Photo: Warrick Page/HBO Max
Spoilers follow for the second season of The Pitt through the finale, “9:00 P.M.”
There goes my hero, watch her as she goes — and maybe never comes back to the Pitt?
Season two’s finale, “9:00 P.M.,” is the culmination of The Pitt’s season-long mirroring of Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi and Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, concluding with a pair of cliffhangers that leave their respective futures at PTMC up in the air. Rather than leave for his much-ballyhooed, much-feared trip to Alberta, Robby’s final minutes in the episode are spent cuddling Baby Jane Doe, insisting to her (and himself) that everything is “gonna be okay.” And rather than drive home after revealing her seizure disorder to Robby, Al-Hashimi seemingly listens to his dire warnings about how she could have another episode at any point and put herself and others in danger. She stops her car in the parking lot and starts to cry, and in that moment it’s not hard to imagine her sharing Robby’s desire to be swaddled and assured that everything will be okay.
Both attendings end the season near rock bottom, but let’s be real here: There’s no world in which Robby, played by series star, EP, writer, and director Noah Wyle, does not return for season three. Sepideh Moafi’s Al-Hashimi, though? Her status is more questionable, especially now that The Pitt has provided an answer to the 14-episode-spanning mystery that defined the character’s introduction to the series at the expense of her characterization.
This season ends by informing us of Al-Hashimi’s medical condition but by turning that character detail into a puzzle to be solved, the series underserved her until the very end. Nearly everything The Pitt revealed about Al-Hashimi has been filtered through Robby’s reaction to it, from her ethnic name to her time with international NGOs to her desire to hire two attendings for the daytime shift. How Robby feels about all this is given primacy, and that becomes especially noticeable by “7:00 P.M.,” when Robby — smarting from his fights with Dana about his obvious martyr complex, and irritated by Al-Hashimi calling him out for not reporting Langdon to the medical board, and increasingly worried about his friend Duke’s health — clocks Al-Hashimi’s brief moment of frozen hesitation when treating a teen who’s having trouble breathing. Al-Hashimi recommends the correct treatment for the boy and saves his life, but this is now the second time she’s seemed to lose her sense of self (the season premiere ended with her zoning out while Supriya Ganesh’s Dr. Mohan tried to get her attention) and that’s enough to make Robby pay attention. Suddenly he’s asking Mohan and other medical staff if they’ve noticed what’s up with Al-Hashimi, and The Pitt draws this out, adding Robby’s questioning to Al-Hashimi’s “1:00 P.M.” call to a neuroscientist’s office. Crucially, The Pitt doesn’t follow her when she leaves the room after these incidents; what she’s going through in these mysterious moments isn’t as important as Robby’s curiosity about them.
Setting aside how unbelievable it is that Al-Hashimi, who has been undermined by Robby all day, would trust him with her sensitive medical history, their fights about whether she should continue to treat patients aren’t weighted equally. How Robby is written here, as the logical, pragmatic one telling Al-Hashimi that of course she can’t keep working in the ER when she knows her medication isn’t effective, and of course she’s putting people in danger, is not so different from how he tells off Mohan, Javadi, and his other underlings. Robby and Al-Hashimi are clearly meant to be reflections of each other with each of them hiding something that could impact the quality of their work (Robby’s depression and suicidal ideation; Al-Hashimi’s increasing tolerance to her seizure medication and her two seizures during the shift). But where The Pitt centered Robby’s trauma and self-loathing and spun character interactions and relationships off of it all season long, Al-Hashimi was first a riddle to be solved, then a problem to be addressed.
Al-Hashimi and Robby argue twice in “9:00 P.M.,” and in neither instance does The Pitt accompany her to see how she’s reacting to Robby’s disapproval and his insistence that she disclose her condition. Yes, this reveal about Al-Hashimi’s health jeopardizes Robby’s sabbatical and furthers his certainty that he’s the only person who can run the unit correctly. It makes sense to follow him to see how this information further derails his plans. But when Al-Hashimi disappears to consult with the neurologist on call, why not show us any of that interaction? Why not let Al-Hashimi speak for herself in the same way that Robby has tried to explain to Dana and Duke his conflicted feelings about continuing to work at PTMC? Why not give Al-Hashimi’s fears and doubts, and how they’re progressing over the shift, the same attention as Robby’s? Why not push the mirroring of these characters even more by emphasizing the symmetry of Robby doing whatever he can to leave the PTMC and Al-Hashimi doing whatever she can to stay?
If The Pitt had placed the seizure-disorder reveal earlier in the season, Robby and Al-Hashimi could have spent more episodes trying to figure out how to work together, and Robby could be more challenged in his opinion about Al-Hashimi, rather than getting the last word in a season finale. Moafi and Wyle are incredible in that second fight scene as they scream about whether it’s Al-Hashimi’s or Robby’s call for her to work in the ER; every Pitt fan account that praises how beautiful the actors look when their big brown eyes are filled with tears is correct. There’s no real tension, though, because the show has so securely positioned Robby as the voice of reason, and because it structured the reveal of Al-Hashimi’s condition in a way that deprives her of deeper characterization. In “9:00 P.M.,” both Javadi and Mohan, who Robby had harshly, even cruelly, criticized earlier in the season, ask for his approval of their choices and thank him for his guidance. Of course Al-Hashimi would follow that pattern and realize that Robby was right, and of course she would modify her behavior to follow the words of Dr. Daddy. Her ending is anti-climactic and abrupt because it doesn’t feel like Al-Hashimi’s story line was about her as much as it was about Robby.
There’s a route for Moafi to come back next season because, as Robby says during their argument, Al-Hashimi could step away from the job for six months, get her seizures under control with new medication, then return, like how Langdon’s residency spot was held for him while he went to rehab. And given Wyle’s comments about how the series’ next inter-season time jump could lead them to a winter shift, the months between July and December would be just about enough time for Al-Hashimi to get her health in order. The Pitt has already said “good-bye” to two women of color whose story lines, the creators insisted, were naturally wrapped up within the context of how ER training works. There are no such timing limitations on Al-Hashimi, and the ending that now seems like a way to end her story line could easily be transformed into a way to prolong it. The series has already established that the Pitt has two late-shift attendings, lead Night Crawlers Abbot and Shen, so it could naturally follow Al-Hashimi’s suggestion that the day shift would run more smoothly with two attendings, too. If Al-Hashimi and Robby are really supposed to be reflections of each other, bring her back for season three and let her be more than just his shadow.
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