The Watch - Noah Wyle on the Season Finale of ‘The Pitt’ and the Show’s Unexpected Success

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Chris and Andy talk about the first episode of the new Jon Hamm show, ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ (12:48). Then they break down the season finale of ‘The Pitt’ and how this show hit the sweet spot between network and prestige TV (27:38) before they are joined by ‘Pitt’ star and executive producer Noah Wyle to talk about the making of Season 1 and honoring the medical community with the show (46:16). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Noah Wyle Producer: Kaya McMullen Video Production and Editing: Jon Jones Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the ringer.com, and joining me on the roof of the pit. It's Andy Greenwald. It's not just us up there today, buddy. No, man. What's going on, brother?

Do you want to tease what's happening on today's podcast? It's a special one. Joining us today on the watch, Noah Wiley. Dr. Robbie himself from the Pit is here. He's going to talk to us a little bit about the first season and especially the finale. He was a pleasure to speak with. Noah was like, he's just such a guy, kind and genuine and sincere person.

And it was just like immediately you could tell. Like, he was, he was a real one. It was awesome. And I also should say, you know, off air, I do have a little red patch on my back that I was concerned about. And he was really kind. Yeah.

Just take a quick look. He palpated a little bit, you know? A little bit of housekeeping. You can email us at TheWatch. At Spotify.com. Follow us on Instagram, the watchpod underscore. You can watch us on ringer dash TV. on YouTube, you can watch us also on Spotify.

I have a lot of stuff, like, just kind of news and notes at the top. We're also going to talk a little bit about your friends and neighbors a new show on Apple TV. Plus. Guess what? I feel like there's some connective tissue between the pit and your friends and neighbors that I'm excited to weave for you. It's all about me.

It's about me kind of just dribbling the ball of the court and just making sure you're set up in the spot you like. Here's the thing. Right before we hit record, we were joking about how we are entering the time of the offseason. Well, there's always an offseason. In whatever sports offseason it is. There's like a rash of videos of like Ben Simmons flexing and dunking in the gym,

be like Ben Simmons is going to be a problem this season. My version of that was yesterday, you know, where I was just crushing tape. I was just watching show after show after show. You tried to get out of it by asking me to get a beer. I did. I did. But then I felt like I was showing up for you regardless. So I just want you and our listeners to know.

It's not for me. You're not doing me emotional labor. Like, you get paid to do this podcast, right? I mean, it's an ongoing negotiation, but, you know, I believe it's showing up regardless. Okay. Yeah. I want to talk to you about something a little bit outside of our purview. Oh, okay.

You're just going to throw this to me. Okay. I mentioned this maybe at the end of last podcast, but I do think it's worth talking about. Okay. Which is the fact that a company called Colossus has reanimated direwoolves, long extinct. Oh, yeah, yeah, I did want to talk about this. And what this means for the Game of Thrones industrial content complex and also, you know, I mean, humanity, the fact that we can reanimate long, extinct animals. And also, like, I need to tell scientists something.

Yeah. I know you guys are... Do you want to talk to direct to camera? Right to you. I know you guys are under a little bit of fire right now, right? That's fair. So I'm not trying to pile on and far be it from me on an episode where we're all. also talking to Noah Wiley, who has made an entire television show that's trying to stress

the importance of objective medical fact, I'm not here to tell you guys how to do what you do. But if you are working at a company that's actively trying to reanimate dire wolves, and you're like, God, we got three of them. What a fucking huge win for us. And it's high fives and maybe you crack open a cold one. And somebody goes, hey man, what should we name these dire wolves? I don't think Romulus, Remus, and Colisei is the message you want to send. Because that makes it feel like you've got to lost the tail on the Dair Wolf already.

And then they're like, we've got a 3,000-acre farm. These Dyerwolves are just roaming. I'm like, this is how it starts, dog. It starts with Romulus and Remus and Colisi. This is how Jurassic Park starts. We're going to make a park is what they're saying. Okay, so a couple things. First of all, I really was surprised that of all the problems inherent in this,

naming rights was your big one? I just think it's like sometimes scientists like they dare they dare nature to punch back. I see. I thought you were saying that they should. And like you don't have to give this dire wolf like two mythical names and one name from Game of Thrones.

You would have preferred like Quicken.com No, just like Spot, Archie and Frank, you know? I want to unpack all those choices. I think you limit the possibility of of revolt. Of revolt.

When you keep it to like, ah, come on, like, let's domesticate these dire wolves. If Spartacus's name had been Jerry, yeah. Problem solved. Yeah.

You name him a sick name like Spartacus. Do you see what I'm saying? I do. It's kind of like, it's like, I think Elon does this a lot where he'll like get a product and then he's just like, it's the cyber truck or whatever. And it's like,

I don't know, you're pushing us towards Blade Runner too fast. I see. Pump the brakes. Yeah. I'm with you on all of your points. First thought. Best thought, has anyone checked on Mallory?

I haven't checked on her. I talked to her yesterday, but this didn't come up. Somehow this didn't come up. I've gone on a different... This is true, by the way. There's like you can... Now, also, I would say that there's a New York article about this. I think there's a bunch of other articles.

And then Slate wrote a, what's the problems with the Dyer Wolf Reanimation? They zagged. I'm waiting for someone to do the problems with the Direwolf reanimation discourse. Yeah. what everyone's getting wrong. About dire wolves? I didn't know those were real things, by the way. Dyerwolves?

I can't pretend that I did either. First of all, I do think that dire wolves have been really silent about the impact of some of Trump's recent executive actions. Oh, like, that's an excuse now. This is their first president. God. That's true. I'm going to segue in a way I was already going to.

It's the same way with my second child. But I've gone on a different journey with this because, you know, anyone who is a parent will relate to this that, like, you basically spend a day as a parent, like, running a light dustbuster through news and culture for anything you could potentially tell them. Oh, to like have something that, yeah, did you see Olivia Rodriguez did this? Right. And then often then six minutes later, it's just like, just the sounds of chewing, you know? So it's like, what else can we bring into this? So I was like, guys, funny story. You know science? class you don't like. Guess what those rascals have done now? Yeah.

And older daughter thought it was interesting. Thought the picture was cute. Younger daughter, at four in the morning, I can't sleep. Okay. Why? I was having no trouble. I can't sleep because of that thing you told me.

I'm like, about Olivia Rodriguez dating Louis Partridge? She's like, the wolves. Because she thought they were outside She was so upset I think just on a like a conceptual existential level that then I had to do a little more digging and you understand these are not actually reanimated direwolves right

They're like rearranged the DNA of gray wolves right Yeah first of I love how blaze we are about that Oh it's just another jerk off DNA rearranging Get back to me when you do something real pointexter It's it's not No yes they were just like What if these wolves had different colored fur And then they're like, look, everyone, it's Prometheus, the dire wolf.

Anyone have any notes? No, we're just going to leave it here. No one said where the island was either, right? Where? It's not an island, but like the park where they're keeping them. They're keeping it real quiet. I would imagine it's in Norway. You can imagine all you want, but they didn't say, you know, why.

Moudang. What's that mean? That guy got too popular. They don't want press and paparazzi coming to these dire wolves. I don't even, I mean, these guys have, like, more space than I could even dream to have. These wolves? Yeah. I know.

Do they how much we pay? How much we pay for square footage? Did you see Colossus's hit list for what's coming next? No. So apparently on their docket are the dodo bird, which is cute. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's, I feel like that could trend. I think we need to just worry about the birds we do have.

Like, because they're coming for us? Or because they're, like, you know, they get hunted. They go extinct. Like, yeah. And 5G power lines. Right. You said it, but I'm not shaking my head. Oh, and the woolly mammoth they're interested in.

Now where would you put that guy? Where? Yeah. Like on Earth? Could you engineer a woolly mammoth to be like, I'm in Miami? Now I'm thinking about like, what was that? We brought this up before. But in the 80s, there was that surf brand that had like all the animated animals surfing.

Like the monkey on the, so now I'm thinking about like, what if a woolly mammoth could surf? Listen, if that was our problem in the world, These woolly mammoths like the beach too much. But he just wants to be somewhere where entrepreneurship is valued. I kind of, we have to move on, but I do want to know about like, your point about this is the only president they've known. Like, do you think someone has to sit down and explain, like, founder culture to these wolves? But, like, here's how the economy works now. It doesn't.

Does anyone know that? It doesn't. But that's awesome. So that was my big thing. Okay. Any other disciplines that you'd like to lecture? before we get into it? No, I was wondering whether, like,

you would sort of sit just to psychologically prepare yourself for Last of Us. And that's coming this Sunday. We'll talk about it on Monday. Whether or not, I see you nodding kind of out of the corner of my eye in a way that means you don't want to talk about this. But I will say that I rewatched and or with my mom. I love talking about things you do with your mom. What are you talking about?

