Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for “The Pit” Season 2 Episode 3, “9am,” now available on HBO Max.
When storyline discussions began for Season 2 of “The Pit,” star and executive producer Noah Wyle and executive producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells wanted to honor Pittsburgh’s Jewish and Muslim communities nearly eight years after the October 2018 terrorist attack at the Tree of Life Synagogue that killed 11 people and injured six others.
In the third episode, “9 a.m.,” Weill’s Dr. Robinavich helps treat a Jewish patient (played by Irina Dubova) who suffered burns after being startled by fireworks. She later admitted that she suffered from PTSD from the gunshots she heard at the synagogue during the shooting.
“This seemed like a great opportunity because it was a very important event in the city of Pittsburgh,” says Wiley, who also wrote the episode. “When I began my research, the aspects of this incident that most moved me were the subsequent protests by the Muslim community and the way Pittsburgh’s Jewish community came together to grieve and mourn the loss. That has been the most underappreciated aspect of this story, and perhaps the one that offers the most hope moving forward.”
Patient Yana goes out of her way to bring up that it is the Muslim community that funds the funerals of those killed in hate crimes, thanking nurse Perla Alawi (Amielin Abellera).
“You can’t make a medical show set in Pittsburgh with a Jewish doctor and not touch on that,” Gemmill added. “We felt this was a very important story that needed to be told. There are important elements of it that haven’t been told or that haven’t been in the news as much. The fact that the Muslim community came together to pay for all the funerals, that’s information that needs to get out. We wanted to tell that part of the story and address the story itself.”
Weil said Robbie’s “lack of faith and perhaps desire to have faith” was touched upon in season 1 and was an issue they wanted to explore further, and one he also wanted to delve deeper into.
“We don’t talk about Robbie’s parents at all, but we do mention that he was raised by his grandparents, and Jana is his grandmother, so she’s a very familiar energy for Robbie,” says Weil. “There’s a level of relaxation and familiarity in their interactions that he rarely shares with others, because the cultural affinity, the sense of humor, the irony, the irony is there. All of that is shared, and his wariness is there. When she pokes holes in his journey and asks if this is a mid-life crisis or a cry for help, because he’s loosened up to her, it’s the first time in a series of earthquakes he experiences that he begins to doubt his own “determination.” ”
