‘The Pitt’ Team Talks Chaotic Episode, Langdon’s Return, and More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Season 1 Episode 12 “6:00 P.M.”]

“In a certain way, [Episode] 12 is just chaos from start to finish,” director Amanda Marsalis says.

It certainly comes across that way onscreen. The Pitt Season 1 Episode 12 begins the absolute madness that is the emergency department dealing with an onslaught of patients after a shooting at the musical festival Pitfest. And in doing so, it continues to firmly establish itself as the best show of 2025. Most concerning? Robby (Noah Wyle) can’t reach his stepson Jake (Taj Speights), who’s at the event with his girlfriend (who took the doc’s ticket).

In general on The Pitt, “We shoot pretty much 92 percent in order,” Marsalis (who will return to direct in Season 2) tells TV Insider. “We shoot so quickly that so much of the show is just about performance. The prep for 112 was really intense. There’s a lot of your directing that’s very, very technical. When we’re going to look this direction, what’s going to happen then? Are we doing VFX blood? Are we doing real blood? How long is the reset on the blood? But then in the end, you have to make sure that we’re all feeling what the story is. You have to, as a director, make sure that you’re in your feelings and paying attention to your actors’ performances so that we all care in the end about this insane experience that they’re all going to have. It’s rough and it’s crazy, but we really mapped out where every single patient was going to be and when they would be moved and who you’re going to see in the background.”

She calls Episode 12 the most challenging to direct (her fourth of the season). There was keeping the patients and which zones (based on how critical) they were sent to and how much blood was on them. “The photos of the floor of the set, I kept coming to work and going, ‘I think we broke the set’ because there was so much blood everywhere. At a certain point I was like, ‘I don’t know where we’re going to get this clean,'” she admits.

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“When [Episode] 12 hits, it’s like an entirely different show,” says Patrick Ball, who plays Langdon, who returns to help though Robby sent him home after realizing he’s an addict and has been stealing patients’ pills. “Kudos to [showrunner] Scott Gemmill. So much of the genius of what he’s done with how he has built this season and how he’s sort of set up — I watched the first two episodes and I was like, ‘Man, I love this show. This is great. How cool that I get to be part of this show?’ And then every episode that comes out changes my mind as far as what this show is. And every episode that comes out, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, this is my new favorite episode. This is awesome.'”

But having all the patients after the shooting, “that’s where I’m happiest,” according to Ball, speaking as his character. “I like to not think. I just go on instinct. There’s nowhere else I would rather be. I love this job. This is where I’m my happiest. This is where I’m most at home. I like to move fast and help other people, not so good at helping myself, really not so good at sitting still with what is happening in my own body.”

For Langdon, it’s easier to jump into this chaos than it is to go home and face his family and admit he was fired. But, Ball points out, “There’s a lot of questions that still remain unanswered as far as what this means long-term. And I don’t really ask for permission. I just sort of come in and do it. And so there’s a lot of conversations yet to be had. So fingers crossed it goes well.”

Robby does tell Langdon he shouldn’t be there, but there isn’t time for more than a very short conversation with all the patients in the ED. Perhaps this is one way he can earn back Robby’s trust. That is a hope for Langdon, but Ball adds, “First and foremost, I’m doing what needs to be done. Trust or no trust, fired or not fired. I am the best doctor you got and you need me on the floor, and that’s where I’m going to be because there are lives that need to be saved. And so that’s the first priority. And then we’ll deal with me later.”

Marsalis echoes that. “No one in that episode actually has time for feelings. They have those micro moments of feelings, and then they have to save people’s lives.” And that’s true of Robby in that moment with Langdon: “He can’t let him go, but he’s gotta be pissed and then he’s got to just get rid of those feelings.”