And so we, we rewit. I was, like, not going to do that. I don't typically go back and rewatch seasons, but I thought she would really get a kick out of it. And I did find it helpful. and I do resent but also acknowledge

the usefulness of refreshing yourself about a show that was on two to three years ago yeah for sure but I don't know if I'm going to do that

with Last of Us I feel like I remember pretty clearly what happened you sort of get it I think the other thing that might make a small distinction

and yes we will be talking about that show on Monday is that from everything I've gathered about the second season it picks up five years later

it is not a what's the next second of these people's lives? You should play the video game with your younger daughter, see how that goes over. I just thought you'd find this some interesting conversation. You know those mushrooms on the pizza? Well, guess what they're doing to them? Yeah. Or standing outside your bedroom going, click, click, click, click.

Is that the clickers? Is that the clicking sound from the show Last of Us? You should rewatch it. Have you watched ahead yet? Have you watched Last of Us yet? I was not granted a screener. Wow. That's awkward.

Yeah. Do you want mine? No, I definitely wasn't. I definitely wasn't. Nothing much else for you. I just wanted to say 100 foot wave is coming back. That's so cool. In May, I think.

So they've basically just been camped out of Nazare just filming our guys this whole time. Since the first season, they've just been accumulating new footage. Well, I wonder where else they went. Don't they usually have like, we went over here for a while? And then, of course, it was Nazareth season.

But I, like I've said, 100 times, oh, Christmas makes 50 seasons of this. I feel like I should rewatch season two, though. Just to get the- Just to see where Nicole's head's at. Don't get me started. Our queen. Let's talk about, why don't we do your friends and neighbors

as like a little bit of a preview. Then we'll talk about the finale of the pit that Noah's going to join us. So if you want, you can skip the friends and neighbors part if you haven't watched it yet or if you're going to watch it but want to hear us later about it. We'll keep that brief. Talk about the finale.

talk about the Pitt season one, and then we'll get to our interview with Noah. Yeah, and for what it's worth for your friends and neighbors, I think it's a show we're going to keep coming back to and talking about. So generally light preview,

I don't think we're going to spoil anything. More premise than anything else. Friends and Neighbors is a new show on Apple from Jonathan Trapper, writer, and creator of the show. Really interesting career. Has done some shows that you really love, Banshee and, you know, Warrior.

Also, is a published novelist. Very, very kind of has his, his hand in a bunch of different parts of Hollywood. He's done blockbuster feature script writing for the Adam Project. He's kind of persisted in making these adult-minded drama, dramaties. Like, this is where I leave you. And it's done obviously, like I mentioned, some TV stuff. But kind of is a very much hot screenwriter of the moment,

even though he's been in the business for a very long time. Including being brought on to the Star Wars universe. Yeah. So he's got a Star Wars. script. He's doing an adventure movie with John Sina. It's just, it has a lot of stuff going, but this seems like a very personal project to him and also

very much, like, a statement of purpose from him. It is a dromody, I guess. I'd say it's a drama with some funny elements. Starring John Hamm in his first leading TV role since Madman. Pretty significant there. Obviously, he's

been on morning show. He's been on Landman. But this is the the first time that he has led a show and it is, you watch these episodes and you're like, God damn, John Ham's getting out of that car and then he's going into that building. Like, he's carrying every scene. He's almost in every shot. That alone, honestly, is worth the price of admission, but there's a lot of other stuff to recommend about this show. What did you think of it? Well, let's say, so two episodes are premiering tonight from a nine episode first season significantly and we'll circle back to this point. It's already been renewed for a second season,

which I think is going into production this month. Premise is pretty, pretty gangbusters and great. Ham plays Andrew Cooper. Sidebar. Do you know a lot of people who are called their last name nicknames by even their wives and like closest people in their family?

And also I just don't have a cool last name for that. Like you could call me Ryan, but no, there's no like Chris Rye Ryan. Like that wouldn't work. No, but also like when we go out to dinner, Phoebe's not like, like, CR, pass the bread rolls. You know?

I mean, unless I'm missing something, right? That doesn't really work. I also, honestly, on some level, I resent a little bit the lengths that this character goes to avoid being called Andy. You know, I just feel a little like, okay. We do the best we can. Anyway, he is a what Tom Wolfe called a Master of the Universe. Investment banker, stock trader, yeah. Who finds himself sort of over-leveraged with a wife and kids and an increasing series of expensive houses.

just to keep up, basically, with his friends and neighbors. And in the pilot, he's now suddenly divorced and loses his job and turns to robbing, said friends and neighbors. Yeah. In order to continue his lifestyle. And I have to say, I'm glad we're talking about this show in an episode where we're talking about The Pit. Okay.

Because there was something truly exciting and fun for me about firing up a show that was designed to go multiple seasons and also was already planning on its second season. It would be back in a year. It's an old-fashioned feeling, right? That like, okay, yeah, let's see how far this thing can go. This has got a strong cast. It's got a strong premise.

It's got a voice. And that feeling of like getting on the ride is at this point, it's like a market inefficiency. how few times we get to do that. There was an expansiveness to the show and the voice and the world that was honestly kind of exhilarating, knowing that all of the irons being put in the fire in the first hour, and there may be a few too many.

We can talk about that. I'm not already doing the mental calculus of how are we going to land this in six hours. How is this going to be resolved in seven hours? That was really, really fun for me. And for it to come out of the gate with a lot of confidence, confidence and wit and Tropper, as you said, like knows this world has has stakes,

emotional stakes in the world, and it's just a clever and good, but also efficient, and let's keep things moving kind of writer. I was super in, even though I think we probably have a few bumps in the early. Yeah, I think it was the thing that I responded to the most was the voice,

and there's a lot of a voice, because John Hamm narrates a lot of the episodes. With these highly stylized, very cynical kind of like just really like calloused kind of here's what it's really like

and here's what the problem is and what are we doing and I almost admired the distinctiveness of his POV which honestly is like incredibly rich white man who's got woman troubles and money troubles but you actually for the most part

in a lot of contemporary television I think that that gets sanded down a lot a lot. And I think it is getting sanded down on this show a bit. Yeah, I think that's we both want to talk about. The sort of state of the anti-hero is a really interesting conversation to have about this show versus where it came from with Sopranos, but then specifically with bad men, because we're talking about ham. You know, and it's also interesting to think about Coop in relationship to Don Draper, because Don Draper is purposely such an enigma. and Koo is enigmatic, but is constantly telling you.

He's telling you how he feels. And we're seeing every aspect of him. And also, and I think this is not my favorite aspect of the show, it constantly is pre-apologizing for him potentially doing behavior that is not great. And it's pulling its punches in that way. And I find that kind of, honestly, I find that aspect off-putting.

The Don Draper part of it, this is the other way that I think the show is similar to the pit. when the pit premiered, we were like, there are some actors who should not run away from their strengths. There are some actors for whom playing a certain archetype is incredibly rich. There's depth to it and there's more depth as they age or as they're put into different circumstances.

And then you can play with something that most shows don't even get a chance to sniff, which is the audience's pre-existing investment in this person, in this type of role that they carry with them from one role to another. So when Dr. Robbie shows up in the pilot, of the pit, anyone who spent the 90s watching ER is like, I trust this guy. Yep. So then what do we do with that? So when John Hamm gets in a Maserati? When John Hamm is sitting at the end of the bar,

nursing a whiskey, I'm like, yeah, he's been there before. Yeah. The show, I think, very boldly, does not hide the Don Draperness of it. Like, there's a shot early in the pilot where he's, you know, in a suit surrounded by people who aren't dressing as nicely as he is. So he's a little bit out of step with the times. And they crowd around him on an elevator as he's leaving it all. He's leaving an office. And I'm like, yeah, I've seen, I've seen this shot before. And I like it. I think it's very interesting also to consider what a quote unquote alpha male looks like from the 60s to the 2020s. And how some things say the same. Some things are quite changed. And how maybe the middle of all of this has just been eaten away. I really like that aspect of it.

And he also, you know, Ham seems like a great guy and seems like a good actor. I mean, I know he's a actor, but also he seems like a good sport to try things like he did in Fargo, like he did in Landman, but he's in his bag. And he seems really animated to be in the show in a way that is very compelling. I think what you're seeing on this one is there's basically like three different things happening. There's a midlife crisis show that's happening that's being largely narrated and acted out by the Ham character and is about his malaise and his feeling of disconnection as he he's, you know, living in a rented house while his ex-wife Mel played by Amanda Pete lives or dates a ex-Bas NBA player

who she had cheated on him with. He, he, Coop has a fling going with a recently divorced woman played by Olivia Munn, the character Sam. And then Coop is sort of alienated from his two teenage kids who don't really notice the fact

that he no longer lives at the home that they live in. So there's like a family thing going on. Then there is a secondary story, which is the dissent into crime and this kind of, and that is also heavily narrated. So we're getting a lot of explication about like how this guy's feeling. And it's very interesting because that is these trap doors that takes them into different parts of New York City and different elements. And, you know, he's going up to the Bronx to fenced stuff. And it's, that's fascinating.

