The Pitt is so built around its real-time premise that it’s easy to forget it’s also a uniquely one-location show. When Robby chewed out Samira a few episodes ago, he barked, “You have to think of these walls like a force field. You cannot let anything in.” The show itself largely follows that philosophy too, except in premieres and finales, when that force field finally lowers and the real world suddenly bleeds in. That’s why it’s almost shocking to see Whitaker happily ride off into the sunset at the end of his shift. It’s one thing to hear him talk about his friendly relationship with Amy. It’s another thing entirely to see him warmly greet her baby and casually hop into the driver’s seat like he’s part of their family.
Conceptually, we know these doctors have lives outside of the ER, but seeing those lives in action is—in the best way—like shattering an illusion. Crucially, that illusion shatters for Robby as much as it does for us. After a season of dancing around what’s actually been bothering him all day, Robby suddenly opens up with a pretty major reveal: Back when his career was just starting, he assumed he’d be married with two kids in college by now. Only he never found the time or the right person. Now he’s in his fifties, living alone, and defined solely by what he does for work. He’s not ashamed that being a good doctor is part of his identity, but he is worried that it’s the only part of his identity. What does he have besides the ER?
In retrospect, it totally makes sense as a central anxiety for Robby—one that dovetails with everything from his fractured relationship with Jake to his noncommittal situationship with Noelle to his charged history with Collins and the reveal of her abortion last season. When Robby referred to his house as a “swinging bachelor pad,” it just felt like a cheesy joke. But the bittersweet look on his face as Whitaker drives away suggests there’s a whole world of depth and regret we’ve really just scratched the surface of so far. All the repetition and stalling of last week is replaced with something that feels so much more tangible and specific. It’s a fantastic Robby scene in an episode full of them.
Tellingly, however, it’s not nearly as interesting of a scene for Samira, the person he’s opening up to. While Robby’s slow-burn breakdown has had ample screen time all season, Samira’s has existed much more on the margins, with the reveal that she’s gone no-contact with her mom as a particularly big swing to happen offscreen. (She was still taking her calls this morning.) After Variety broke the news that Supriya Ganesh won’t be back next season, however, it’s clear that Samira and Robby were never meant to be equally important foils for one another.
Instead, she’s meant to be his mirror, a fellow workaholic who risks sacrificing her personal life for her professional dedication. Her arc matters only in as much as it serves to emphasize the themes of his. The specifics of her relationship to her mom aren’t important. We just need to get to the moment Samira announces she won’t let her mom treat her like a child anymore so that we can see Robby start to grapple with how much he’s been treating his staff like children as a way to cope with his own paternal regrets. Whether next season frames Samira’s exit as escaping Robby’s influence in an empowered way or getting bullied out of the ER in an unfair one, the fallout will matter for him, not her.
We can debate whether or not that’s a reasonable use of an empathetic supporting character played by a woman of color, but what’s unequivocally true is that it’s a very different way than The Pitt operated last season. One thing I’ve heard repeated a lot recently is that the first season of The Pitt was about the doctors coming together to solve an external crisis of the mass shooting while this season is about them cracking under internal pressure. But as someone who just rewatched both seasons ahead of this finale, I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.
While the memory of the mass shooting looms large, more than anything, the first season of The Pitt was about the many different relationship dynamics that shape the wide world of PTMC’s ER. There was the warm friendship between Dana and Collins; Robby and McKay butting heads over the incel kid; Collins mentoring Samira by reminding her that Robby can be wrong sometimes; and all the different ways McKay, Samira, and Langdon approached teaching Whitaker, Javadi, and Santos in various combinations.
This season, however, has re-anchored its thematic center around Robby (and, to a lesser degree, Dana), which has changed the overall flow and structure of the show. Where last season might have had Samira mentor Javadi as another South Asian doctor dealing with an overbearing mom trying to shape her career, this season has decided to emphasize that Whitaker is Robby’s new protégé by having him handle pretty much all the teaching storylines, even though he’s just four days into his internship and Santos was still very much the one being taught in her equivalent year last season. Here Whitaker helps steer Javadi toward a mental-health specialty, which Robby greets with general approval after switching his stance on her TikToks. Meanwhile, Santos, McKay, Samira, and Mel have been largely siloed away into more isolated storylines this season, with McKay at least getting a handful of nice moments with Ogilvie.
Much more so than in season one, though, the show’s supporting relationships are secondary and sporadic compared to the ones that involve Robby. Even the reveal of Al-Hashimi’s seizure condition flare-up recontextualizes her story from one about a professional equal who could model a different way of running the ER to another moral dilemma for Robby to grapple with. As we’ve seen, Al-Hashimi had two “episodes” today after being seizure free for either 12 years or one year. (She gives both answers within the same scene.) She wants to keep working with some guardrails in place, which sort of makes her a parallel for Robby’s desire to “push through” his own issues. But her condition is much more specific and legally limiting in a way that really makes her more of a parallel for Langdon. Like last season, Robby ends this one yelling at a co-worker that if they don’t self-report, he’ll turn them in.
