The second season of HBO Max‘s The Pitt has been offering fans several tantalizing clues about what their favorite characters are getting up to in their personal lives off screen. However, in The Pitt Season 2 Episode 7 “1 PM,” two characters share a moment in the ED that could see them getting closer.
**Spoilers for The Pitt Season 2 Episode 7 “1 PM,” now streaming on HBO Max**
In The Pitt Season 2 Episode 7, Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) is laser-focused on helping uninsured diabetic patient Orlando Diaz (William Guirola) stay in the hospital until he’s had all the insulin he needs. She promises to scrounge up some free medical supplies for him to take home if he stays a little longer. When she returns to his bed, though, he’s gone. In his place? A shirtless Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) who very clearly seems to have a tiny bit of a crush on the younger doc.
Abbot plays up his macho cred as a SWAT medic, shrugging off the bullet graze he’s struggling in real time to treat by himself. When Samira, meanwhile, complains about how much the situation “sucks,” Abbot rushes to say he’s okay. She explains she’s actually upset about Orlando leaving and then Abbot chivalrously offers to pay for the Uber needed to courier the medicine to his house. Mohan finally notices Abbot and takes it upon herself to treat his wound. It’s a move that has both Robby (Noah Wyle) and Santos (Isa Briones) making curious glances in their direction.
DECIDER first learned from Shawn Hatosy last season that Dr. Abbot might have a little crush on Mohan “because of this respect that he has for her.” In Season 1 Episode 14, he encourages her to try a new South Korean procedure using a pigtail catheter to aspirate air that’s gotten caught in an injured patient’s heart.
“I love the scene, and I don’t mean it in like a creepy way, but it’s just a sort of a flirtation,” Hatosy said.
When Supriya Ganesh stopped by DECIDER’s midtown Manhattan studio last week, she confirmed that she and Hatosy played that scene with an undercurrent of flirtation. “It is a cool medical scene,” she said, “and we also made the decision to play it that way.”
This time, however, the flirtation is far less subtle and Ganesh thinks it might be a real moment of connection between the characters.
“I think that dynamic is just really fun to play with,” Ganesh said. “I think when we were doing the scene, it was really interesting because it feels like really that moment when he offers to pay for the Uber is really when they connect for the first time, maybe, because that’s like him really seeing her.”
“Up until then she’s just still thinking about the patient,” she continued, before acknowledging that Mohan’s also puzzled about Abbot. “‘Why is he here with his shirt off and is he okay? But what about my patient?‘”
“I think she’s really focused on Orlando. So really him connecting with her in that moment is really the thing that she cares about because it’s like, ‘Oh, this guy — I mean, this person who’s in a leadership position really — actually is supporting me.’ Which is not something she finds very much throughout the hospital at times.’”
Ganesh also revealed she personally pitched the idea behind Orlando’s story to The Pitt showrunner R. Scott Gemmill in between the show’s two seasons.
“I talked to Scott and I just said, ‘I think this is something I’m really passionate about,’” Ganesh said. “At the time, I think it was something they were already thinking about, but I really felt like this would be a storyline that’s great for Samira.”
“I think so many people in this country really struggle with what health insurance has become — and always has been in some ways — but I think especially now, there are so many people in our country that are uninsured that just fall between the cracks. The system just isn’t really working. And I think Samira is a great character to really tell that story,” she said.