Then there is the third layer of the show, which I respectfully will describe as like, shrinking but in Long Island where it's a bunch of people who are orbiting this family or this man and their love lives and their wants and desires and some B-C-D-E plots. I probably am least interested in that part

this like sort of expanded community you know suburban drama but I get why they're doing it because it provides a lot of story stuff what did you think of the kind of like the three different shows or did any of those feel tonally off to you?

Yes. And let me then also say we are kind of unused to shows that can find their footing. This, as we said, has been renewed. They're making more. And there are enough smart people in the creative team that I think that the version of the show that we see at the season finale two months from now might be

addressed or even improved on in future seasons. Like even the shows that this wants to be in the Pantheon with, I'm not saying this is like a Hall of Fame show, but it is decidedly and with a lot of intention trying to be a difficult man show, basically, or an heir to that throne. And those shows, you know, some of them had amazing pilots, but they definitely weren't the shows that they ended up with,

they ended up being in the first few seasons. So I'm willing to accept some bumps along the road, particularly because when the show hits and there are a couple scenes in the pilot and there's the opening of the second episode that I think I'm like, oh, yeah, this is the Maserati version of this. and I am completely locked in. What's interesting, and we know nothing about, like, actually, the development are behind the scenes of this. But it's hard to watch the show, the first two episodes, and not feel a familiar hand of Apple.

And what I imagine is their notes giving process or their priorities within it. Part of that is, like every pilot from the last 10 years, from every over-noted pilot from the last 10 years. the pilot begins no less than four times. It begins with a flash forward, and then it goes back slightly in time, then it goes back slightly less in time, then it catches up to where we are. Then it goes back all the way to his youth.

Yeah, we're getting de-aged ham. And all of this... Try doing that, Colossus. You ask my friends in Parma, nobody wants D-H-Tam. The... Again, this is... I'm saying this with hopefully some degree

of empathy for this. That is a note. I mean, it's just everyone's note from pilots. I do think that I think it's starting to turn a little bit where now when executive see a script that says something exciting six months earlier, they're like, okay, this is actually... We believe you, you can put it at the end of the season.

This has now reached the point of cliche. But what that comes from is a very real existential terror that if you don't hook people with something interesting or tell people what the show is in five minutes, they're just going to go back to YouTube or whatever else they're doing. it feels not confident at this point, especially when you have a show with this pedigree.

So that was kind of a bummer. And then similarly, like, the pilot has so much to do to introduce this world, this character, why he is the way he is, what he's going to be doing in series. That's another sort of indicator of where this show exists

in the century of television development. Sure. Because it used to, be, Chris, that like a pilot could be a premise pilot where like we would meet him on the day that he discovers his wife is cheating on him and that he loses his job and then blah, blah, and then the show begins in the second, the series begins in the second episode. But they have to have him rob somebody in the first episode. That is a no-no. We have to show people-and-wee say Rob, I mean, he's like stealing from their homes

when they're not there. It's not like he's pulling heists. It's not, give me the loot, but with John Hamm. Yeah, so we have to show people what the show is. So I'm sympathetic to all that. I get it. And it mostly does it with. with as much grace as possible. Similarly, the end of the first episode introduces John Hams, Coop's, younger sister, who has some mental health issues and is heavily medicated and goes off her meds, and he's the only person caring for her, which might prove to be interesting plot-wise and story-wise and definitely gives the actors a different color to play with.

But mostly in its presence in the pilot, feels like a note being like, I don't think we like this guy. We have to make him likable, even though he's going to do bad things. And that rankles a little bit. But I will say after all this sort of slightly critical monologuing, Tropper's writing is really good. And the other thing that he's really, really good at is writing smart good stuff in this ecosystem. You were mentioning his larger CV.

He seems to be willing to play ball as long as they're playing the game that he wants to play. And I think that bodes well for the series. Yeah. I think we'll definitely be keeping an eye on it. The first two episodes go up Thursday night, Friday morning, or whatever the Apple kind of release schedule is. So we'll probably hit this next week next Thursday and talk a little bit more about it in depth.

Also Amanda Pete back. Mandi Pete's great. My guy, my guy, Hun Lee, from... I thought he was awesome. From Banchi, awesome actor. Yeah. Awesome actor. He plays a Coop's business manager.

Yeah, he's great. Yeah. And the Corbin-Bernson Sans just continues. Well, what else do we got on the Sons? Oh, he was in... the Emma Stone, Nathan Fielder show. Oh, that's right. You excited for the rehearsal?

I'm getting a lot of, getting tagged in a lot of stuff. Sure. So that's fun for me. Let's talk about the finale of the pit. And obviously, spoilers for this. It's going up Thursday night. The pit finale will air this evening. Remarkable season of television.

One of the best shows of the year. Huge accomplishment to kind of find this. between the urgency of a limited series, but the slow descent into and then loving, like, embrace of the waters of long-form television, obviously has been renewed. I think it's probably going to come back

as early as early next year. Yeah, I think they want to keep a yearly schedule. This, you know, I think this season peaked and culminated with, the pit fest shooting and what the the the the the the the the er that had to do to react to that so in terms of it's like you know the adrenaline shot i think you're asked to go on the same arc as the doctors and this episode is a lot of about them coming down from the day and so in in some ways it's it's a very uh it's a very like sort of sensory it's it's you're following the same

sensory journey that they are because it's not a TV episode that's about like breaking through the other side and like oh my god there's like one more case we have to solve it's really just like the measles thing right and the code tan with the with the guy who works at the hospital who gets crushed by a truck yeah um but for the most part a lot of like kind of contemplative scenes trying to figure out like where to go from here what did what did you think the finale um i texted you after i watched it and we watched it last week to get in front of our noa interview um I believe I wrote, this is the only good show that may have been hyperbole. You?

I mean, I'm not prone to it. But the experience of watching the show was so engaging and so joyful in the, like, it woke up parts of my TV watching brain and more importantly, heart that have just been dormant for a very, very long time. I could probably count on one hand the number of shows that were created with a specific target. get in mind to try to split the difference between the prestige era and the opportunities of the prestige era and the ambition of the prestige era and the just bare bones. We know how to do this practical nature of storytelling in the broadcast golden era. And they did it. Like, they actually did it. For creative and legal reasons, we won't say that this is a natural air to any show that we loved in the 90s starring Noah Wiley. But this is the science and magic that

Jack Donagie talked about. And I mentioned that quote when we talked to Noah too. So I'm sorry for repeating myself. But like they did that. I find that so, so remarkable. I think for me, the most striking thing about this finale was that it didn't continue. The sense of pacing, right, that you were referring to was so masterful, it didn't try to top itself by ending with another bang or another series of bangs. And yet, I wrote in my notes and when watching it, the experience of watching the finale was for some reason the most stressful I had all season. Now, to be fair, I did turn off the episode where the child drowned, but beyond that. And the reason why wasn't because of the intensity or the gore or the realism of any medical case, it was because people who I've grown to live,

love through my television screen. In this case, Dr. Robbie and Dr. Mohan were completely on edge and near crash. And I was so emotionally invested in their well-being. And I was just praying for them not to screw up. And that felt like old-fashioned TV in another way to and also like a kind of a magic trick that the doctors became the patients in terms of my empathy moment to moment with them. Mohan, like, being so clearly near a crash and so coming so close to inserting herself into opportunities to insert things into people. As she's like basically running on pure adrenaline, yeah. Which is how, I think, I think didn't we do three pods in one day once? So I feel like we can relate. I thought that was, I thought that was incredible. Yeah, there's a couple of

scenes I wanted to talk to you about. Well, there's, here's one thing I just want to mention. The introduction of the night shift. Yeah. I've never seen anything like it. During the shooting, you know, the pitch fest shooting and these new doctors coming on and the fact that now

I am as into Ellis and Shen and Abbott as I was into Langdon, Santos, Whitaker. Yep. It's incredible. That was 12 hours into the show. All of a sudden we get like

a half a dozen new faces to meet. The only comparison I can make off the top of my head was the introduction of East Dillon halfway through the series run. Yeah, but that was like we started a new show. Three years into the show. New season, yeah. They did this in one season with no feedback.

Like, again, the leap of faith, and we talked to know about this to a degree, but like they didn't know when they planned this and wrote it and cast it and shot it how we, the audience would feel about McKay or Collins and how we would feel about them being there or not being there, let alone how we would feel about their replacements.

