Are boundary lines being crossed all over the place? Or is this actually OK, really?
The following story contains spoilers for The Pitt season 2, episode 9, “3:00 P.M.”
WE’RE NINE EPISODES into The Pitt‘s second season, and we’ve already run the gamut of medical mystery, drama, and intrigue. We’ve seen automobile accidents, flesh-eating viruses, tumors, blisters, gunshot wounds and even Hot Dog Eating Contest champions—if there’s something that could go wrong on a 4th of July weekend, The Pitt is showing us how an emergency room would handle it.
But, look—depiction of competent doctors isn’t all we come to The Pitt for. If that were the case, we’d just watch documentaries of real doctors doing the work. We do appreciate that The Pitt shows us all of that, and shows it with accuracy and respect. But we also come to The Pitt because these are characters we’ve now come to know, and they’re in situations we want to see play out. And if that comes at a risk of potentially crossing some lines in the workplace, well, its the characters who are going to have to deal with it, and not us.
Amidst all the real-time medical drama that The Pitt has thrown at viewers in season 2, the show’s writers have also managed to work in a couple character-driven subplots as well. First and foremost, we know the this entire day takes place on Dr. Robby’s (Noah Wyle) last day at work before he goes off on a three-month sabbatical. As viewers of season 1, we know all about Robby’s past battles with mental illness and depression, and many of his friends in the show seem to be equally concerned with him, including Dr. Abbot (Shawn Hatosy).
We’ve also seen through subtext that Robby is particularly pleased with and proud of now-officially-a-doctor Whitaker (Gerran Howell), although he recently learned some new information about his young protégé: He’s been spending a lot of time hanging around at the farm and home of the widow of one of the burn patients he cared for last year. We don’t know if Whitaker and the widow have anything romantic going on—and neither does Robby—but it’s enough that he feels the need to talk to the young doctor and make sure he keeps things on the straight and narrow.
But Robby really likes Whitaker, clearly. And so he also winds up asking him to house-sit for him, an offer Whitaker graciously accepts. And then Robby says if he doesn’t come back (????) that he could have a great bachelor pad on his hands. While we don’t like the sound of that, we did ultimately enjoy the scene and exchange between these two men.
But what is to make of a conversation like this? We’re wondering not only if Whitaker is crossing a line in his personal relationships, but if Robby himself is crossing a line by bringing Whitaker so intimately into his own personal life.
