Noah Wyle Teases What’s Next for Robby

[Warning: the below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Episodes 1 and 2.]

It doesn’t take long to realize that The Pitt is outstanding. (We’re completely sold in the premiere.) Noah Wyle, once again in scrubs (the ER vet is also an executive producer and writer), seems to be at home playing a doctor again, showcasing the harsh reality of the job, Robby’s struggles especially on this day (the anniversary of his mentor’s death, during COVID), and the constant, on-the-go mentality of an attending.

Wyle plays Robby with a weight — even though we’re just meeting him during this one shift, with a few flashbacks to the aforementioned tragedy, we can feel the weight of all the years that came before it. This is a man who should not be working this day. In fact, he’s taken it off the past four years, as the first episode makes clear, and therefore everyone is worried about him. Robby, on the other hand, is worried about Shawn Hatosy’s Abbott, whom he finds on the roof. The two share a conversation about what the job has given them (nightmares, ulcers, suicidal tendencies), and Robby warns him that if he jumps on his shift, he’s rude. Both hope Abbott’s never one of Robby’s patients. Abbott heads home, his shift over, just as Robby’s begins.

Warrick Page / Max

“He was supposed to go to this outdoor concert that’s taking place called Pit Fest in the city with his pseudo stepson, Jake. That was going to be his plan to kind of get away from the hospital and away from the attendant memories of this day,” Wyle explains to TV Insider. “And then Jake dumps him for a girl and says that he wants to take his girlfriend instead, which leaves Robby sort of at wit’s end and he decides that he’ll just pull the shift instead.”

And while Robby may want to push aside any thoughts about his mentor’s death (he blames himself), he can’t, even as he’s dealing with new interns and med students, bickering doctors, talk of the hospital being up for sale (it’s nothing new) and low patient satisfaction numbers, charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) checking on him (he’s fine, he doesn’t need to talk), rats, and patients that include a Good Samaritan and the woman who fell on the train tracks he saved, an elderly patient from a nursing home with an advanced directive for no artificial life support, a woman who made herself sick in hopes of getting her son help after she found a list of girls he wants to hurt, a teen who overdosed and is now brain dead, and patient after patient coming in. It’s all of that, as well as the real time aspect with each episode taking place over the course of one hour of Robby’s 15-hour shift, that makes The Pitt feel so real and grounded.

That’s just the life of an attending, says Wyle. “He’s immersing himself in work, but he’s doing exactly what anybody would be doing in his job on shift, which is you’ve got your head on a swivel and you move through the department like a shark and if you don’t put eyes and hands on every patient it could come back and bite you in the ass. He’s done it long enough that he’s just second nature to getting in everybody’s business and making sure everybody’s doing the best job they can.”

But it does feel, to us, like there’s going to reach a time when he can’t or shouldn’t be working, considering what he’s dealing with. (“Physician heal thyself,” Tracy Ifeachor‘s senior resident Collins remarks at one point. “Don’t you have patients?” Robby retorts.) Wyle agrees. “You’ve already seen it in flashes, but it’s going to get very pronounced very soon. Something happens at the end of Episode 11 that really informs the rest of the storytelling for the rest of the season,” he teases.

Also in the first two episodes: Collins is pregnant, and only Dana knows; second year resident King (Taylor Dearden) transfers over from the VA; third year medical student Javadi (Shabana Azeez), whose mother works in the hospital, faints when a patient’s foot is set, and Robby sends her to work with second year resident McKay (Fiona Dourif) — who has an ankle monitor — in triage; intern Santos (Isa Briones) rubs senior resident Langdon (Patrick Marron Ball) the wrong way but is on surgeon Garcia’s radar; the stage is set for a Leverage: Redemption reunion for Wyle and Drew Powell (as a patient very frustrated with the long wait time); third year resident Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) realizes a woman paramedics thought was a drug seeker is actually having sickle cell pain; and fourth year medical student Whitaker (Gerran Howell) struggles to let a patient go when he finds him unresponsive.

What did you think of The Pitt? How much did you love seeing Noah Wyle as a doctor again? Let us know in the poll and comments section below.

The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, Max