the city, a lot of unique things to summertime that bring you into the ER, so we can tap into those with whatever we decide to do.
And the summer setting was also born out of a practical concern since the series exterior filming happens in September for a number of reasons, Gemmill says.
Its the best time to really shoot there for us. Its not too late in the season. Its actually kind of too early in the season for some of the [writers], he says. Because whatever we write and shoot there in September, you know, like the scenes in the park, the scene on the roof with Robby and Abbot, the scene with the helicopter, the blood arriving, all those were shot in September. So you have to write the scenes that you think the show is going to end on without really knowing how youre going to get there. So thats a little tricky, but we didnt want to be there in the wintertime, so September is going to have to match for anywhere from, say, April through November. Wed already done September, so we just picked July as a good midway point.
With respect to the new faces, Gemmill indicated that would apply to the hospitals medical staff.
You want a bit of everything. I think the great thing about an emergency department is its a very vibrant, alive place, with people coming and going constantly, he says. And thats not just workers and the patients, but, you know, you have med students showing up, you have med students moving on, you have specialists showing up. That allows us to keep it alive and keep it authentic, so, yeah, I think it helps to see some new faces. And new faces bring new characters and new perspectives. And what we always want to do is tell stories from different points of view as well, not just the ones were used to.
The prospect of new characters comes as it remains unclear if at least two major characters Langdon and charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) will be returning to their roles at the hospital, with Robby sending Langdon home and Dana, who suffers the indignity of getting punched in the face by a patient, saying repeatedly that shes done with working in the emergency room before packing up her things at the end of the day.
When asked about LaNasas future on the show, Wyle was quick to joke but noncommittal, merely highlighting her importance to the series, Fan favorite Katherine LaNasa not come back? Come on now. But, yeah, it happens. Who knows? Who knows?
Onscreen, Robby seems to think Dana wont really quit.
I think he hopes that shell be back, Wyle says. I think that he doesnt want to entertain a universe where she doesnt come back.
Amid the uncertainty around Langdon and Dana, The Pitts first-season finale also features a surprising reveal from Abbot, specifically that part of his leg is prosthetic, which he nonchalantly removes during a post-shift drink in the park.
We wanted to make Abbot a vet, and his experience in those scenarios, those situations, inform him somewhat as a doctor, Gemmill explains of the thinking behind revealing this character detail that way. And when we got to see how well he performed during the mass casualty because hes been in, unfortunately, those kind of situations before, and that seemed like if he suffered an injury, a pretty significant one, as a result of that, I think it makes for a more interesting and a more sympathetic character. So we knew that that was going to be a reveal from the get-go go but also not going to be revealed until the very, almost the last moment of the show. Certainly its in the last scene, and that was really just to see that hes a physician who has lost a part of his leg. Hes not a guy with part of his leg who became a physician. So he really, its really just more about who he is. And we didnt want to make a big deal about it. It was just to show that, you know, so that nobody judged him ahead of time. And at the end, its a big, hopefully a good reveal, and you realize it has never slowed him down one bit.
Wyle, Gemmill and the team behind The Pitt have stressed wanting to make the series the most accurate medical show on TV, but going into season two, theyre facing the challenge of trying to predict how high-profile changes in the health care industry, including layoffs and funding losses, play out.
Were talking to all of these people now, and were saying, Can you do the impossible for us? Can you look into the future and see how bad its going to get? And tell us what youre going to do about it? Which is really unfair to ask these people who are literally losing their jobs or their funding every day and trying to shore up what is going to be this damage before it hits full force. So it is tricky, Wyle says. We got lucky in some ways. We wrote about stuff a year ago that wasnt exactly in the headlines a year ago, but its certainly in the headlines now, and the measles storyline is a perfect example of that. I cant believe how relevant that storyline is. It seems as if we did it in response to the cases that are rampaging through Texas as we speak, but we were just thinking what would happen if an under-vaccinated population continued on this trend, and herd immunity was a thing of the past, and we continue to travel internationally. What do we think is going to happen here? You know, were going to see a lot of these diseases that we thought wed taken care of and got rid of coming back in greater and greater numbers, and the more disinformation thats out there, the more deaths that are going to happen. So that is very important, tough stuff.
For season two, Wyle, who also serves as an executive producer and writer, will write two more episodes than he did in season one and direct an episode.
Returning to medical dramas more than 15 years after the end of ER, Wyle says despite the fact that The Pitt is a streaming show and the TV landscape has changed, his experience in terms of how people are interacting with the show and the feedback hes getting is remarkably similar with perhaps a little more engagement.
The shows debuting on Thursday nights, and I get a lot of phone calls Friday morning, and its being released one a week. So were back to the network model that built anticipation through the week and then delivered on Thursday. And so that kind of response coming in weekly waves has been really fun to get, Wyle says. Audiences are a lot more sophisticated now in a lot of ways, and theyre a lot harder to fool and harder to get to fall in love with you. In some ways, theyre jaded, and theyre really sophisticated in terms of narrative devices and tropes. They love to jump on a clue path and figure out where this thing is going before youve gotten there. And people talk about it a lot. So when you write, you write with the understanding that audiences are not passively watching this, theyre actively engaged in trying to figure it out, and they want you to respect their intelligence, and they want you to respect their time.
And Gemmill is happy to keep going with The Pitt until someone tells him to stop.
I think a very important part of my job is to keep a show on the air as long as possible, he says. Because this is still a business. The business has been hit pretty hard between COVID and the strikes, and I get calls. I even had a call today with someone who Id worked with, and was looking, just trying to see where the next gig was. So I will always, I tend to, will work on a show until they take my chair away and shut the lights out, because I think thats really important to give people the opportunity to work, and to work in Los Angeles and to work the sensible hours that we do. Its really important. And so I dont look to the next best, next big thing. Im really dedicated to whatever show Im on at the time and trying to make it last until people either dont want to work on it anymore, or people dont want to watch it anymore, and then we move on and do the next thing.
As for what he would like viewers to take away from the series, Gemmill is focused more on emotional resonance than a political agenda.
I would like to think that our show offers hope, not to give up, that theres still really good people out there, he says. Were in a time when the world seems very divisive, and it is. And yet, there are people, great people, working, 24/7 around the clock to be there when we need them, our first responders. And I would just hope that people respect that. And if theres a sad episode where somebody dies and it makes you feel something, then use that opportunity to call your mom, hug your kids and stay reconnected with each other. I think thats thats the most important thing for us is just to provide a hopeful hour of television that maybe makes you think about being a little nicer or kinder to someone in your life. If we could do that, then weve done a good job.
Season one of The Pitt is now streaming on Max.