Yet while I prefer The Pitt 1.0 to this more Robby-centric version, I still think this finale is one of the more successful installments of the new format. There are a few ongoing storylines that lack a sense of closure here—including the Langdon/Santos tension, the Al-Hashimi/Langdon tension, the Javadi/Mateo flirtation, and the question of whether Perlah and Princess ever planned Javadi’s 21st birthday party. But, for the most part, this episode does an effective job closing the loop for its supporting players even as it keeps its focus largely on Robby.
Dana gets a righteous win as she hands off the hospital’s rape kits to a pair of passing detectives. Langdon and Mel enjoy an absolutely lovely (and, yes, quite romantic) scene where they watch fireworks while discussing their tough but bearable days. Al-Hashimi wraps up 15 hours of quiet composure by exploding in righteous anger at Robby’s self-importance and then breaking down in tears in her car. Santos and Mel realize that instead of internalizing their struggles in self-destructive ways, they could both use a friend to blow off some steam with—which leads to a delightful and delightfully unexpected mid-credits karaoke scene. Plus, this finale delivers one of the most memorable medical set pieces of the season, as The Pitt firmly puts to rest the misconception that C-sections are “casual” surgeries or “easy” ways to give birth. (Shout-out to the “night crawlers” for leading the double save on the patient’s ill-advised “wild pregnancy.”)
It’s a strong episode for most of the supporting cast and a great one for Robby, which is probably the best we could have hoped for as a capper to this season. Robby’s sweet, funny, sad scene with Abbot is a fantastic bit of writing from R. Scott Gemmill and acting from Wyle and Shawn Hatosy. His final conversation with Langdon is an effective switch in their power dynamic, with Robby approaching with real vulnerability while Langdon delivers the sort of harsh truths Robby usually deploys as mentorship. (“How can any of us live up to your standards if you can’t even do it?” Langdon asks.) Plus, the ending with Baby Jane Doe is genuinely lovely. It ties in with Robby’s desire to be a dad, with the reveal that his mom left him when he was eight, and with his very relatable wish that he just wants someone to swaddle him.
While season one followed an incredibly traumatic day for PTMC, it ended with a sense of catharsis as the Pitt crew laughed over beers in the park. Season two follows a comparatively less intense day and reaches a much more ambiguous endpoint. The rooftop where Abbot and Robby contemplated suicide last season is reclaimed as a space where the women of The Pitt wrap their arms around one another as they decompress watching the fireworks. Meanwhile, the space where Dr. Adamson died is now the space where Robby maybe starts a new family, if Dana’s suggestion of kinship adoption comes to fruition.
They’re not hopeful scenes, exactly. But they’re not unhopeful either. There’s only so much anyone can change over the course of just one day. Looking back, this season has been about basically everyone in the ER trying to persuade Robby to get some help. Maybe it’s the cumulative weight of all of their words—and some pointed straightforwardness from his pseudo son Langdon—that will finally inspire him to actually seek it out.
Stray observations
- • Especially cruel to reveal Abbot is either divorced or widowed in Samira’s last episode. Sorry to the Mohabbot ’shippers!
- • Speaking of which: There’s been a lot of confusion over this point, but Samira has been looking at future fellowships within emergency medicine (i.e. geriatric emergency medicine), not trying to switch fields entirely. Here, however, Robby asks if she’s had any luck “picking an elective” (i.e. a two-to-four week specialty rotation), which could be how the show explains her absence next season even though she still has a full 12 months before she completes her residency. (She’s the same year as Langdon.)
- • It’s strange to give Robby a big dramatic monologue about how watching people die rips out a part of your soul in the same episode where a patient dying in the waiting room is played as a joke. I’m really unsure why all the doctors laughed off what felt like an absolute horrific condemnation of the waiting-room experience.
- • It still feels crazy to me that Becca is this enmeshed with Adam and his family yet had never even mentioned his name to Mel before, even under the pretense that he’s just her friend.
- • Some more closed loops: The show’s analog era ends as everyone dings the bell in celebration until Santos (hilariously) throws it away. Digby winds up back on the street with Whitaker’s doctor badge and the medical dummy. And Langdon heads up to the Surgical Care Unit to confirm his septic waitress patient made it through surgery, even if she did have to lose her leg. All great stuff, although I wish we’d gotten one more beat to remember Louie too.
- • “Go on a cruise, man.”
- • Gnarliest moment of the season: That C-section is going to stick with me for a long, long time, but in terms of the season as a whole, I think I’m still most haunted by the severed leg from the waterslide accident.
- • Thanks so much for following along with this season of Pitt! It’s been a pleasure to discuss the show and read your insightful comments—even when we disagreed. If you’re somehow not sick of me writing about the series yet, I wrote a piece breaking down the core motivations of each character and how that can inadvertently put them in conflict with one another. See you back here next shift!
Caroline Siede is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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