Note: This story contains spoilers for “The Pitt” Episode 13.
“The Pitt” has thrown a lot of curveballs at Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch across its first season, but Episode 13 brought this healthcare professional to his breaking point.
In between high-stakes medical emergencies, the Max medical drama established Robby (Noah Wyle) as the overwhelmed senior attending leading the team of doctors and nurses at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital during this intense shift. Though he’s struggling with unresolved trauma from treating patients with COVID at the height of the pandemic, Robby has kept a steady head. But after a mass shooting at a nearby music festival brought a deluge of patients to the ER — including his almost stepson Jake (Jack Speights) and his gravely injured girlfriend — the tragedy hitting so close to home breaks him.
“It’s the deconstruction of a hero. [“The Pitt”] was always intended to show that the fragility of our healthcare system is directly proportional to the fragility of the mental health of our practitioners,” Wyle told TheWrap. “To take a guy that we’ve now invested a lot of trust in — a great doctor, a responsible guy, heroic, capable — and then to show that he’s also human, infallible and breakable, it was a big part of what we were trying to do.”
Episode 13 saw the doctors juggling the care of an overwhelming number of patients, with the nerves of the Pitfest shooter still being on the loose. Robby’s own nerves were validated in this hour too,m when Jake and his girlfriend arrived behind a pickup truck having sustained injuries in the massacre.
Jake had a superficial wound to his leg, but his girlfriend Lea came in a far more serious condition. Robby and the team did their best to help the young woman, but her injuries were too severe and she died in the ER.
The loss surely impacted Robby, but breaking the news to Jake and showing him her body was the final straw. The grief-stricken man blamed his father figure for not working hard enough in saving her. The episode ended with Robby having a full-blown panic attack in the ER’s makeshift morgue.
“With that one, the environment feeds you so much,” Wyle said of filming the scene. “There was so much blood on that set and so many bodies on those gurneys with horrific wounds. The intensity and the depth of chaos was palpable … actors are masochists. You give us days like that where we get to cry and be all histrionical and we love it.”
With two episodes left in Season 1 — and Season 2 already in the works — “The Pitt” has delivered compelling drama while shining a spotlight on the state of the healthcare system and the workers who keep it moving every day. Wyle noted that emergency room practitioners are at high risk for suicide, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce and violence at work.
For Wyle, it’s also the opportunity to push himself as an actor to his best work yet.
“I wanted, at 53 years old, to see whether I could touch the ceiling of my own talents and really go deeper than I’ve gone in a long time,” he said. “In terms of my own creative exploration, this was one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve ever had. I’m just thrilled that it’s resonating with audiences that they’re going to let us continue to tell it, because I am in my happy place right now.”
“The Pitt” releases new episodes Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/ 6 p.m. PT on Max.
The post ‘The Pitt’ Star Noah Wyle Unpacks Robby’s Heartbreaking Episode 13 Meltdown: ‘The Deconstruction of a Hero’ appeared first on TheWrap.