3 takeaways from 'The Pitt' season 2

"The Pitt," TV's most acclaimed drama, wrapped its second season Thursday. Here are three takeaways from both the finale and the sophomore season. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Robby's vision quest

This second season was the personal journey of Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle), by which I do not mean Dr. Trinity Santos' (Isa Briones) priceless put-down ("grand ego death spirit quest"), but rather the journey beginning before 7 a.m. on July 4, and ending just after 10 p.m. the same day. With lights dimmed and Baby Jane Doe swaddled in his arms, cradled against his shoulder, Robby ended this journey by telling her of "so many wonderful things to see and so many people to love ahead of you" (which he then repeated, for emphasis — or reassurance).

Robby's suicidal ideation — if it was ever that to begin with — all season seemed to take the form of a motorcycle, without helmet, high speed, out on some open road far to the west. But that closing scene left little doubt this chopper-based vision quest would have to wait. This was the purgation or catharsis we were all waiting for. Robby was abandoned by his own mother when he was 8, and Baby Jane Doe was abandoned by her own that very morning.

Call this a full-circle moment, except that it was also, perhaps, a foreshadowing one too: Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) had the first of her petit mal, or "absence," seizures early in the season when first attending to BJD. The last we saw of her Thursday was that wrenching scene behind the wheel of her car. Robby and Al-Hashimi have yet to go on their own journey together — maybe next season, when the Emergency Department of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center has two attendings, as she has requested? (Perhaps these two?)

Life, death, babies

We have to talk about that C-section — perhaps the most astonishing depiction of a live birth in prime-time history, assuming it was a depiction and not the real thing, or some magical made-for-TV combination thereof. From start to finish, the scene was a white-knuckle ride and as intense as anything in this series since episode 11 last season when another live birth took place (enacted, with a lot of silicone and prosthetics). Life and death in the balance, mother and child, with Robby and Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) performing one more miracle, together.

Everyone in the Emergency Department — or at least Charge Nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) and Robby's motorcycle Zen master Duke Ekins (veteran TV actor Jeff Kober, in a wonderful arc) — assumed the worst about Robby's intentions. As Robby confided to Abbot, "Every time you see a fellow human being die — and I've seen so many people die — I feel like it's leaching something from my soul." But all it took to bring Robby back from that dark place was ... life. By season's end, he had effectively embraced, along with Baby Jane Doe, the flip remark he'd cynically made in an earlier episode: "Amor fati," or embrace your fate, if not quite love it just yet.

Let's not forget that Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) — who had his own challenges this season — got in the last word: "You need help, Robby. You don't have to be honest with me. At least be honest with yourself." 

Real world, real problems

Last season was the mass shooting, while this season? Where to begin? Great TV series have great ambitions and "The Pitt" did not shirk any of those. We live in a New America circa 2026, and to many an unrecognizable one — of deportations, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cruelty just out of sight, except when it plays out in a large-city ED.

"The Pitt" got right up in the grill of this new world order this season: The kid who turns up missing two fingers from a fireworks accident, whose parents had been deported to Haiti, leaving his older sister to care for him; or the story of Orlando Diaz (William Guirola), admitted with diabetic ketoacidosis, who checks himself out to avoid bankrupting his family (then nearly dies). ICE made its appearance in episode 11, when an injured immigrant is brought to the ED, and Nurse Jesse Van Horn (Ned Brower) is cuffed then detained after he intervenes.

Amid all of its frenzy and tumult, "The Pitt" is mostly about those quieter beats where we're reminded of human frailty. We see ourselves on those gurneys, our lives in these lives. The genius of this show is to make you feel that union with your fellow humans — Robby and Orlando.