‘The Pitt’: Noah Wyle on Robby’s Recovery After Breakdown, Plus Fiona Dourif on Working With Her Dad

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Season 1 Episode 14 “8:00 P.M.”]

The emergency department is losing staff members left and right! First, Robby (Noah Wyle) sends Langdon (Patrick Ball) home after realizing he’s an addict and has been stealing patients’ pills (Langdon comes back to help during the mass casualty event of a shooter at Pittfest). Then, he sends Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) home after learning she had a miscarriage at work. He tries to extend the same courtesy to Dana (Katherine LaNasa) after she is punched by a patient, but she stays with the shooting victims coming in. Now, McKay (Fiona Dourif), after drilling a hole in her ankle monitor when it was going off was interrupting patient care, is arrested!

“It was remembering former times. I like it. I thought it was dramatic and unfair and felt like the end of a good arc. I also was a s**tty teenager and have the experience of being arrested, and it’s so embarrassing,” Dourif recalls to TV Insider. “That’s what I remember at this point from 25 years ago, the injustice and humiliation.”

Still, McKay doesn’t regret drilling into her ankle monitor, the star says. “Your role in the hospital is to do your best, given the circumstances that are thrown at you, and especially during the mass casualty, you are overwhelmed, and it’s one foot in front of the other, and she did what she had to do, and it was a little bit satisfying in the middle there,” Dourif explains.

When the episode picks up, Robby is sitting on the floor in the makeshift morgue, crying, in the middle of his breakdown. Whitaker (Gerran Howell) — it’s still his first day, remember the entire season is one shift! — finds him and forces him to get up. “You have to because if you don’t, we’re f**ked,” he tells his boss.

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Wyle admits that they spent a lot of time thinking about “who would be the most appropriate” person to find Robby. “As we got into those what I call the later rounds, I’m always interested in polarities, in things that represent dichotomies or opposite ends of an emotional or experiential spectrum. So, in that moment, when you’ve got a senior doctor who you’ve invested all of this trust and empathy in, and you recognize him for being an expert at what he does and extremely capable, when that character goes down, you almost want to see what the opposite end of that spectrum would look like when it walked in the door and found it, which makes Whitaker is the obvious choice.”

Robby’s breakdown came after he was unable to save his stepson Jake’s (Taj Speights) girlfriend Leah, who was shot at Pittfest — after taking the ticket that was originally the doc’s. It was after Jake asked why he couldn’t save her that Robby began breaking down and pushed him out of the room. In Episode 14, he avoids Jake, who’s still being treated for his own injuries sustained during the shooting. Langdon, however, does check on him, and while Robby may not want him working as a doctor right now or trust him after what he did, he’s not upset that he goes over to Jake.

“Like many relationships in life, it’s complicated. I think that in one way, as much as he resents Langdon coming back, he’s very appreciative he came back, he recognizes that he needs his hands and his skills at this moment, even if it’s potentially a liability issue and could come back and really blow up on his watch,” explains Wyle. “Similarly, I think he’s sort of hoping that Langdon can communicate to Jake in a way that he can’t in that moment, and sometimes you’re grateful for a proxy in that situation. So I remember thinking in that moment, ‘Oh, I’m not jealous of this. I hope he’s able to get through to him and give him some comfort where I can’t.'”

Says Ball, “On an immediate level, Jake is family. He’s like a little brother to me. And I think Langdon likes being an older brother. I think it’s just how he’s built. There’s not much to say in a situation like this. Sometimes all you can do is be there and let somebody know that they’re not alone and know that they’re probably in this moment of wanting to blame everything and everyone around them. All you can do is understand the pain and try to just gently encourage them to not burn their life down.”

He also calls that “a moment of awareness and regret” for his character, adding, “Robby’s not a bad guy, even in this moment as he’s threatening to let me out to pasture. I know on some level that he’s making the same call that I would make.”

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Robby returns to work, which shouldn’t be surprising, according to Wyle. “Most of the people that do this for a living prefer to bury themselves in work. As traumatic as work seems to us laymen, it’s actually a place where they are extremely comfortable and competent and confident in their skills. And I think that much like after Collins’s miscarriage or Dana getting punched, everybody’s had the opportunity to go home and what’s waiting for you at home is reflection on what you’ve just been through and that is sometimes not easy to dive right into. It’s easier to just extend your shift and be around and in the company of people who understand and have a sense of empathy for what you’re going through.”

That being said, he does have two key moments where he can’t keep his emotions under control in this episode. First is while dealing with administrator Gloria (Michael Hyatt) about the shooter (who at the time is thought to be the teen whose mother was worried about what he’d do after finding a list of girls), then with the parents of an unvaccinated kid with measles when they don’t want the medical treatment suggested.

“The breakdown doesn’t do anything other than shine a big spotlight on how deep the problem is. This is going to be a very long road to recovery and it will not begin tonight. So I just remember as we sort of arced this out and we have two more episodes to get to the finale, [it was], how do you keep this sense of heavy emotional toll and need to compartmentalize after you’ve just scared the s**t out of yourself because you realize that you have no control? Watching that come out in odd ways, watching his temper flare, watching his behavior be noticeable to everybody else around him seemed like a really appropriate way of following through after that meltdown.”

Everyone is noticing what’s going on with Robby at this point, including Abbot (Shawn Hatosy), the night shift attending who came in on his day off to help with the shooting victims. He’s the one to suggest to Robby that he go outside to check on triage after he blows up at Gloria.

“That’s his moment of saying, ‘I see a soldier here in need. I’ve seen it before. Go get some air. Get your s**t together, man.’ That’s his, ‘Get your s**t together, man’ moment,” Hatosy tells us. “And I remember shooting it and sort of trying the best I could without saying those words, ‘Get your s**t together, soldier, ‘ in the very few words that we had to sort of pull that together.”

Elsewhere in the episode, McKay’s father stops by to pick up her son amidst the chaos — and is played by none other than Fiona Dourif’s own dad, Brad Dourif!

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“It was very sweet when they approached me about it. They needed somebody to come in to pick up my son, and I think Noah’s watched my dad’s work for a long time and had talked to me about it,” shares Fiona. “And so when they asked me, I was overjoyed and I called my dad and he was really excited and plus I got to hang out with him. He’s really fun, my dad, he’s like a good hang. So it felt very tender in real life for both me and my father.”

It’s a nice moment for McKay to have with her father — and Fiona as well. “It was towards the end of everything going on, and there was a moment in the scene where my dad turns to me and says, ‘I’m really proud of you,’ and in real life, it felt like we really had this sort of moment together that felt very resonant,” she recalls. “It is very special and also felt like we were wrapping up what was the longest day of my career.”

Meanwhile, Abbot has Mohan do a procedure on a procedure and after tells her to take the win — and it was too risky for him to do himself. Yes, he would’ve done it himself, according to Hatosy, and in fact, that was his character’s way of flirting!

“I think he’s kind of, in his own weird and “I’m not trying to be creepy” way, flirting in the only way that he can. I think he actually has a ton of respect for Dr. Mohan,” he explains. “There was a scene — I’m not sure if it made it, I don’t think it did — in the first episode where somebody says something about her and he comes out and says, ‘She’s the smartest one here.’ And I think he has such respect for her. So like I said, I think it was his way of just kinda trying to keep it warm there with her.”

What did you think of the penultimate episode of the season? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Pitt, Season 1 Finale, Thursday, April 10, 9/8c, Max

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