Review: The Pitt, "7:00 PM" | Season 2, Episode 13

“Nobody knows. Who needs to know? Who gives a fuck?”

Giving Robby mommy issues is not breaking the wheel. It is probably easier to name TV protagonists who don’t require therapy to discuss their parents than those who do. But what made me gasp was how this revelation came out, followed by Robby letting slip to Dana the real reason he fears leaving: “What if I don’t come back?” Like Dana, my jaw dropped because he finally admitted to what the PTMC staff and the Pitt audience have been speculating about Robby's trip all season. Dana got the last word in the previous face-off, but she has zero comeback before the credits hit.  Having Robby lay himself bare like this is destabilizing and his response after he tells Dana this dark secret is to deflect to something more immediately shocking. The revelatory one-two punch illustrates how The Pitt has effectively drip-fed information about Robby's personal life. He doesn’t think it matters to his job that his mother abandoned him, but his inability to leave is rooted in this experience.

I was also too quick to call Robby and Dana's previous confrontation the main event between them, because it was just part of the warm-up. New beats and disclosures avoid these conflicts from becoming repetitive. Another crucial element is keeping these heated conversations on the move. By this point, we know every inch of the hospital set, and momentum is crucial to The Pitt’s pacing and visual aesthetic. Director Damian Marcano ensures we aren’t seeing Robby and Dana get into it in the same spot twice, and the background activity differs. The material also builds on friction from Robby's previous thorny one-on-ones, and his speech to Mohan about shutting everything out when she is at work reads differently in this context. While Robby has referenced being raised by his grandmother (including with Whitaker last season), I assumed that his parents had died. Not even Dana knew this nugget about his mother leaving (nor do we know at what age).  

Last year, the thirteenth hour also culminated in Robby hitting a breaking point. Then, Robby’s tears sprang like an exploding dam. Ten months later, he wrestles between spiky emotions and bitter indifference, a sign of his compassion fatigue. Robby has lost his filter. Of all the outbursts this week, it isn’t the way he angrily slams his travel mug down that is the most shocking. No, it is his casual speculation in a public area that Mr. Diaz tried to kill himself just as Mrs. Diaz is exiting the trauma room. It is only thanks to Dana’s quick thinking that Robby doesn’t say something he would regret. Much to Robby’s chagrin, Dana later compares him to one of her kids, and she is right to do so because his snappy retorts are juvenile.