Well, I mean, I think everybody started the first few episodes and generally speaking people were like, man, Santos is going to be a tough hang for like 15 hours. Right. She just is constantly going up to people and being sarcastic. And then as her plot developed over the course of the year, I thought it was completely fascinating. And then she gets this grace note at the end with Whitaker

by inviting him to come live with her, which is still true to her character. But I thought that she was an amazing character. She wanted to be one of my favorite characters on the show. Not just that grace note. Think about the previous grace note. Like this, it's just masterful orchestra conducting. The patient that she's consumed by in the finale, the kid who overdosed and she can't diagnose, my lizard TV brain was like he's going to be revealed as the co-conspirator of the shooting. Yeah. When you told me that, I was like, are you sure you're not on Reddit? Well, that was my Reddit lizard brain. And that plot line was created to give her something empathetic to do. Yeah.

To take her on a journey, which is as it should be, right? But there are still some vestigal, like, just knee-jerk, broken brain stuff that even I can't quit in terms of watching television and processing it. The two kind of exhale moments of the season take place one basically repeats the opening. the opening of this whole first season where Robbie finds Abbott up on the roof a little too close to the edge. And they have a daytime conversation at 7 a.m., 6 a.m., or whatever it is. And now we're at 9 p.m. and Abbott finds Robbie up on the roof, and they have a conversation about what they just experienced that day. I thought that was a beautiful piece of acting by both actors and a beautiful piece of writing.

I love the fact that Robbie was like, just please stop talking. You know what I mean? and like in Noah gave us some good insight in that scene that we don't want to step on. I don't a step on that. I also really adored the conclusion of Dana's arc on this season. Her putting the pictures in her like the perfect jean jacket that that woman would be wearing and kind of like silently cleaning out her desk in case she's not coming back. And then her last conversation with Robbie, you know, in front of the pictures of all the doctors who had passed away.

way. Yeah. And I thought that that was remarkable. The Langdon stuff is going to be really interesting. I'll be very curious to see two things in the second season that I wanted to ask you about. One is how many plot lines, you know, continue over from the first season, specifically Langdon and his, you know, need for rehabilitation. And for what it's worth, Scott Gamble apparently just blurted out at a panel last week

that season two would be 10 months ahead. at over Fourth of July weekend. And Noah speaks a little bit about that. And then also the, broadly speaking, like whether or not Robbie is going to be Jack Bauer and they're going to kind of keep putting him through the ringer or is he going to be Abbott one season and someone else is kind of in the center.

It'll be really interesting to see what they do with that character and whether they're like, yeah, on another day, it might not be the craziest thing. day of all time. Well, the other thing that they can do now, um, by building out their cast and ensemble is that the 15 hours, I mean, all right. So basically, uh, they had said, we'll do 12 hours to mimic a 12 hour shift. And our guy Casey Blois was like, give me 15. Give me more hours of the show. And so then they were like, well, this is going to go longer than a shift. So what do we do? By building out the night shift characters, they can do a split shift season. And maybe that's where

they're headed. It doesn't, they, it won't require. It doesn't, they, it won't require. overtime in the emergency room to keep some of our main characters there or to keep characters around, which is a really smart save for them and solve for them going forward. I think the Langdon stuff is worth noting and worth tracking because ultimately the show is really, really invested in a kind of boots on the ground, sober realism to as much as it can be. I mean, obviously the cases, there's a lot of cases, and there's a lot of variety to the cases. And that's the fun. I mean, if you know what I mean, in terms of, like, story creation, that's fun. But this isn't the kind of show, and it's reassuring to know that it's not, that if Langdon comes back and acts heroically, Robbie's going to be like, forget protocol and procedure. I trust you now because you were, you know, you went through it with me. So I'm curious, I think that told us everything we need to know in terms of being concerned about storyline. I also just loved the, well, let's talk about two things. You said the measles thing happened at the end, you know, but I do think one of the biggest

messages of this first season and one that I'll, that really sticks with me is that there is no offseason. There is no end of episode. There is no pause for an emergency room in a major city. Yeah. That was so artfully done about the measles stuff. And that was, you know, written and filmed before it actually became ripped from the headline so it predicted yeah measles summer was that it was deployed both in service of Jesus Christ this never ends but also

so that it would be twinned with Robbie's absolute work to the bone so he does behave kind of like a lunatic yeah and then that the show gave us remember like week two or three when we were still just trying to of feeling our way through it. Like, we really liked it. But I feel like you mentioned early on, one of your favorite types of storylines or scenes in ER would be like the doctor's shooting hoops on the weekend or, you know, Carter or Dr. Green waiting for the L in the snow. Getting to see their apartments, getting to see like random little things. Yeah, what car they pull up in.

Pretty artfully done that it gave us insight into Whitaker's actual home life, such as it is, Santos's attitude, also hers talking about where and how she lives, and then the scene in the park to let everybody have a beer. A post-shift beer. We were joking about this. I'm like, could you imagine how good that hit? You know? The first one, I wouldn't even count as a beer.

No. The first one would be like, it would just be gone instantaneously and then I would be like, and now we start. The first one, I said, like, you would just crunch down on like a skittal. Yeah. Like, I don't think you have time to open it. Also, glad to see that our home state apparently has more lax open carry laws for drinks than it used to. Well, I think they're pretty permissive.

Although, I mean, like, McKay almost got put in jail. Yeah, they let her go. And then the cops come back around. They're like, look, we saved a lot of people. Can we drink this Iron City, please, on my walk home? Did you, I thought it was also very, very subtly done the reveal of Abbott's prosthetic. Yes. Right?

Which suggested. I thought that was very, very tasteful. We've been talking about how he seems to have military training or experience, and that was, that was born out. I just, the only thing I was really hoping for was Collins being like, I just turned my phone on. They're like, hey, hey, guys, what's up? I forgot my hoodie.

What's the line that Robbie says, this place will break your heart, but it's also full of miracles. Speaking of things that will break your heart and also full of miracles, before we get into the NOAA thing, I did feel like it's relevant to the PIC conversation that a lot of talks that I've had like in the last week, two weeks, three weeks, like general meetings, meetings on projects I have,

just conversations with people in the industry. No big deal. There is a, really. I'll let you know when it comes a big deal. But there is a tiny, tiny, I know this is rare for this moment in world history, a tiny flicker of optimism. And it's not necessarily tied to,

oh, my friend's getting a deal, or this show is going or this is actually being shot here. I thought it was interesting and significant that a lot of these conversations are tied to a few shows are hitting now. A few shows are working now. We're in a pretty... We have an embarrassment of riches for the first time in a while.

But it's not just that we're so... You and I are busy watching shows. We have a lot of things to watch. It's that specifically shows like nobody wants this at the end of last year. The Pit is referenced all the time. Adolescence, obviously. And I think in a...

know, we'll know in a week or two, but if your friends and neighbors joins this. And I think you can expect the last of us to be a gargantuan hit. The last of us will be a gargantuan hit, but the reason I'm mentioning those four shows is that they are, you know, the Crichton estate may disagree, but they are original ideas that were developed and executed to a degree of success that has been given beyond return of investment from the people, return of investment. And the pit, nobody wants this shoots in L.A. And they shoot in L.A. And what those successes do is actually.

can grow in the sense that... It's a copycat industry. So if it's like... No, no. What I'm trying to say is the executives greenlight and take a bet on something relatively original, that can potentially prove to the actual mega lords of industry

and tech lords who control all this now that we should trust these guys a little. That sometimes we can let them cook and develop something and maybe they'll give a little... I know. I'm saying that generally... in the world, we are clinging to any hopes. I thought you were going to say that there was going to be like 15 more hospital shows. Oh, there already are. We're ignoring pulse. Like there

already are. The copycat thing will never go away and sometimes relatively good things can come from that. I just mean that at a moment when we're just like clamoring for any flicker of hope, I thought it was interesting that the conversations that were hope-based weren't, that had some degree of optimism were somehow, somehow holding onto a kernel of creativity. Yeah. Where most, to be honest, most even 50% optimistic conversations have really just been about like, well, you know, Minecraft is a hit. So maybe there are other video games. That generally is how these talks go. But these shows in particular have sparked a different kind of conversation. I think also, I would say like, you know, I mentioned this to know us. I don't want to get too

into this. But like, adolescence in the pit are the kind of defining shows of the year for me right now. And I think part of the reason why people have reacted so strongly to both of these shows for very different reasons is that they are seeing things that replic, you know, they're closer to real life and contemporary life and some of the issues that people deal with on a daily basis. The characters on screen seem like characters you might know or people you might meet. And I think it's a much wider spectrum of human behavior going on. Yes. And honestly, I would even say that about White Lotus as well. For as much as White Lotus is considered this far off, only the highest up of the 1% can afford to go to these things.

