This story contains spoilers for the Season 2 finale of The Pitt, “9:00 PM.”
Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) has technically been off for most of July 4th, but he’s still managed to get shot, make the internet swoon, and save a woman and her unborn child. And he ended The Pitt’s season 2 shift by delivering a powerful and vulnerable heart-to-heart to his friend and colleague, Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), who was hanging on by a thread.
Shawn Hatosy’s collaborations with Pitt producer and director John Wells have spanned 20 years
and five series, but, in war veteran Abbot, the 50-year-old actor has found a character so appealing and charming that fans are clamoring for a night shift spinoff. Hatosy won an Emmy for season 1, and especially after his work in the Pitt’s season 2 finale, “9:00 P.M.,” he’s well on his way to making history as the first person to win back-to-back Emmys for the same role in the Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series category.
Despite his season 1 popularity, Hatosy didn’t appear in the sophomore installment until episode 7, when Abbot rushes into the ER with an injured officer, revealing that the night shift attending spends his days working as a SWAT team medic. Abbot and Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) rekindle their chemistry when she catches him trying to stitch up his own wound, firing up the shippers who coined the term “Mohabbot” back in season 1; then, as the night shift steps into action, Abbot realizes that there might be something deeper going on with Robby.
In the Wells-directed finale, the two senior doctors must join forces to perform a resuscitative hysterotomy, but the real bonding moment between them comes when Abbot corners Robby in a private space and is finally able to get his friend to open up.
“Want to know why I’ve never killed myself, after what I saw, lived through, losing my leg, losing my wife? Because it comes for all of us,” Abbot tells Robby, as both men get emotional. “We can’t let ourselves succumb to it. Yes, life can suck, it can be unbearable and brutal and ugly and heartbreaking, but it’s also beautiful and hilarious. That woman and her baby would both be in the morgue if you hadn’t been here. That’s what we’re here for.”
Robby says that he knows nothing in his life will ever matter more than what he’s done in the Pitt, but it’s also killing him. “I’ve seen so many people die that I feel like it’s leeching something from my soul,” he confesses. Abbot contends that Robby must find someone to “help you dance through the darkness,” because “you need this place as much as it needs you.”
Their heavy and healing chat is interrupted by word that a patient has come in with half of his face blown off. “How can you not love this place?” cracks Abbot. They embrace, and as they go their separate ways ahead of Robby’s trip, Abbot reminds Robby that he’s his emergency contact…and that he doesn’t want to be contacted.
“On this particular day, we’re seeing a different side of Abbot,” Hatosy says. “He’s had a long day, he got shot at, and now his best friend is clearly on this very self-destructive path, which is starting to fray his nerves a little bit — and we haven’t really seen that before.”
To examine the events of the Pitt finale, we spoke with Hatosy about diving deeper into Abbot and the night shift, as well as the “disappointing” departure of Surpriya Ganesh and Dr. Mohan.