Skip to content

'The Pitt' Season 2 finale goes all-Robby, all-the-time mode

Noah Wyle shines in an episode that goes heavy on the main character, before two supporting players get a surprise mid-credits spotlight

'The Pitt' Season 2 finale goes all-Robby, all-the-time mode

A review of The Pitt Season Two finale — with spoilers — coming up just as soon as we do primal scream karaoke therapy...

SPONSORED

This weekend is your last chance to get $20 off your first year's annual subscription to What's Alan Watching?, to read all of my reviews and recaps.

Get The Pitt Crew discount now!

Season One of The Pitt began and ended with neat bookends: Robby walks towards the hospital listening to music on his earbuds, and Robby walks away from the hospital listening to music on his earbuds. Season Two opts for a different approach. Though Duke has repaired Robby's damaged motorcycle, we don't conclude with Robby climbing back on the thing and heading off for parts unknown, to mirror the sequence of him riding it to work in this season's premiere. Instead, our last glimpse of Dr. Robby until next year is him in the pediatrics room, holding Baby Jane Doe in his arms, rocking her back and forth, assuring her, "It's gonna be okay. It's okay." 

The Pitt recap, Season 2, Episode 14: ‘8:00 P.M.’
Robby says what’s on his mind, Langdon does a risky procedure, and Al-Hashimi opens up in the season’s penultimate hour

Concluding with Robby on the bike would answer a question that neither he nor the show is quite ready to resolve yet. He has spent these last few episodes finally opening up to a few people about the extent of his impulses towards self-harm, as well as his difficulty both working at the hospital and being literally anywhere else in his life. His reassuring words to the baby — which compare her abandonment as an infant to him being left by his mother when he was eight — feel like he's trying to convince himself as much as her that things are going to be okay. And we know Noah Wyle will still be the star of this show when Season Three begins. So it's not really a Lady or the Tiger ending. But the emotional hole Robby has dug for himself is so deep that it wouldn't feel right to end the season either with, say, Robby deciding to walk home instead of riding, or borrowing somebody's helmet, or any more overt indication that he's decided to avoid giving into his suicidal ideation. 

This isn't even the year's final scene, though you could argue that the mid-credits glimpse of Santos and Mel drunkenly tearing their way through "You Oughta Know" at karaoke is more of an Easter Egg for fans than a genuine part of the season. (Among other things, it breaks the show's usual rules about where we do and don't see our characters, though there's more of that with Langdon; see below.)