That's true. But the behaviors within those families, some brothers jerking off brothers aside, like, it's about friendship. It's about families. It's about love. It's about betrayal. It's about what am I supposed to do with my life?

And it doesn't have to be about like, we need to solve this video game puzzle to get to the next level to then tease the next season and possibly three spinoffs of whatever. And I think that style of storytelling has a place. Some of those shows are incredible. We're going to be talking about Andor in April,

but at the end of April, but it's been really cool to see stuff that looks like life on screen. I love that as a manifesto. I believe in it. I also wish cameras on. tune in Monday for our review of a video game show about zombies. Also, quick follow-up before we get into Noah.

If the Colossus Corporation, and you're not a shareholder, right? Like, we should disclose this thing. I'm actually not even sure. Fair. After this week. Had they announced that they had two new dire wolves and their names were Dr. Robbie and Amanda Pete, would your whole opening monologue have been different? Would you have been like, let's... I wouldn't be here.

I would be petting dire wolves. I love it. right, let's get into our interview with Noah Wiley. Noah Wiley was here. Noah Wiley. Let's go. That was great. All right, thanks to Kaya for producing. We will be back on Monday talking Last of Us and a bunch of other stuff.

Thank you for listening to the watch. Thank you to Noah Wiley. Thank you to you. Thank you to you. Oh, am I still here for this person? I thought we were pretending I wasn't. That's why I was being quiet. I thank you, Chris.

Thanks. The playoffs are here and you can predict the action all the way to the finals with Fandul Predicts. Follow all the playoff dishes. wishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant.

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Follow all the playoff dishes. swishes, wishes, and misses. Predict the spread, the total points, and even the game winner. Sign up for Fandual Predicts and predict it from the couch. Offered by Fandual Prediction Markets LLC, a registered futures commission merchant. 18 plus. Trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors. Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. We are very honored to have Noah Wiley joining us here on the watch.

We've been huge fans of this show all season, Noah, so it's a real pleasure. to get to talk to Dr. Robbie himself here in studio. You can't tell, but I'm blushing. We can't tell. We're on video, I think. Then you can't tell them. I'm going to make you blush a little bit more because a couple months ago, we finally, after 13 years, opened up a consistent email inbox for the podcast.

To be clear, Chris opened it. I've still not been given access. But the first thing I think around when we did it was right when the pit was coming on. And so it's a small sample size. The amount of emails that we, got. Not about us. Not about like, hey, great joke, Chris, you know, bad take Andy, anything like that. From medical professionals emailing two idiots from Philadelphia who have nothing to say about,

you know, the healthcare industry being like, you guys, thank you for talking about the pit. This show is the realest thing we've ever seen. It represents actual daily life of an emergency room doctors and nurses of the healthcare industry right now. And how much. it meant to people in that space was mind-blowing. And I can only imagine you get that every day, like when you're walking around and like, what's that like to feel that kind of response? Because people like something, people don't like something, but to have something means something to people must be pretty intense. It's somewhat multi-layered because I'll be honest and say that a lot of the response that we're getting was tied to the intentionality of project. This is what I

wanted to have happen. But I always want this to have happen. And it never happens. You always want the work to have impact. You always want to have it resonate this particular time at bat. It was a little bit more important than usual because of the stakes involved in the people that we're talking about. But I also think it speaks to the volcanic amount of pent-up emotion among practitioners who have been suppressing a lot since COVID and not been able to give context to it to their families, not been able to give context to it to themselves. And then suddenly you put something on TV

that just pulls the quirk. And it reminds them enough of their daily life that it opens the floodgates or allows people to turn to their spouse and say, is this really what you do all day? Is this what you see? And so it's that feeling seen, feeling heard aspect that feels really, really gratifying and really rare.

So I wanted it. I didn't expect it now that we're getting it. It's pretty intense. And every day, my inbox is a bit of a lightning rod for people sharing experiences and letting me know what the show brings up for them. And that's really gratifying and powerful. I would imagine that since your time on ER medical professionals

have come and talk to you about things or people who are not medical professionals have come and ask you to look at, they have or other things on their body. Is it fair to say that maybe the change in perception of the medical field during COVID is one of the things that led you back into scrubs? 100%. I stayed out of scrubs for the longest time. Yeah.

And had no interest in putting a stethoscope around my neck. Mostly because I felt that that was hallowed ground and traveled road. And I didn't think I could do it any better. And neither did John or Scott Gemmel and John Wells. So even when we got back together to talk about the need of telling, you know, the story in this arena, all we were hyper-conscious of was fucking up the legacy and, you know, embarrassing ourselves in the attempt. And at that time, a lot of shows were rebooting themselves and the optics of it were really kind of ineligent. It all looked like kind of going for one more squeeze on the old cash cow. And that's not what we were trying to do.

So we were very thoughtful about how to go about it and just decide, let's hide ourselves in accuracy. Let's embed ourselves in realism and try to push the envelope on what we can do and show that we were never able to do and show because of standards and practices and working on a network. Now with the streamer, you have a lot more colors to paint with. That said, you know, this show, The Pit is literally not ER. It is also legally not ER.

Thank you for saying. But when it was described, even just the log line and we heard about it, I feel like I, and I regret this, I think it was clearly a mistake. But I think there was kind of a knee-jerk assumption that, okay, now it's on streaming, so now they can show more. So the show is going to be more gory or more in your face or more intense. The other side of it was, oh, they're just trying to recreate, and I say this all the time, the 30 Rock joke about let's recreate 1997 by science or magic. Can you talk about the process of making a show that does show things that E. couldn't show and uses words of the ER couldn't show, couldn't say. But also, the pit never, ever forgets the humanity of the characters. And week to week was reminding us of why we fell in

love with TV in the first place. And I think it's a really remarkable balancing act that you guys were able to pull off. It's something that is radical. It is intense. It is new. But it feels like coming home in a really wonderful way. Well, I have to give a lot of credit to John Wells for that one. I think, you know, because you're allowed to play with all these new toys, doesn't mean you should. And so discretion and taste become, you know, the operative words. And John has always had incredible taste. And he's always been extremely knowledgeable about storytelling. And that's what comes first.

More than any of the toys comes the heart of the story and the heart of the character. Even when he directs, he comes into the scene first and says, okay, what's the point of view here? Who do I care the most about it in this scene? And let's organically block the scene from that point. So it's always inside out with him. And I think that audiences have gotten extremely sophisticated in their viewing habits,

extremely adept at recognizing narrative tropes and devices. And John doesn't even care about how smart you are. He's just going right for your heart. And it works. You know, the genre, itself, the television medical show is very durable. I watch them for the detective shows. I watch them for

the soap operas. But I noticed really early on talking with friends about this show that for as much as it obviously shines a light on what's going on in the medical profession that it occurred to me in a way that it hadn't before how everybody

is touched by illness, injury, whatever it is. Like you have been in the hospital, you've got somebody in the hospital. You're going to say goodbye to someone. You're going to say goodbye to somebody in the hospital and how, I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before, but it is like the great uniting church. Also because we're old now. Yeah, I know, right. This is the universal arena. This is where it all happens. You know, it's so funny, we did a story in episode four where we had adult children saying goodbye to their elderly

parent. And then in episode 11, we had a birth, birth and death. Pretty ubiquitous experiences for all of us, and yet it would seem that we revolutionized something by showing it in real time. Yeah, we watch death all the time on television. We consume it daily, and yet when you slow it down to actual pace, it's very jarring. And when you photograph what birth really looks like, it seems to be mind-blowing. Well, I wonder whether or not the two shows that have really defined this year so far for me are the pit and adolescence. And I wonder whether or not people are craving, seeing not necessarily even themselves as much as their stories or seeing things that they recognize

from their lives on screen in a way that maybe they hadn't over the last couple of years. I think that's fair. I mean, there's a lot of great stuff on TV right now and I'm enjoying a lot of it. But sometimes when you're living in dystopian times, you don't want to double down with your content viewing on dystopian fair.

So I have a feeling that the pit is benefiting a little bit from being a lighthouse at the moment and reminding people that they're very heroic people out there in the trenches who are going to continue to treat people who are ill and sick, despite how many broken parts they may have. They are coming to work every day to patch ours together. Episode four, I'm glad you brought it up because we wanted to ask you about that specifically. That was an episode that hit like a freight train, and I know that you were, you've been creatively involved in the entire project, but I believe you were the credited writer on that episode.

