Noah Wyle Has One Major Goal With The Pitt's Dr. Robby

This article contains discussions of mental health and mass violence.

There's been a lot of discourse, as of late, about the state of masculinity in our troubled times (if I may, I highly recommend reading Jessica Winter's New Yorker essay on the topic). As it turns out, Noah Wyle — the Emmy-winning star and executive producer of HBO's smash hit medical drama "The Pitt" — has his own goals when it comes to helping young men navigate increasingly tricky territory, and he did so through a storyline about, of all things, a mass shooting.

In season 1 of "The Pitt," Wyle's Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch meets a young man named David Saunders (Jackson Kelly), whose mother Theresa (Joanna Going), makes herself sick so that she can go to the ER and report her son for keeping a list of women he plans to potentially target. When a mass shooting occurs later in the season, David is a natural suspect ... but Robby handles him more gently than his colleagues. According to Wyle, this was a distinct choice, particularly because Robby goes through his own emotional journey in the season.

"It's really interesting for me to talk about what I was trying to do with Robby in a sense, which is to at least display a different form of masculinity on television," Wyle told Esquire, explaining Robby's surprising approach and his own larger mission of depicting the wide spectrum of masculinity. "He's a good, heroic, and complex guy. He's not perfect. He's got a temper. He's got some undealt-with pain. Ultimately, he's got to realize that compartmentalizing his feelings and suppressing them isn't any healthier than it is for David. There needs to be an avenue of release and a safe community for conversation and healing to take place."

I don't want to mince words here, and Noah Wyle doesn't either, but it still needs to be said: even though we find out that David isn't the shooter, it is deeply reprehensible and downright frightening that he's assembled a list of young women he potentially wants to hurt. Wyle, elsewhere in this interview, explained that even though David's feeling "misunderstood" is no excuse, it is, perhaps, an explanation.

"David is not feeling seen or heard, and he's slipping through the cracks. It triggers all sorts of paranoia and feelings of judgment and bias," Wyle mused, particularly speaking to the fact that Dr. Robby's colleague, Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif), takes a much harsher approach to the young man. "We wanted to play that out to have it be misunderstood that he was not actually responsible for this shooting, and yet still will be punished for what, in essence, is a thoughtcrime. In reality, it's cautionary behavior that needs to be addressed. It speaks to this very interesting place we're living in, where there is a problem and I'm not sure what the right remedy is."

Wyle also said that although David's anger seems apparent, he thinks it's actually sadness. "Most people at heart just feel a little heartbroken and don't know how to express that. And so we all go about getting attention however we do," Wyle said. "Sometimes it's positive, sometimes it's negative, but it's certainly attention, and you're certainly going to be seen and you're going to be heard one way or the other. That's what's at the root of it — everybody just wanted to be acknowledged. But man, it can go some pretty abhorrent ways if ignored."

I completely agree with Noah Wyle's take here, and I think what he's attempting to do by showing Dr. Robby's "version" of masculinity on "The Pitt" isn't just noble; it's necessary. Speaking to the fact that he's raising a son in his 20s, Wyle said, "I just think there used to be so many other ways for young men to be able to do this kind of stuff — improve their mettle and their manhood and test themselves and each other. And if they didn't, they weren't punished so thoroughly for their mistakes."

To be clear, Wyle's not making excuses for behavior like David's. Still, he stressed the importance of supporting young men enough so that they don't go down a similar road. After saying that all people need to be given chances, Wyle concluded, "We are all fallible. We are all trying to figure this out together. We should be allowed a little grace as we're growing up. To see everything so binary all the time has really become problematic for our world. Out of necessity, we have to appreciate complexity."

So what happens to David on "The Pitt?" His mother signs an order for him to get some extremely necessary help for his own mental health, and even though David seems angry, he eventually breaks down in tears, hit by the full magnitude of what he's done and the healing journey that lies ahead of him. In just 15 episodes, "The Pitt" presents several visions of modern masculinity, and as far as Dr. Robby's gentler and kinder approach to manliness, it does, to Wyle's credit, set an example that many non-fictional men could follow.

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.

If you have been impacted by incidents of mass violence, or are experiencing emotional distress related to incidents of mass violence, you can call or text Disaster Distress Helpline at 1-800-985-5990 for support.