The Pitt is just over two-thirds of the way through its first season (it’s already been renewed for Season 2!), and there are quite a few storylines in place that could be building to the big finale: There’s the teen whose mother is worried he’ll go after the girls he has on a list; patient Doug Driscoll (Drew Powell) who punched Dana (Katherine LaNasa) is still out there; the shooting with victims about to overwhelm the emergency department; and, of course, Robby’s (Noah Wyle) upcoming, inevitable breakdown.
Looking ahead to the finale, all Wyle will tease is, “The shift will end. We watched Robby walk to work. Eventually, he’s going to have to go home.”
It does sound like a bit will be left up in the air — and we might not even get answers come Season 2. “One of the premises of the show is that for emergency room personnel, you work a shift, whether a 12-hour shift that extends into 15 hours or whether it’s just a straight 12, and you go home and those patients are no longer your patients and you come back and you start over the next day,” notes executive producer John Wells. “So I think one of the things that’s going to be shocking for the audience is they go home and there are going to be a certain number of stories and patients that haven’t been resolved yet.”
Also up in the air? What the future holds for Dana, says Katherine LaNasa. After all, the charge nurse said she’s “done” at the end of Episode 11 … before word came of a shooting at Pithiest. “It’s really an unknown ending,” LaNasa says looking ahead to the finale. “I don’t know what happens to me in Season 2. I have no idea. I will tell you though, if they asked me to read the phone book, I would say yes. It’s been a really delightful experience.” (She also praises Wyle as a writer: “I love it when Noah writes for Dana. He’s really written some of the best Dana stuff.”) If you ask us, the ED can’t operate without Dana, nor can Robby. “I hope you’re right,” she says.
What we do know is that it sounds like The Pitt is going to circle back to the moment that we saw in the premiere and was all over the promos leading up to the premiere: Robby finding Abbott (Shawn Hatosy) on the roof.
“He’s just worked a long grueling night shift, which culminated in the loss of this veteran that was killed by a drunk driver. We discover because he writes the letter to the family that he is a veteran himself, so it hits him particularly hard. He’s on the edge emotionally. He’s literally on the edge up there, and Dr. Robby walks him off it,” Hatosy says of that moment. “Abbott’s unique in that he’s a different kind of doctor, that he comes from the world of combat medicine. That’s what began his career. He discovered his talent for emergency medicine there that made him go into med school. I wouldn’t say he’s the most academic guy. He sort of comes from a different place. He runs on instinct and his ability to improvise in these sort of situations. And he has some of his own buried trauma that is hidden under there that he’s coping with that also put him up on the roof that we’re going to find out more about later.”
And looking ahead to Season 2, there will be a time jump. “We would need to have some distance for some of the stories we want to tell. If it’s Langdon’s [Patrick Ball] first day back after being in rehab, that’s one thing we’ve been talking about, so we would need to be at least a month later,” exec producer R. Scott Gemmill explains. “That gives us time to have things happen in their lives as well that we can then reveal to the audience, and that’s kind of fun because the audience isn’t ahead of the story where they sort of have to catch up with these characters as they reveal little things throughout the day. That’s what it really is, especially for the young ones who this is their first day. You don’t get to know someone very well over the course of 12 hours, but you get enough to get an idea of who they are.”
And so far, the show has only seen the doctors at work and it’s unlikely it would ever go home with them. “I think what makes this show sort of special is that it’s all in the ER and that’s what these people are like. When you go there, you’re there for however long, you don’t go home with them. You don’t know. And I think anything you glean has to come from the time you’re there,” Gemmill says. “I think going home with them just becomes a different kind of show.”
What are your predictions for how this season will end? And what are you hoping to see in Season 2? Let us know in the comments section below.
The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, Max