I wrote four and nine. And can we use that episode as a way to talk about your increased creative involvement in the show and why that was your story that you wanted to tell and even how you ended up putting the beautiful Hawaiian saying into the episode, which I think has spread like wild. And people are referencing this episode and that message quite a bit. And you've written on the last couple of shows you've done, right? Like falling skies. I have. I wrote more subversively on falling skies. I believe it's uncredited writing. But it gave me the confidence to think that maybe something that I thought would be good in a scene, could play in a scene. And then when

librarians and leverage came around, I jumped at the chance to be part of those staffs. And it's not an easy to college to break into, especially when you come in through the acting door. But I really love it. I love that I can do it from home around my kids and my wife. And I love going into kind of a fugue state with it. And I love the collaboration of a writing room. I love the pollination of ideas and the politics of the room. It's all very interesting to me. I'm extremely gratified to be working with this group because they are tremendously talented. And specifically the Hawaiian saying, is that something that you had come across in your life?

Did you bring that into the room? Or did that just follow your episode? Well, episodes are assigned randomly. I didn't know that I would be writing a second one and I wanted an early one so I could get it to bed before we started production. So Scott Gemmell, our showrunner, wrote the first thing. and then I took the first available one after that. And there are things that were on the board, outlined beads that you're trying to hit.

I had been invited to participate, but to observe a taping of this online educational compendium called MRAP that was founded by a man named Dr. Mel Herbert, who's a technical advisor to our show. And while I was watching them taped this segment, I met Dr. Ira Brirock, who wrote a book called The Four Things That Matter most, which is a compendium of experiences that he has had as a physician attending end of life and recognizing that these four significant things, simple things, if said, can really aid people

in the grief process. His four things that matter most is based on Hooponipono, the Hawaiian ritual. They're slightly different, but I came, I wanted to blend them together because the book is terrific and the ritual is terrific. And I have received a lot of mail from people who are either experiencing end of care with their parents or have recently lost a parent. And they said that that was extremely healing for them. So I was really happy to put that out there. Let's go a little bit under the hood with how the show gets put together both as a writer and then as an actor and working in production. So told mostly, more or less to the second in real time, feels like with some, you know, like 40-second gaps or whatever between episodes.

So how does this structure, the act-breaking, the actual script of an episode of the pit, differ from a typical episode of television that you've acted on that makes it? The very first difference was we hired Nina Ruccio to build us a set before we started to write. Because of the real-time format, we needed to know how long it took to get from one room to another and how wide the hallways were going to be. And whether you'd be in a site, line from one room to another, if we were going to try to write for something that required it, it couldn't be arbitrary. We couldn't hand a blocking plan to a director during their prep that didn't work logistically, and we couldn't put three or four people in the same room. So we had to

make sure that all, everything was spaced out. You can't be writing towards, sorry to cut you off, you can't be writing towards a Dr. Robbie and Langdon collision argument like that have a screaming fight unless you know you have a place for them to be having it. Exactly. That's remarkable to think about it. Exactly. So that was atypical. We had a big blueprint on the wall that we all took home with us, that we memorized to make sure we understood the set and its spatial relationships to time.

And then it is Dr. Joe Sachs' turn to open up what he euphemistically calls his tickle trunk and share with us the benefit of his four-decade career in emergency medicine and his sphere of relationships. And we just start talking about cases. And then he organizes expert meetings with, there's an organization called Hollywood Health that Roberta Kruger runs. And she brokers talks with people from every aspect of health care. So if we want to know about trans rights in health care, we talk to Glad, if we want to know about the recovery road for a physician addicted to narcotics, how to get your license back. We talked to an expert on recovery.

We talk to people that deal in IT ransomware for hospital. protections against bad actors. We talked to everybody. And the last question we asked them is, what would you like to see on TV? You know, what is it that isn't on TV that should be? And what would be really bad for us to put on TV? That would be countercurrent to your work. And then we just take all that and start breaking it out. As we talked about earlier, because of the 15-hour format, we have to break all the season at once. There's no sort of making it. You know, it or up as you go or course correcting. So we kind of need to know where we're going to end,

where everybody's mini-arch is going to take them, how this day is going to affect them all the way down to the smallest day player. I think that what you're just speaking to is the thing that I can't get over, and you may have heard us talk about this again and again week after week, is there's a commitment to the project that you had to make so early on.

And we're sitting here in week 11. week 12, week 13, feeling the accumulated relationships between the characters, between ourselves and the show, and we feel them paying off, paying off. But you, you know, sitting in the Warner Brothers lot, months, years before we're actually seeing this, have to make a bet that we are going to care about Dana as much as we do by the time that she is assaulted.

That we are going to think that the shoes that drop in the finale, and we can talk about some of the specifics, are going to hit. That was even more of a bouncing act when we talk about the finale. Yeah, that's because we went to Pittsburgh in September to shoot our exteriors, which meant we shot Robbie walking into work, Robbie chasing David down the street, going up to the hill of pad to get some blood.

And Robbie on the roof with Abbott. Did you do the exteriors of like the ambulances arriving for Pit Fest in Pittsburgh, or was that? That was all St. Joe's exterior ambulance bay in Burbank. But you're saying you shot both sides of the Robbie and Abbott on the roof. I'm saying the same day. We went up and shot Robbie and Avid in the morning, and then we waited for the nightfall. And then we went up and shot the scene at night, and then went across the seat. It saw the scene in the park.

The scene in the park and the scene on the roof were just sides. They weren't scripts. We didn't have those written yet in September. We were still writing, I think, episodes five or six at that point. But we needed to audition actors with scenes that showed the full range of their emotional abilities. So we wrote sides that reflected heavy emotion so we could cast Sean Hadassie, so we could cast all these wonderful actors. But when I was on the roof with Sean

and he said, nice speech, wish I'd given it. There was no speech written. I had no idea if I was talking to the press, if I was talking to myself, you know. It also adds color to Robbie saying, please stop talking. I don't even know what you're talking about. Let's like make this a little bit more minimal.

But we shot this lovely scene and it turned out so well, we were like, okay, that's where we have to get to. We got to get Robbie up on that roof. And so for that part, for 13, 14, and 15 it was being very mindful of where we needed to land the plane and making sure we lined up the runway appropriately.

How much did you guys allow for the possibility that, you know, something that happens on TV shows sometimes, which is that somebody blows your mind or does something that you didn't know that they could do or is funnier than you expected. Or chemistry sparks between two characters. That happened a little bit.

There was a little course correction and a little enhancement of relationships. And there were some players that got bumped up as they proved themselves to be incredibly the character of Donahue, for example, Brandon, came in to his wardrobe fitting and stopped by medical boot camp to watch what we were doing. And then he just hung out.

And then when we needed anything done, he just jumped in and volunteered. And I remember saying early on, I really like this guy. I like his attitude. We should throw him some stuff. And then he nailed his first couple scenes. And it was like, okay, let's write more for him.

He's great. And so there's a little bit of that promoting from within and it was very much a meritocracy. And as you're watching people's strengths and weaknesses, you kind of want to lean into their strengths and away from weaknesses. But this cast was so solid, there weren't many weaknesses. But one of the things that I'll, it taught me about watching TV and what I love about TV is that names like Abraham Ben Ruby and DZERD, like these are names that are burned into my brain because these people were with me and with us every week. And they were not the credited stars of the show when ER started. And so I wonder how much of that institutional

memory you and John carry over into this. Because now it's not just that, you know, Dana, for example, or any of the other nurses or the security guy, I'm like, I love these people. I love Princess. I want to know where they are at any given moment. It's that then two-thirds of the way through your show, the night shift shows up. And I'm like, I would watch a series about Dr. Shen. That's fine. Yeah. I love him. Where has he been? Come on. Smell spinoff there. Having nurses talk in Tagalog, having those guys betting on the ambulance crash,

reinforces what is true about hospitals, which is they are run by support staff. Nurses and techs and PAs and RTs run emergency rooms. And the doctors try to keep as many patients going through there as possible. But they really are the fabric of the place. I read an interview with Catherine Lanasa. Did you see I mentioned RTs? RTs are very unhappy with us.

We don't have any RTs on the show. No. Letting us know. Season two, RT revenge. Season two, revenge. Season two, the pit colon, the RTs. I saw Catherine Lanassa did an interview talking specifically about the arc that her character goes on, but just in general about the freedom, the collaboration that she had to come up with a backstory for Dana.

And I was curious about to the extent that you can share, like, did you do the same work on Robbie? Yes and no. It was more, it was interesting when we started to write the show. It was okay, do we wake up with Robbie? Where does he wake up? Does he wake up in an apartment or a townhouse or a house? house? Is it clean? Is it nice? Is he alone? Is he with the dog? What's on the wall? Does he take a shot of whiskey or a protein shake? Every question you ask, you define the character, but you're also limiting

the character to a degree in terms of his relatability to the audience. And so the decision was, no, we'll get to know him in his professional capacity because that's how a patient would get to know him. And as the day progresses, you learn more and more little nuggets about his personal life, but not so much that you're pigeonholing him, identifying him. You know, or not being able to relate to him. So I kept a lot of that very vague, but personally built a very inner, rich life and backstory to feed the emotional journey that I was going to be going on.

