If the Scrubs Fit

On ER, Noah Wyle was a prime-time TV star. Now, he's just happy to be part of the company.

- By ROXANA HADADI

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, was forced to fire a trusted colleague, has watched numerous people 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. Robby, who previously strode from patient to trainee with unassailable empathy and decisiveness, looks lost. He was supposed to attend the festival with his ex's son, and he hasn't heard from the 17-year-old. His face, so often calm and ready, crumples in despair. Things aren't going to be okay. It’s a hell of a way to end an episode of a series that has, to this point, won over audiences with the familiar assured smile of a former ER star and the idea that health care is a human right, not a profit generator.

“What you're seeing is the water level in his eyes. He’s almost going under,” Wyle says. “We gave the press the first ten episodes. Everybody's enjoying this train ride. I'm the only one that knows we take this train over a cliff.”

There are always medical procedurals on TV. Each of the big-four networks currently has at least one. The Pitt is Max’s, the product of a brain trust that worked on the juggernaut ER and includes Wyle (also an executive producer and writer on the show), creator R. Scott Gemmill, and executive producer John Wells. The Pitt has the hallmarks of an old-school television hit: It follows a weekly release model instead of streaming’s more customary binge. It mirrors the structure of the popular early-aughts show