In The Pitt Season 1, Robby is “a drowning man that doesn’t know he’s drowning yet,” says star and executive producer (and writer and director) Noah Wyle. “At the end of it, he recognizes the need for a life preserver. He’s still got a long way to swim to shore though.”

Noah Wyle is having a nightmare of a day on The Pitt. His character, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, has been plagued with knee-buckling COVID flashbacks, forced to fire a trusted colleague, watched numerous children die, and continues to butt heads with a hospital administrator obsessed with patient-satisfaction scores. In the episode “6:00 P.M.,” everything gets worse in a typically American way: There’s an active shooter at a nearby music festival, and the ER Robby oversees is bombarded.