Who do you credit most with, and maybe it's a shared credit, with the balancing act that the show does so well between the necessary happenstance of fiction, like McKay's ex shows up with a broken, ankle with her son. It's a TV show. Of course, people who are connected to our doctors are going to walk through the doors while we're watching the show. But also what I found to be a really admirable commitment to randomness at times as well. And that played out with, you know, David is not

responsible for Pit Fest. There was a misdirect at the very end that I really welcomed, which is the overdose patient that Santos is treating. My TV brain is saying he's the co-conspirator of the mass shooting. There's something here. They're showing us something. And the thing you were showing us was that Santos can be human, you know, in that way and can relate to someone and heal someone on a personal level, which we had not seen. So who do you credit with that balancing act of like, you know, we have to generate plot, we have to have coincidence, but also we have to. I would give it to jointly to the personalities in the room. I think that's how we all compliment each other so well. You know, Scott Gemmell has a wicked sense of humor and is really great at writing dialogue and humor.

Simron Badewan is a masterful storyteller when it comes to sort of interpersonal relationships and plot lines. And then you've got Dr. Joe Sachs going, keep it real. That's not what we do. That's not what we say. That would never happen. So it's this wonderful balance. And then you say to Joe, well, not to you, maybe, but, you know, there are a lot of kinds of doctors out there. So it's this sort of we all, we have checks and balances on each other.

We all know what it should be in the end. And I think it's a cross-pollination of everybody's input that gets us to that balancing act. And then the final editor, the final arbiter is John Wells. Everything goes past him and if it passes his muster, it gets on TV. With the, let's talk a little bit about sort of like the last couple batch of episodes, obviously Pit Fest. But then one of the things that I really treasured about this season was the slight decompression. And you're kind of going with these people for as much as when you walk into that hospital with Robbie

and you're getting his kind of like, all right, I'm looking at the board. prepping people and everything, you also get the slow kind of decompression of the day, which might run counter to the way a TV season is necessarily structured, where maybe Pitt Fest would be one episode, that's the penultimate episode, and then there's like a cliffhanger of a finale. So how important was it to honor, I guess, the original structure of like, this is a day in the life, not necessarily a season of TV, because that's what it felt like, and I think it was more powerful.

for it. Initially, we were pitching a 12 episode season to match a 12-hour shift, and Max asked for 15 because they wanted a larger episodic order, and then Pitfest allowed us to kind of expand the narrative into the 15 hours. We, ask me that question. Well, it's just basically, like, I love the fact that there were essentially two episodes to come down from Pitfest. I think it would have felt irresponsible of us to end on a cliffhanger after the investment that we'd asked for all season long to stay with us in real time on our feet. Once we get to go home, let's all go home. Yeah. And let's all go home and reflect on what we've all been through. And when we come back, it'll be farther down field. And this will now be in everybody's consciousness, right?

Robbie had Adamson. Now we all have it Adamson. We've all been through Pitfest and how we bring these characters back and walk them to the next stages of their lives and careers. As long as we stay truthful to the who are they and where are they and why are they, think we'll be in good shape. So the resistance to feel the need to blow something up, to go bigger and badder in the second season, that's what we're feeling right now is, oh my God, what are they going to want to see now? And it's, hopefully they'll just want to see some more sutures and they want to see some more human stories and some more what's happening out there. I think that the pacing of the last few episodes gave us what's lingering with me is one of the more powerful images and moments, which is

you know all the red tags and pink tags and pit fest has been mostly processed through to the OR and then it's time to open it up again there is no off there is no end of episode really in life or on your tv show no just another shift coming through and they'll never get ahead of the problem you can't get ahead of this problem there's always going to be a full waiting room right now there's always going to be boarding patients and they're always going to be understaffed that's the new health care um the you mentioned and I feel like we're skipping around the finale. I do want to ask about the finale, but I do,

you talked about the temptation to go bigger for season two. I believe you and the creative team confirmed a few days ago that we're jumping 10 months. Yeah, Scott. He just blurted. You ask a good Canadian question

and I guess he feels compelled to answer it. I was like, oh, we're just giving up everything, are we? Yeah. Yes. It's been confirmed. We're going to jump about 10 months into the future and plot the show

July 4th weekend, holiday weekend. Is the temptation similar to what you were saying before about showing Dr. Robbie before after the shift, has there been much conversation that you feel comfortable sharing about whether the first episode begins an hour before the shift, you know, whether we are at home with people more, whether we go more into their lives? I don't mind confessing. This is a wonderful example of how smart Scott is. I came in season two and thought, okay, well, 15 hours, it's an unwieldy number.

I wonder if we could play with something kind of creative where we'd just take that first hour and call it commute. You know, and basically we pick five characters, get a sense of what their home life is, that they have to leave and compartmentalize in order to get to work. How do they get to work? And we end that first hour with the time card punch. And then on the back end, we bookend it

and we get a sense of closure and how they have to compartmental layers of the day to walk into their family lives. And Scott looked to be, and all the other writers were nodding. And Scott goes, yeah, I don't know. You know. We'll probably have to do something like that if we go four or five seasons.

But, you know, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I like rules. Rules are meant to be broken. And they're really there to service the writing. But I think our discipline this year is to do what we did last year, but better. I think that's wise. I feel compelled to share this with you. If you haven't seen it, I mentioned it on the pod last week.

But one of the favorite, this is already a cursed phrase. One of my favorite tweets recently was this. I don't know if you saw this. Season one episode of a medical drama. Professional and personal tensions are high during a stressful day at the hospital. Season nine episode of a medical drama. There's a new patient at the hospital and his name is Dracula. Dr. Acula.

Exactly. No, it's not like, actually not a terrible idea. That's an Edwin. That's an Edwin. But there is a reality to that in terms of like. Oh, 100%. But you do have a- We were dropping helicopters in an ambulance pay by 15 on the yard.

Exactly. Yeah. But I think that's another networks-like spectacle. And to bring viewers back, you need to tell them it's bigger and better than ever before. That kind of hype and hyperbole is intended to all programming. And hopefully we'll have a good sizzle clip package to sort of sell the show with season two, just off of the drama that you find in an emergency room and the fact that you already care enough about these characters to carry.

about how they're going to be successful in their careers and in their day. Do you look back when you see, like, say, the kind of commotion that's happening around Taylor Dearden, right? Is there almost like a full circle feeling for you where you're like, man, I remember when I was her age and entering this kind of this world of being on a hospital show, but also my character becoming kind of larger than life to people? Yes, yes, not specifically with Taylor, though, because Taylor, though, because Taylor has grown up in and around this. So she has a little bit of her 10,000 hours in early.

I feel that more with somebody like a Shabana Aziz or even to a certain extent Patrick Ball, where I'm watching, or Garen Howell. Even though these guys have done work before, really good work, this is a whole new sort of experience. And it's wonderful to watch. It's wonderful to watch them handle it so well. I was very grateful to the fact that I had Anthony Edwards,

George Clooney, and Eric LaSalle, all 10 years older than me acting like a big brother and steering me away from trouble and steering me back into professionalism. I've tried to be that sort of available resource, but it's amazing how little they need it. They're really sharp. This might be a tough question to ask since you're so involved in every facet of the show, but I just wonder if you have a moment and you ever step back and consider not just the strength of your performance and your ideas that you contribute to the show, but you being on the show in terms of audiences' relationships with you, Noah, the actor, playing a doctor in our lives and what you bring to us, giving us

the opportunity to see you do it again. I don't know if that's a very meta question. No, no, it wasn't lost on me. Well, first of all, I was extremely grateful that Max Greenlee at the show with me and the lead. I was surprised at that. But I knew what attendant baggage I bring to playing a doctor, And I knew that I was going to already be able to trade on a history of trust and goodwill. And that was part of the thesis. You know, we're presenting somebody that, oh, he's a good doctor. Oh, he's a really smart guy. Oh, he's really compassionate.

Oh, look how empathetic he is. Oh, he's so capable. Wow, he's so dedicated. He doesn't even have time to pee. This guy is fantastic. This guy is great. I want him to be my doctor. Oh, shit.

He's on the ground. Yeah. Oh, shit, he's crying. Like, he's full. human, he's frail, he's fragile, he's a good metaphor for our health care system and even the best practitioners. So that was the arc we were going for and I made it easier to have that arc play out because of the goodwill that audience has already kind of bring to the table with me. Yeah, but I love the way Abbott and Robbie get inverted by the end of the day.

We're not only very real, like on the roof wise, but you kind of realize by 14, or 15. Rob, he's not being reckless per se. But Abbott's like, hey, man, take a sec. You know, like, you don't have to show the measles case parents. Yeah, no, he's flying on autopilot. Yeah. And he has no filter, no professional mask anymore, no ability to be politic.

