Newsletter #6 I am kind of over Dr. Robinavitches shit

Helloooo

Welcome back friends :) I realized something I am ashamed to admit. The last 3 newsletters and maybe all of them contained stories about sad men. Why? I don’t know but I will stop, it’s been enough I think.

I pledge to here on out only focus on sad women and nonbinary folk.

I have to be honest: I'm not super happy with the ending of the second season of The Pitt. The season ends with an idea of hope and new life. There's a scene where Dr. Robby, the main character, is holding an abandoned baby. Behind him, a mural creates a kind of halo, it looks very much like Jesus, risen again, reborn, survived. You'd think this is a good ending, that it's nothing but positive, especially within the story, because he has been through so much in his life.

But honestly: I was actually hoping for an escalation at the end of this season. As someone who keeps everything bottled up, Dr. Robby spends the entire season struggling against his own mental health. The contrast with season one is drastic. This season opens with him on his motorcycle, on his way to work, without a helmet. In the next shot you see that he does have the helmet with him, but that he just hasn't put it on. You immediately wonder how it's possible that a doctor who works in the emergency room doesn't wear his helmet.

In a way, this was already a major escalation. At the end of season one you could tell things weren't going great for him, but at the start of season two you think, or hope, that maybe things are getting better. But it's so clear that that's not the case. He's visibly exhausted at work, no longer finds any satisfaction in what he does, snaps at colleagues, is hypocritical, and is generally just not a pleasant person to be around.

Also unmistakable is that he's dealing with a mental health crisis. His colleagues, who have been working with him for 10+ years, can see that he's not doing well and keep asking: "But how are you really? How can I help you?". But at every attempt he dodges with either a joke or just evasions.

This is his last workday in the story. After this day he was supposed to go on a three-month trip, just him, his motorcycle, and total freedom. But the closer the end of the day gets, the clearer it becomes that he's not entirely sure whether he's actually going to come back. The trip starts to look less like a vacation and more like a very permanent goodbye.

I never hoped this would end with his funeral, but I did somewhere hope that it wouldn't be resolved so easily on an emotional level. Or well, resolved: we don't know whether any of this is resolved until season three.

Because for a man who so urgently needs help, there's also no accountability. By the end he has made his colleagues' lives miserable all day, he has shut someone out for a transgression last season hes tried amending for, he has made Dr. Al-Hashimi doubt her own profession, and he has left two doctors at the end questioning their careers. Yet by the end of the season it all seems kind of okay, because he's found new hope. And I don't entirely agree with that, it felt a little too easy.

I thought the big escalation moment would be his last interaction with Dr. Al-Hashimi. I genuinely thought this will be the big catharsis i have been waiting for. This is the only Doctor in the building with the same rank and none of the history. Someone to break through and confront the situation. But that’s not how the scene plays out and it left me feeling dissatisfied.

Dr. Al-Hashimi is incredibly composed throughout the entire season. She's calm, empathetic, and takes the time to explain things to her patients. But as she's written, the intention is that you don't really like her at the start of the season. You're stepping into a workplace with characters you already know, who have their own storylines. And she's the newcomer literally taking over Dr. Robby job while he is gone.

What makes her so interesting is that she's a kind of rigid counterpart to the loose style of Dr. Robby, who tries to be everyone's friend. She's not unempathetic and not unsympathetic either, but she is somewhat more distant.

At the end of season two, she and Dr. Robby have a confrontation about whether she's fit to lead the emergency department while he's on vacation. It completely spirals out of control. It's the first time you really see her break. What makes it so upsetting is that she had actually trusted him enough to approach him with something deeply personal. But nowhere in the season does he show enough empathy or safety to justify that trust. It's misplaced trust, and that is now painfully confirmed.

Over the last episode of season two: there's apparently a cut scene where Dr. Al-Hashimi sits in her car, and I think it should have been left in.

After that massive argument she sits in the car to drive home and breaks down in tears. The scene that was cut is her calling her ex-husband, talking to him, him asking how she's doing, and her asking whether he can watch the kid. It's not so much that that conversation itself would have been so important, it's more that there could have been a little more time to look at her emotional state. It moves so quickly back to how Dr. Robby is doing, and I really miss the resolution of Dr. Al-Hashimi’s storyline.

But mostly i just wanted the narrative to stop giving Dr. Robby so many passes. He’s not Jesus he’s just a man. And I'm kind of over his shit.