‘The Pitt’ recap: A Code Blue turns into Code Red for Dr. Robby and Nurse Dana

The ICE officers may be gone, but the tension is still high.

Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa
Warrick Page/HBO MaxThe ICE agents may have left the building, but the tension in the emergency department is still running at peak levels. While everyone’s trying to figure out where Jesse has been taken after he has been arrested, a Code Blue is called: a hospital worker has been assaulted. A patient has attacked new nurse Emma (Laëtitia Hollard), and luckily Dana (Katherine LaNasa) disarms him quickly with a shot of the sedative Versed she just happened to have in her pocket. But Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) is not happy that she has been carrying drugs — and the two friends finally blow up at each other. “Anyone else uses force to stop an assault they’re a hero,” Dana tells him. “But a nurse does it, and we’re punished.”

Their tense head-to-head continues throughout the episode, as they face off not just about the Emma incident, but also about his simmering issues with Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) — “Are you angry at him or are you angry at you?” Dana asks Robby — and his looming end-of-shift sabbatical. “How am I supposed to leave this place when it’s such a s–tshow?” he asks her. “First you can’t stay. Now you can’t go. Don’t be such a martyr,” she throws back at him. “This place is bigger than one person. It’ll survive without you.”

It’s clear the thin ice Robby has been standing on is cracking around him. He snaps at Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) when she recommends two attending physicians be on staff going forward (“It’s going to be your ED – so don’t f–k it up,” he tells her). At least he opens up a bit to his buddy, Duke (Jeff Kober), who has been waiting all hour for a CT scan. “You’re worried if you won’t leave tonight you won’t leave at all. I can feel it in the air; this place is like quicksand. I’m starting to feel like a hostage in this place,” says Duke. Responds Robby: “How do you think I feel?”

Meanwhile, Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) finally realizes she’s been bottling up her own feelings in a heartfelt one-on-one with Dr. Langdon: “I don’t remember the last time I cried. I’m not even sure I can anymore. … I’m a little scared I’ve shut [my feelings] down for so long I don’t know how to turn them back on again.” (“Do you need a hug?” asks Langdon. “God no,” responds McKay.)

Recognizing a kindred broken spirit, she tries to talk to Robby: “I’m getting a weird vibe from you.”

Dr. McKay, it’s not just you.

At least Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden) is spared Robby’s wrath. “There’s something about Mel that people just can’t really be super aggressive with,” she tells Gold Derby. “There does seem to be something about Mel that people just can’t hold that kind of aggression with her. They really can’t. And there’s more to come of Mel being soft spots for people, and even Robby has more soft spot moments with Mel. And it’s just an interesting idea of why Mel can escape that kind of stuff.”

Dearden theorizes that it’s Mel’s genuine earnestness — a rarity in the ED. “She always wants to do the best she can do at all times,” she says. “I think it’s hard to be mad at someone who’s constantly trying to be the best that they can for everyone else. She’s never trying to be the best for her. She doesn’t want a promotion; she doesn’t want the acknowledgement. She’s just constantly trying to get the best for her patients without other things getting in the way. And I think there’s something about how earnestly she she goes after that that is charming to people.”

We certainly see that in this episode, where she’s able to put aside her worries about the deposition and the revelation about Becca’s boyfriend to work with Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) to find a solution for the elderly couple to continue living at home. “I think she was born with that compassion, and her life circumstances only increased the fervency for her,” she says. “Mel’s parents both died when she and her sister were young — being an orphan at 23 is not how it’s supposed to go. So I think she’s always finding the need and fulfilling the need. She’s doing anything she can to keep everyone together and find ways around the system. Dr. Mohan is really good at and pushes to find ways around systems in order to care for her patients, so I think Mel’s getting some of that off of her, too.”

As for the confrontation with the patient that triggers Dana’s fight with Robby, Laetitia Hollard, aka nurse Emma, says that scene was actually part of her audition. “I think it’s really important that a show about a hospital shows that nurses do often get assaulted by patients, and hopefully it leads to a conversation about how we can help mitigate that,” she said on The Pitt‘s post-show podcast. “Most nurses I’ve talked to have had some sort of bad interaction, even verbal assault, or know someone who has.”

Emma brings out a rare soft side to the normally steely charge nurse. “[She’s] like a mirror for Dana who can see herself as a young nurse,” said Hollard. “Robby at one point says that you’re not that type of nurse anymore. Dana used to have a lot of care and go the extra mile and what makes it happen so that she stops doing that, and is that going to happen to Emma? … I think there’s a lot of interesting conversations that you get when you put us right next to each other.”

The post-show podcast also included Brandon Menendez Homer, who plays nurse Donnie, who talked about how his character has changed from the first season — and is now working with Dr. Langdon. “Having had that experience [of the mass casualty event], he comes back on fire to do more, to take on triage, to lighten the load for his team members,” he said. “And then here comes Patrick basically trying to become a part of the team and heal and repair. So for us both to have that collision course, I think it is in fact, the moment he shares that anecdote about being a father that brings him together and he gives him the green light of like, ‘OK, I know we need you from a professional lens, but I didn’t even know you had this emotional canvas to you.’ So that was really sort of exciting for me to find that with Patrick and find that shorthand because we didn’t have much season one at all.”