He's, he's, and no ability to go home after this shift and lie to himself and say there isn't a problem. So where we go from now is him accepting or resisting treatment. all the different modalities of treatment available, which one is going to take effect, and to underscore the doctors aren't always the best patients. I was looking over at the notes that I was writing when I was watching the finale, and I was struck by the fact that I wrote,

this is the most stressful episode of the season for me, even though one of the reasons I was enjoying it so much is that I felt like I understood the show, I trusted the show. I didn't think a car was crashing into the ER. I didn't think that there was going to be some secondary mass casualty event. what was stressing me out more than anything else was that Robbie and to a lesser degree Mohan were losing it. And that the loose canon, what you were just describing, that something could go wrong for them. Yeah.

Was what was animating me and making me sit on the edge of my seat. It wasn't the medicine anymore. It was the people. No, you don't want them to say or do the wrong thing. You don't want them to get hurt. And you see how fragile they are at that point. I only have one more question, which is, what's a crick tray? A crick tray?

Yeah, because every time somebody was like start a crank tray or I'm going to get the crank tray, I was like, it doesn't seem like I ever want to hear those words. All about the airway in an emergency room. Are they breathing? Airway breathing circulation, the ABCs of emergency medicine. So when you're trying to get an airway and there's any kind of occlusion and you can't get a tube through, then you have to do, you have to make your hole a little lower. and the cryoc thyroid is where you make your incision to put your... The surgeons are so quick with the cranes. Don't you remember on MASH when Hawkeye did it

with a ballpoint? I do, but I'll never forget it. But Chris, to be fair, patients who come into the pit ER, they're pretty chatty. I feel like they don't seem to mind what they're hearing. Maybe that's because the ketamine hits. Every time John Wells has asked about, you know, so now you know a lot about medicine,

what's it like when you go to the hospital? He says, terrifying. I know just enough to know what they're talking about. And I can't do anything about it. Yeah, and I can't do anything about it. My biggest medical question isn't so much the, you know, the education, literally the crash course that the cast had to have to use these words and make it sound like they've used them 100 times

and the practice movements, which are so amazing, and we take for granted. I mean, that goes back to ER, the choreography of it. It's how many pairs of rubber gloves did you wear? Oh, yeah, I was going to ask, the hand sanitizer was real. How are your hands? Well, I'm conscious of waste, so I try to reuse gloves as often as possible, so I'll take them off in the scene, then I'll pick them off. off the floor and turn them right back out.

What does Dr. Sachs think about that? It's not the most sanitary thing that we do. But then we got all that hand sanitizer sitting right there. That was, you know, from the jump, you've got to wash your hands on the way into a room and you've got to wash your hands on the way out of the room. And we did that because we couldn't

do some of the other things that are ubiquitous in hospitals. Like, we couldn't all wear masks all the time. You wouldn't see our faces if we wore masks as often as you should wear a mask in the hospital. So to underscore the need to stay hygienic and clean, we use the hand sanitizer in a lot of gloves. Again, we're not hunting for spoilers, but we are curious about you and your curiosity and your creative mind here. What are you hoping to show with Robbie in future seasons or do with him in a second 15-hour shift?

I think that, you know, just to use as an example, it wasn't just the collapse that was so meaningful is that he fell back on the shaman and that there is a glimpse of some belief system that was echoing or still, you know, in his brain. To me, that's the elegance of giving just a nugget every once in a while is in episode four, Robbie says, you know, that he's Jewish, but it's a throwaway line. And then in another later episode, somebody asks him about his talking to God and he says, oh, we haven't spoken in a while. Another episode, you find out he was raised by his grandmother, but he never mentions

his parents. So you've got three pieces of information that he's Jewish by faith, but it's an estrangement and it's tied more to a grandmother than it is to how he was raised by his parents. And then when he's on the floor in his deepest despair, he falls back on something that he recited with his grandmother for comfort every day. And it's a very basic prayer. And that was my way of showing him reaching for any lifeline he could find, even if it's a semblance of faith,

which felt really appropriate for the character. But again, it was just specific points, just to tell a sort of very subtle version of a story. And then in season two, whether that takes more prominence or not, we're discussing now. I wondered not to circle back too much of that one moment, but why Whitaker? Why is it the Whitaker that... That was another great conversation because it could have been anybody that walked in. But at the same time, when you're showing extremes, in that moment,

I want to see the youngest doctor whose first day and he's wide-eyed and he's naive and he's aspirational. to see what it looks like on the other end of your career. And that, to me, that polarity was really poignant. And who else could get Robbie up except somebody who has the innocence of believing that he can get Robbie up. The bloodhound, yeah. It's the, I throw a look at him like, as he extends his hand to me and said something that felt like, like, we need you out there, Captain. I remember thinking that Robbie would think, you really think you can help me.

That's so cute. That's so cute. Oh, and then we threw in that. I love that little beat. Garon and I always found something wonderful to play physically with each other. When he helps me in my feet, I just loved shoving him away from me. I just thought that was the most rabbi-esque thing I could do. As if that kid hadn't taken on enough bodily fluids over the course of the season. I also, I hate asking this, but I feel like, can he never use his real accent in an interview again? Because I feel like we, I just... Disconcerting, right? Yeah. First of all, this is an incredible American accent. Yeah. And I just think, you know, again, you know, you don't need to say who said this to you, but I feel like we would prefer it if he just stuck with it just for at least the next few years. It's, well, Shabana as well with her thick Australian accent.

And Tracy's an English woman. Oh, her accent's really good. Her accent's great. Yeah. Yeah, they're all phenomenal. It's when you work with actors who are doing an American accent on top of all the medical jargon and stuff, it's sort of like, okay, you're, that's the, you know, What's the Ginger Rogers?

Backwards and in heels. Now we're just doing it. Now we're just in the fancast. I want to ask a little bit about like the, at the end of this season, we find out that Whitaker sometimes stays upstairs. I think that there's a lot of unexplored space of the pit. You know, there can be kind of like a pit, like a hostel up there. You guys could have. That's the only time we left the floor except to go to the hill of pad.

And it was such an internal debate about whether to do it, whether that was a slippery slope. But we felt earned. Because there's a lot of students who are house insecure right now who are living. If they don't have a car, their couch surfing as they get through their medical education. It's a big problem. There's a lot of unhoused people going to USC. John Walsh's wife is involved in a project trying to get housing to students. So that was one of the storylines we cared a lot about.

Is it safe to assume that where Whitaker was staying on the higher floor, that's next to Dracula's layer? And we'll be seeing, that's an Easter egg, right? We'll be seeing in future seasons. Exactly. It's awfully creepy. I know Chris was, I feel, I'm sorry, I'm asking this for you, but I know Chris was particularly motivated by Dr. Collins' do not disturb functionality on her phone. Deep sleeper.

Very deep sleeper. Did that get kicked around at all? But also, that was an interesting choice because her character made such an impact, it's a beautiful performance, the relationships that she has with Robbie, with everyone, and she's very, very good. And then she really doesn't come back. And I wondered if that was, is that scheduling? Is that showing us how?

It was a, well, the whole end of the season is just removing bearing walls from Robbie's life. You know, he leaned so heavily on Collins and Langdon, and then you take them both away from him. He leaned so heavily on Dana, and then she becomes compromised. And then his one last relationship to Jake is severed when he can't save his girlfriend. So it's really, it was more of a, let's take away all this guy's support system and have him out there. If she had been there, I think she would have been maybe one of those voices that could have reached him. Yeah. And we didn't want them to be reachable.

Wait, last thing. Yeah. Obviously, the way that Pitfest plays out on the show is horrifying. I did have to ask you, who played Pitfest? What was the event? Because it does attract a very diverse crowd of like MDMA kids and clowns. Somebody posted that very question and called attention to just what a diverse group of people are coming through. I mean, it's beautiful.

A jam band? a new metal band. We're assuming it's a multi-stage. Yeah. I see. No, right. There's a balloon animal's. And we've got the petting zoo and the kid rides over here.

That's what the clown is for. And then all the kids doing MDMA and raving over here. It's a beautiful vision. During the afternoon, too. So it was kind of an afternoon rave. Noah, man, thank you so much for coming by. Oh, my goodness. I told you guys before.

Thank you. You were early champions of the show and you were beating the drum early. and I can't thank you enough for your enthusiasm and support. It really means a lot. We appreciate it. It meant a lot to us as people who think about this stuff and watch this stuff to have a show that thought this deeply and beautifully about serious things.

What you said a moment ago was what we were, was in our heads this whole time. We watch so much death on television, but we rarely have shows that consider what that means in our actual life. So thanks to all of you. My pleasure. My pleasure.

Thanks for coming on. Thank you.