The Pitt has established itself as must-see TV since the first minute of the first episode of the first season. It delves into not just patient care but also the harsh effects the job has on the staff, with things we saw building in Season 1 carrying over into the Fourth of July shift now in Season 2. And just like Season 1’s Episode 13 ended on a shocking, raw, gut-wrenching note for Robby (Noah Wyle), so does Season 2’s.
Also in this episode, in a parallel to a Season 1 scene, King (Taylor Dearden) is the one to help Langdon (Patrick Ball) as he continues to navigate his first shift back after rehab, and Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson) wrestles with the realities of the job with some advice from Whitaker (Gerran Howell). Plus, Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) dealt with her patient returning in serious condition. TV Insider spoke with Taylor Dearden, Lucas Iverson, and Jalen Thomas Brooks for this week’s Post-Op: The Pitt Aftershow. Warning: Spoilers for The Pitt Season 2 Episode 13 ahead!
Dana (Katherine LaNasa) pulls Robby aside to call him out on his actions, including speaking too loudly about a patient’s possible suicide, and he tells her he doesn’t need another mother after his mom left. She thinks he needs a break and suggests he start his sabbatical now. But he still has more to wrap up — like telling Duke (Jeff Kober) his diagnosis (ascending aortic aneurysm) and concern about Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) running the place while he’s gone, if Langdon will relapse, and if Dana’s OK running around with a syringe of Versed in her pocket. They’ll all manage until he comes back, she says. “What if I don’t come back?” he asks, emotional, before walking off. That is what we’ve been concerned about all season.
Dana’s not the only one noticing that something’s off with Robby. Mateo’s (Brooks) is only on the second hour of his shift (he moved to nights), and he’s picking up on things, too; he is, after all, there for Robby’s comment about survival maybe not being the outcome that Orlando was hoping for.
“I like to think that everybody in the hospital, you’re in this pressure cooker with your fellow coworkers, that if something’s off with the person to your side, you’re going to notice,” Brooks explains. “And so of course, there’s something off about Robby the past couple hours and even coming in for those first two, there’s a difference.”
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Meanwhile, Langdon admits to King that he’s not sure if he’s ready to be back after not catching something with a patient, and in turn, she tells him that her deposition made her feel like a bad doctor. While Langdon may feel like Robby wants him gone, King doesn’t want him to leave, either.
“Mel is so team Langdon,” Dearden says. “She has no idea about the Langdon Santos thing at all because she’s just an innocent little butterfly. I think something that Mel sees in Langdon that I’m not sure if any other character sees is he actually is a very caring person, and his kind of a**hole cockiness is such an act.”
She continues, “I think he lets down his wall with Mel, and I don’t think he lets down his wall with anyone else. And so I feel like it was a really nice moment for us to have a few of these opposite scenes of when Mel was a patient and he turns off the lights versus the Season 1 and this. I think she sees what he’s capable of, and to be able to be that person for Langdon means also the world to Mel. To have someone who actually listens to her and cares about her, even though they only met one day, just not many people take the time to get to know her, or at least try. And so it means the world, and I think she’s doing what comes naturally to her of just supporting and being a loving person.”
Also having a bad shift? Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson), whose patient he followed to surgery just died. After, he can’t bring himself to return to the ED, and so Whitaker (Gerran Howell) ends up joining him outside in the ambulance bay. The doctor, whose confidence has been evident this shift versus Season 1’s tells him about losing a patient on his first day and finding a balance. While Ogilvie doesn’t know if he can take another day like this one, Whitaker encourages him to wait until the morning to decide if he wants to come back.
“I think the beauty of it is that I think Ogilvie doesn’t really get a redemption arc as much as a destruction arc, and that the person that began the day who ostensibly should succeed in an environment like The Pitt on paper ends up being completely obliterated by it,” notes Iverson. “I think the person he was at the start of the day is shattered, and he is left in this husk of his former ambition.”
But Whitaker’s words are “medicine for Ogilvie’s soul,” he continues. “I think what Whitaker is talking about is something that would be antithetical to Ogilvie’s perfectionist mindset, which is, I believe, the quality of grace and self-forgiveness. I think Ogilvie is learning that no matter what effort you put into the day, sometimes, things go south. Whitaker is able to approach this in this lovely echo from Season 1 with him and Robby, where it’s about finding the balance. Ogilvie doesn’t have balance as a concept in his life. He sort of throws himself into everything. His ambition is so massive. And then for it to come crashing down, he lives in these absolutes, which is why I think this loss is so devastating for him. To hear that balance is possible, I think, is hope in a moment when he desperately needs it.”
Watch the full video aftershow above with Taylor Dearden, Lucas Iverson, and Jalen Thomas Brooks for more.
The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, HBO Max