'The Pitt' Finale: You Oughtta Know

I’m not particularly interested in awards, but if the rest of the season didn’t already seal it, Noah Wyle is going home with another Emmy after this finale, along with a supporting award for Shawn Hatosy (so deserved after his long, mostly thankless career), a supporting nod for Patrick Ball, and another win for Katherine LaNasa, who’ll have to beat out Sepideh Moafi. And Taylor Dearden and Isa Briones should probably get some sort of honorary Grammy for their Alanis Morissette duet.

What a stacked cast. What a great show. What an outstanding finale.

Not that the finale resolved anything, really. Dr. Robby is still burdened with the weight of his job and more deaths than he cares to remember, but we can at least put aside any notion that Noah Wyle won’t return for a third season (a preposterous thought, for sure). He still has not — as Dr. Abbott has — vanquished his demons, but I think he can at least name them now. That’s a start.

I’m not so sure about Dr. Al-Hashimi’s fate. In my mind, I was pleading for Dr. Robby to cut her some slack even as I knew that doing so would be the wrong thing to do. A five-second seizure is not nothing when you’ve got a patient’s life in your hands, but good God, what a loss. For her. For the hospital. For healthcare. I had my doubts about her at first — we all did — but she proved herself an exceptional doctor devoted to her patients, which is exactly why she probably confessed her disorder to Robby. Because he would do the thing she couldn’t bring herself to do, which is boot her from the ER.

Dr. Robby and Langdon also finally had their talk, although it probably wasn’t what we were expecting. There were no bro hugs and apologies. Langdon read Robby the riot act. And Robby deserved every bit of it. Even Dr. Robby has to know his “You’re welcome” for the tough love rang hollow.

Dr. Mohan’s farewell also felt more true-to-life than true-to-television, to its credit. Her final conversation with Robby was nice, but not too nice. There are still some raw feelings there. She still resents him. He still thinks he’s right. And he may be — but there are better ways to express it.

Nurse Dana, meanwhile, did get that final convo with Robby. That also felt right. If there were a post-mortem after every shift, she’d never have time to sleep, get up, and do it all over again. It was a tough day for her. But it feels like that’s mostly par for the course.

I wonder, too, if Robby regretted insisting that Whittaker set those boundaries after seeing him drive away with his dead patient’s wife and baby. Maybe Whittaker has boundary issues. Or maybe outside of the hospital, Whittaker has the most functional life of all of them.

Javadi is not going anywhere; she’ll be back in emergency psychiatry, which is right where she belongs — still killing it in the hospital, but out of the shadow of her parents. Good for her. Meanwhile, Santos got a little sleep, a little primal scream therapy, and maybe even a friend in Dr. Mel, who so needed one after realizing that the rest of her life may no longer be defined by her relationship to her sister.

A mom and her baby were also saved. What more could you ask for — though no doubt the mom will probably bring a suit against the hospital for the C-section. Ain’t that America?

All in all, a great ending to the second season. The Pitt left some storylines dangling but still managed to end the day with the necessary amount of closure. What else could you ask for in a finale, except an immediate announcement of a night-shift spin-off.