‘The Pitt’ Aftershow: Noah Wyle & Team Talk Robby’s Romance and More (VIDEO)

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Season 2 Episode 2, “8:00 AM.”]

“Noelle and I don’t like to share what’s going on behind closed doors very much,” Noah Wyle half-jokes of Robby and his new love interest, a nurse who is also the case manager, played by Meta Golding. The Pitt‘s January 15 episode offers a tease of their relationship.

The two cross paths professionally in this episode when a patient’s insurance won’t pay for his surgery at PTMC, and he must be transferred to another hospital. McKay (Fiona Dourif), witness to their exchange, senses that something else is going on, and after she walks away, Robby notes that she has a heightened sense of empathy, meaning she’s good at picking up on stuff. But he assures Noelle he hasn’t said anything, and she checks he’s still planning to leave that night for his sabbatical. He is, and says he’ll find her before he leaves.

That relationship speaks to Robby’s mindset this season, Noah Wyle tells TV Insider as part of our Post-Op: The Pitt Aftershow. Watch the full video above.

“One of the ways to show that the character is having a difficult time making connections that are lasting is to show that he’s engaged in relationships that are really finite, almost intentionally finite, that he goes into them with the expectation that they will be finite or at arm’s length,” Wyle explains. “So, he’s been having this lovely experience with someone who works at the hospital, and it’s all very grown-up and adult and understood that there’s no expectations and lots of freedom. But it’s a way of underscoring that the character’s having a difficult time attaching.”

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Elsewhere in the episode, Langdon’s (Patrick Ball) first shift back after rehab continues, with King (Taylor Dearden) pretty much the only one excited to see him. After she’s knocked over by a patient fleeing the police, he checks on her and tells her about being in rehab and his addiction to benzos. He admits he didn’t handle things the way he should have and let a lot of people down, apologizing to her. She says he didn’t let her down, but he corrects her: He did, and he should be setting an example, not being a cautionary tale.

“Coming back into the workspace after having been caught out, stealing drugs and not being OK, I think there’s a lot of shame and a lot of self-doubt,” Ball says. “I think he’s trying his best to make amends and to not continue asking of people. I think it’s hard to look Mel in the eye. I think it’s hard to look Dana [Katherine LaNasa] in the eye and look these people that I think Langdon identified as being a role model or strove to be a role model to someone like Mel. And I think it’s clear that he wasn’t up for the job.”

As for how King feels, Dearden points out that she only knew Langdon for one day 10 months ago. “At no point during that day did Mel ever feel neglected by him or that he wasn’t the doctor he should have been,” she adds.

Someone who definitely isn’t happy to see Langdon back is Santos (Isa Briones), who was the one to notice things were off with Langdon before it was revealed that he was stealing pills. To say he didn’t treat her well on what was her first day is an understatement. Now, in this episode, she’s actively avoiding him. And according to Briones, Santos also wasn’t prepared to see him because she didn’t know he was coming back.

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“I think the day that it happens is like, ‘Oh, here it is. Here’s the day that I was hoping would never come,'” Briones explains. And so I think you’re watching her in real time, trying to figure out what she wants from this. And I think that’s why she immediately is like, ‘I’m going to go this way. I’m going to leave the situation. I’m going to avoid him,’ because it’s bringing up a bunch of anxiety that has lingered for the past 10 months, because she’s very strong and she masks a lot of pain, but it was her first day. And he really dressed her down in such an aggressive way that is hard for anyone to not let affect them in their confidence.”

The star also points out that some people in the hospital may not know why he was gone and just that she was involved. “As we’ve seen in the world, when a woman is right about something and kind of tells the truth about a man who is beloved, a lot of people do not accept that and do not necessarily respect when a woman blows the whistle on something,” Briones says. “So I think she’s dealt with a lot of animosity in the workplace, and now this is just bringing it all to the forefront on this day of bringing back her first day of being a doctor, and it being so terrible.”

Plus, watch the full aftershow video above for Noah Wyle, Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Isa Briones, Taylor Dearden, Shabana Azeez, Sepideh Moafi, and executive producer R. Scott Gemmill breaking down the episode.

The Pitt, Thursdays, 9/8c, HBO Max