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There is one person happy to see Langdon again: King (Taylor Dearden), who also really steps up in this episode. “Kudos to Taylor. She’s brought a lot to the role,” shares Ball. “I think Langdon sees pretty quickly that she’s got the right stuff, she sees the world the right way, she sees the job the right way. She has the ability to compartmentalize. She has the ability to identify what her job is. You’re not here to be a best friend. You’re not here to be a caretaker. You’re here to be a doctor. You’re here to keep this person from dying. Mel really has the ability to do that just as a product of how she is internally organized. Coming in, she doesn’t quite understand the extent and value of her own superpower, and I think she just needs to be given a little encouragement and learn to trust herself a little bit more. She’s got what it takes, and I think Langdon sees that pretty straight off.”

Also showing up to help is Abbott (Shawn Hatosy), who handed off his patients to Robby at the end of his shift in the first episode. “I had some idea of who Abbott was, but I didn’t fully comprehend his importance to the hospital and his position there, so it was scary, coming in and having to dole out a protocol to this cast of people who have been there working together for, I don’t know, seven months,” admits Hatosy.

“But it was amazing. There’s just the process of this show. There’s no acting class or kind of, like, theater conservatory that can prepare you for the kind of work we do,” he continues. “The stakes are so high for our characters, but they’re also really intense and high for us as actors because there will be a shot that’s designed [as] a continuous shot where you have all of the departments working together and there’s hundreds of people and you are having to say a [medical term] and you just hope you don’t screw it up because if you do, the resets are a big deal and everything has just got to be perfect. So it really does provide a rush of adrenaline working on the show. The authenticity makes it feel like you’re really there. So the acting becomes kind of second nature.”

It becomes quite clear that Abbott thrives in that environment; he has quite the go bag and he does have his combat medicine experience to fall back on. “There’s a moment on the roof in the first episode where Abbott says, ‘I’m not sure why I keep coming back here,'” Hatosy recalls. “And I believe these kind of events are what keeps him back because he has such a knack and talent for it, which not a lot of people do, and there is something incredibly comforting, even though it’s a really difficult job, about knowing your place. That’s why he thrives.”

In fact, at one point, after the doctors start donating blood, Abbott is doing so while treating patients. But of course he is. And that was Hatosy’s reaction, too. “I loved the character right away. I loved everything about him, but when I saw [that], I was like, ‘Oh my God, this is my man. I love him,'” he says.

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When Abbott shows up, Robby is so happy to see him, he greets him with a hug. It feels like there’s an understanding between these two doctors that there isn’t between anyone else on the staff. Hatosy agrees. “There’s such a mutual respect and I don’t think that we’ve been able to see Robby have that with anybody on the staff. And he’s clearly at a breaking point in that he’s losing residents left and right, so to know that Abbott, who has experience, shows up is just a relief to him,” he says.

“And I think the character of Robby is drawn so well. He is so many things to this emergency department. He’s the leader, he’s the teacher, he’s the father,” he continues. “He’s being pulled in these different directions and they’ve kind of layered in these moments of flashbacks where we see that he might crack. And it’s just nice to have somebody there that can sort of maybe help him rather than him helping everybody else.”

It is clear that The Pitt is building to a breakdown for Robby. Hatosy says Abbott’s not aware of how close he is — yet. “As the episodes unfold and once we get into [Episode] 13 and some of the things that occur, Abbott sees a little bit of combat fatigue and steps in,” he previews.

As the director, Marsalis is there to support that arc for Wyle. “Robby’s job is to make sure that everyone is doing their job, so he, in a certain way, always has to get rid of his emotions,” she notes, pointing to his speech in Episode 9 after they lose the little girl who drowned. (She also says that she’d want him to be her doctor.) Now, in Episode 12, “he has to stay calm. He has to be a leader who’s like, ‘Don’t worry, everybody, we’ve got this.'”

Looking ahead, she teases “more chaos” to come with this mass casualty event far from over.

In general, Marsalis says it’s an honor to be part of shining a light on those in the medical profession. She adds, “I’m honored to be on a show that we worked so hard to make sure that everything was medically correct. Friends of mine will call me and say, ‘My dad’s an ER doctor. He ran an ER for 30 years, and he just wants to know it’s the most medically accurate show.’ They feel seen. The amount of feedback I personally get from people who are in the medical profession, and that’s just me. I’m not Noah, I’m not John Wells, I’m not Scott. It’s really beautiful.”

The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, Max