If you dig into the vast and voracious community of The Pitt fans on the internet, you’ll find some curious opinions. After season two’s premiere in January, there were people who started shipping charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and her new mentee Emma (Laëtitia Hollard)—in other words, wanting them to become a couple. Others are annoyed that Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) and Dr. Javadi (Shabana Azeez) haven’t gotten enough screen time together this year. Still more are obsessing over whether Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) is a “girl dad.” But by far the oddest Pitt opinion I’ve found served up by the algorithm is that Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) is ruining the show.
This is strange on multiple levels. Wyle is an executive producer of The Pitt, as well as one of the driving creative forces behind the series. It quite literally would not exist without him. Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch is also the show’s main character—as much as this ensemble series has one. During the show’s wildly popular first season, Robby was treated as a swaggering, tortured heartthrob by the viewers who turned this HBO Max original into an Emmy-winning success.
But the anti-Robby sentiment also seems to be a result of the show’s success. Creator R. Scott Gemmill—along with Wyle and fellow EP John Wells—did such a good job that fans have developed deep parasocial relationships with nearly every character on screen, from the sensitive Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) to nurse Jesse (Ned Brower), who began, essentially, as a background character. But it’s also evidence of how online communities can sometimes desire fan service above all else, with little care for nuanced storytelling.
Because it’s very clear, if you’ve been watching this season, that The Pitt’s writers are purposely trying to paint Robby as a complicated, flawed man, someone who desperately needs to get ahold of his emotions and is frequently a bit of an asshole. It’s a portrayal that consciously wants to poke holes in the notion of the ER doctor as an untouchable cowboy. In season one, Robby’s vulnerabilities were made evident through his trauma over the loss of his mentor during COVID; in the show’s next chapter, his vulnerabilities are shown through his stubbornness.
That much is clear from season two’s very first moments, when we see Robby riding into work on a motorcycle—without a helmet. It’s an image designed to make him look cool. That fantasy of invincibility is quickly crushed once he arrives at the hospital: By 9 a.m., a driver comes in devastatingly injured after a crash with a motorcycle. That plot twist is a bit on the nose; so is the patient who arrives during the 12 p.m. hour after falling off a motorcycle pyramid. When Dana asks if he was wearing a helmet, and he says yes, she shades Robby: “What do you know? They are still in style.”
We find Robby on July 4 on the verge of taking a much-needed sabbatical. His plan is to drive, likely helmetless, to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a world heritage site in Canada. He’s both eager to leave and having trouble letting go, as evidenced by his tense interactions with Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), the attending who was brought in to replace him. Al-Hashimi’s style—calm with a belief in a work-life balance—is in direct contrast to Robby’s reactive, heart-on-his-sleeve approach. Despite her slightly annoying interest in generative AI to help with charting, it’s clear Al-Hashimi is not a villain. In fact, her composure shows just how volatile Robby is.
