Why Dr. Whitaker Was The Perfect Person To Help Dr. Robby

This article contains discussions of mental health and mass violence.

Stop reading right now if you haven’t watched “8:00 P.M.,” episode 14 of “The Pitt.” Spoilers ahead! 

In episode 13 of Max’s massively successful new medical drama “The Pitt” — which, I should make clear, is not merely a spin-off of “ER,” but its own unique thing — Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle, hits his limit. In one of the series’ roughest and most heartbreaking scenes to date (thanks to an absolutely stunning performance by Wyle), Robby brings his surrogate son Jake (Taj Speights) to see the body of Jake’s girlfriend Leah (Sloan Mannino), who was fatally wounded during a mass shooting at a local festival. Jake, overcome by grief, asks Robby why he didn’t or couldn’t save Leah, even though, as we know, Robby tried his hardest despite the fact that the young girl was shot in the heart. Robby starts crying and shaking, getting Jake out of the makeshift morgue (it’s actually the ER’s pediatric wing, making the whole thing sadder thanks to the murals of animals behind him) and has a panic attack on the floor next to the gurney that holds Leah’s body, and the episode ends.

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When the following episode, “8:00 P.M.,” kicks off, nobody can find Robby until fourth year medical student Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell) goes to the morgue to get a blanket for a living patient and finds him reciting the Shema, a Jewish prayer, in the fetal position. Instead of providing outright comfort, Whitaker does the exact thing that Robby needs: he tells the trauma attending that the rest of the doctors are “f**ked” without him working by their side and, after sitting with him for a moment, gets the blanket he came for and tells Robby he’ll see him back on the floor, calling him “captain.” This snaps Robby out of his severe panic attack and gets him back to work.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Howell and Wyle explained why it was so important that Whitaker be the one to find a struggling Robby. “It was an interesting conversation. Who’s gonna find Robby? It became so clear that it needed to be Whitaker,” Wyle told Emma Fraser in a Zoom interview with Howell. “Because you’re framing this experience between the youthful naivety of somebody coming into this environment for the first time and a very world-weary and battle-worn veteran who’s having the aggregate collapse of his entire career coming on his shoulders.”

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“It seemed perfectly appropriate to have these two characters meet up again this late in the season, after having had this lovely exchange early on, where I talk about needing to find balance,” Wyle added (and we’ll circle back to that “lovely exchange” in just a moment.)