When the team behind the medical ’90s drama “ER” started working on a new medical drama, “The Pitt,” also starring Noah Wyle but not meant to be a spinoff of that original series, they knew they needed to find a way to differentiate Wyle’s character from Dr. John Carter, that fresh-faced third-year medical student so many fell in love over the course of 12 seasons.
According to Wyle, who is an executive producer of the new show, that process began with a conversation with the creators, R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells. “Noah, where’s your family from?'” Wells asked, to which Wyle replied, “They’re Russian-Jewish.” That activated Wells, who said, “Well, what’s a name? What can we play with there? Would you want to play in that blood memory?”
Wyle shared that through his “Pitt” character Dr. Michael Robinavitch (an untraditional spelling of the common Jewish last name Rabinowicz, Rabinowitz or Rabinovitch), he was “interested in playing a guy who came from a way more blue-collar background” than his “ER” character, “and who hadn’t had any of those early opportunities, who came to medicine for completely different reasons.” While people don’t automatically associate Jewishness in this country with a blue-collar background, there are many Jews who do, in fact, work blue-collar jobs, especially in a city like Pittsburgh. Jewish doctors on TV, especially those deemed magnetic enough to play protagonists in shows like “Northern Exposure” and “Royal Pains,” don’t usually feel like they’re from a blue-collar background, and there’s something fresh and dare I say needed in this take on the “nice Jewish doctor” TV trope.
Wyle’ father, Stephen Wyle, an electrical engineer, came from a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, while his mother was Episcopalian. Faith didn’t play a particularly large part in his upbringing, but both his parents’ religious and cultural backgrounds were a part of his experience growing up, mostly through the holidays. “It was like a Chinese menu — one from Column A, one from Column B,” Wyle once recalled in an interview.
It’s that Jewish part of his background that inspired Dr. Robinavitch, who goes by Robby, at the Pittsburgh E.R. where he is a senior attending doctor at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital.
The entire first season of “The Pitt,” one of the best medical dramas I’ve ever seen, takes place during Robinavitch’s 15-hour shit at the ER on the 4th anniversary of a very traumatic day for him – the loss of his mentor in that same hospital. The show depicts how doctors deal with the lasting scars from the COVID-19 pandemic, as the echoes of that haunting death reverberate over and over in Robby’s mind through his shift.
It’s also a visceral, unvarnished and poignant depiction of that high-pressure work of first responders — we see bodies bleeding and broken, floors littered with the debris of life-saving work, the jarring experience of having to move between losing and saving lives, the stress of ensuring the ER remains high-rated and valuable while appeasing business interests in this for-profit medical system. We see the many faces of death as they come in the ER, fast and abrupt and impossible to grasp: young people dying from accidental overdoses, old people dying from the usual suspects that come with age. Yet, the patients are never just props for the interpersonal drama of the staff, with so many patients themselves dealing with heart wrenching situations, like a mother who feels like she’s drowning and a teen dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. Because of the way the show is structured, more “24” than “Grey’s Anatomy,” you get to feel the real stakes of what happens at the ER, and while there is some of that interpersonal intrigue, it unfolds slowly amid the fast-paced medical action.
All its many characters feel well-drawn and real: the socially awkward possibly autistic-coded second year resident, Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden), the 20-year-old prodigy medical student and daughter of two other hospital big-shots Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez), the overly cocky intern, Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones). Yet it’s Robby who is the beating heart of the show. He feels, inadvertently in some ways, like a rabbi, and not just because his last name is Robinavitch. He sports a bushy salt and pepper beard. He is usually wise and often patient, full of advice and reflection that’s both compassionate and learned and Pittsburgh tough. We see that kind of sagacious power when he helps a non-religious family find adequately spiritual ways to say goodbye to their father, or comforts a medical student coping with losing his first patient. But he, and we, are constantly aware of his flawed humanity. When he talks to that young med student, he tells him that, eventually, “You learn to live with it. You learn to accept it as much as your own mortality and find balance.”
“You found balance?” the med student asks hopefully.
“No, not even close,” Robby admits. “But you keep trying, which is all you can do.”
It’s that kind of advice that makes him feel like a Jewish leader, making it clear that he doesn’t have all the answers, guiding him to the more equipped experts (a social worker, in that case) when needed. And like another recent TV Jew, Adam Brody’s Rabbi Noah Roklov in “Nobody Wants This,” Wyle, quite dreamy in his “ER” days, is still a heartthrob, with that authoritative voice and chiseled cheekbones, a McDreamy, or rather, as Emily Gould dubbed him in this The Cut piece, “a McWeary,” suave and easy on the eyes but also authentically tired and run-down.
That weariness comes from working in the trenches during the pandemic, and continuing to do so every day, but if Robinavitch’s character is meant to draw on that ancient blood or genetic Jewish memory, there’s certainly another marrow-deep aspect to it too, a kind of weariness any Jewish viewer can relate to right now.
In the fourth episode of the show, Robby mentions his Jewishness in a conversation with charge nurse Dana Evans, who accidentally attributes a quote that comes from the Book of Luke to Shakespeare. The line, he tells her, should be attributed to “Luke, the disciple, who probably heard it from Paul, the apostle, but what do I know? I’m Jewish, it’s not my book.”
It feels like a casual, authentic way for the character to mention his roots without belaboring it. Dr. Robinavitch is one of around 50,000 Jews living in Pittsburgh, many in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood, and many, like him, highly educated, though a 2018 survey found that around a quarter of Pittsburgh Jews consider themselves “poor or just getting by.” The Jewish neighborhood gets mentioned when Robby’s son comes to visit him in the middle of his shift.
The ER may feel like its own world, apart from anything going on outside it, but city of Pittsburgh is very much a part of the show. An older patient worked on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” another talks about riding his bike in Frick Park, cultural events in the city make their way into the many stories that come wading in and out of the ER. Since the show deals with such dark chapters in recent history, like the pandemic, it’ll be interesting to see if it also will address the deadliest antisemitic attack that ever took place on U.S. soil. Could a Pittsburgh-based show with a Jewish protagonist get away with never mentioning the Tree of Life massacre that took place in Squirrel Hill? Especially with a character that is meant to draw on that historical blood memory?
We’ll have to wait and see the answer to that one, but in the meantime, it’s clear that Wyle’s Dr. Robby and “The Pitt” make for a fascinating, complex Jewish representation that’s impossible to look away from.
“The Pitt” is currently streaming on Max, with new episodes airing every Thursday at 9 p.m. ET.
