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SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers from the Season 2 premiere of “The Pitt,” now streaming on HBO Max.
The first season of “The Pitt” took off in a way that nobody expected — but the daunting question then became how to top it in Season 2. Luckily, its star and executive producer Noah Wyle recalls, director/EP John Wells told him and creator R. Scott Gemmill, “You don’t have to be bigger, better, faster, stronger, funnier, bloodier. You just have to be faithful to the characters that you’ve established and say, who are they 10 months on the other side of this mass casualty event?”
From that, a new 15 hours, 10 months later, was born. As the shift kicks off at 7 a.m. on July 4, Wyle’s Dr. Robby heads into work for his last shift ahead of a three-month sabbatical, a trip in which he’s set to ride his motorcycle up to Alberta. (He drives it to work helmetless, passing an ambulance on a bridge, in what may be an act of foreshadowing.)
“It was important to say Robby can’t pretend he doesn’t have a problem anymore,” says Wyle of the trip. “We wanted to show what that looks like when you know you need help, but you don’t really want it. You don’t really know how to ask for it, and what you want is a quick fix and to be told when you’re going to be better. It’s easier to compartmentalize than it is to open Pandora’s box with no guarantees that this is ever going to work. So that was really what I was curious about playing with — that form of denial takes on many faces.”
Robby’s motorcycle trip, which his colleagues roll their eyes about, is one manifestation of that denial. “Instead of sticking with therapy, you decide you’re going to go fix up an old motorcycle and take a very romantic, literary journey to go find yourself,” Wyle says. “These are maybe avoidance techniques and maybe therapeutic techniques. And as the season wears on, we start to look at all of these choices and motivations a little bit more carefully for everybody, not just Robby,. I think if I were going to plant a seed in the viewers’ minds, I would say, look at what everybody’s showing you — this is what they want to show you at work right now. This is what we want to present and project as who we are. But whether that is really who we are, whether we can maintain that composure over 15 hours straight, is going to be interesting to see.”
Throwing a wrench into that plan is the new attending physician in the Pitt, Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), who will step in to lead the day shift when he’s away. Not only does she have a different way of thinking, but also has no spatial boundaries — something that was very intentional.
“We did want her to be a bit of a close target, but it also dovetailed with this thing I’ve been playing with Robby for since we started — which is that he doesn’t really like being touched. He occasionally will touch somebody else or put his arm around somebody, but when it happens to him, he usually recoils away from it,” says Wyle. “So when you’re put in a situation with a character who has no spatial boundary, and it’s somebody who doesn’t really like to be encroached upon, it physically manifests itself in awkwardness and all sorts of interesting behavior. Dr. Al-Hashimi is a perfect foil for where Robby’s at right now, because he’s going to be giving her his baby to take care of in his absence, and he doesn’t like your parenting style, and that’s really an awkward place to be.”
Gemmill agrees, and adds: “Robby is trying to distance himself — literally — from her, and she is constantly in his space, so it’s just to make him even more uncomfortable, to up the stakes a little bit.”
Her take — she’s “very much into modern medicine, and trying to implement AI into the emergency department,” says Wells — creates “a bit of friction” with not only Robby, but other doctors in the room as well.
The premiere also features Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) returning to work after months in rehab after he was caught stealing drugs during last season. Dr. Robby spent the first hour of their shift avoiding him — but that can’t last forever.
“For both of their health, sense of closure and peace of mind, they need to get real with each other. Fifteen hours is a very short period of time in which to accomplish something as large as that,” says Wyle. “Fifteen hours is not really that much time for people to radically change an opinion. It’s just enough to plant a seed and start to have it germinate — positive, negative, fearful, tearful, tragic. These are all things that we start in one place, and we get to another, but they’re kind of micro journeys.”
For the producers, they wanted to display the “realities of recovery” with Langdon’s return and show how it affects everyone involved.
“Langdon feels he’s done something, and he’s worked hard at it, and it was difficult. He’s not really expecting a parade, but at the same time, he’s expecting to be acknowledged for how difficult that was and how hard it was on his family — not working and damaging, possibly to his career,” says Wells. “Others are just [thinking], we had to work twice as hard to fill in for you that entire time. In Robby’s case, he was his protege. He loved him and respected him, and felt very betrayed. So I think showing the realities of how difficult recovery is, and at the same time, how you shouldn’t have expectations that everyone’s going to accept you having done that recovery, is very important.”
Santos (Isa Briones) and Langdon will also have to work together, eventually, but have yet to communicate since she reported his drug issue.
“There’s a lot of hard feelings and unresolved feelings in between those two,” says Gemmill. “She’s trying to be avoidant, partially because she doesn’t know how she’s going to react. Ultimately, he will make an overature, but I’m not sure how well it’s going to be received by her.”
“The Pitt” airs on HBO Max Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET.
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