OK, if Robby *is* a misogynist let's talk about Jack for a minute
Personally I subscribe to the school of thought that Robby is a 50-ish year old man with certain biases that he appears to try to address for the most part, but sometimes he does that badly and boy ain't that just so human of him? I've never thought he's a misogynist, but a lot of people do. And I do love a good thought experiment, so I'm going to do some extrapolating and philosophising about what that means for night shift's fav Dr Jack Abbot.
First off, let's set some parameters for this experiment. I'm thinking entirely about the on-screen, in-universe stuff here. I'm disregarding interviews, potential biases in the writer's room and in production (which IS an interesting and important discussion, but one that should be had when I'm not in such a silly mood), and any and all mention of how Robby treats Samira (because atp it seems very few people can engage on that particular topic without losing their actual minds, and I happen to actually agree with most of you about it!)
Secondly, I'm only like 10% serious about any of what I'm about to say. I've had a thought and I'm running with it till it leads me somewhere interesting. Everything here comes with the heavy caveat that I love Jack and I'm a Robby apologist first and foremost.
Okay, good.
Hypothesis: Jack treats women way worse than Robby does.
Data:
"I got it with my eyes closed. But I won't. Well, maybe one eye". Aka the line that's set me off about this in the first place, because WHAT? Can you imagine the fan reaction if Robby said this?? Tumblr would actually explode, I think. That is the most casual dismissal from a senior male doctor towards a female patient on the entire show! She's in pre-eclampsia, she and her baby might die, and her doctor is winking at her?? That's some bedside manner, Jack! (I actually love this, because it just goes to show that Jack is as much of a train wreck as Robby is in a lot of respects. But come on now, this is not hinged behaviour, this is very much unhinged)
His introduction to Mel. Wowee. Mel is new on the job and she's excited and enthusiastic when she introduces herself (because she's Mel!) and Jack gives Robby the most withering look and says "Yeah? Talk to me at the end of the shift" like she's an idiot to be so full of joy. Obviously, Jack was about to throw himself off the building about 10 minutes ago because his own shift triggered some personal trauma, so I think some leeway is in order (*cough* and what leeway does Robby get on the trauma front, I wonder??). What's interesting to me is that Robby is often accused of dismissing Mel (which is fair, because he does literally walk away from her when she's talking), but I've never seen anyone talk about how Jack treats her. And what Jack never does (that I can remember), but Robby does do is check in with Mel, give her positive feedback about her work, (attempt) to talk to her about her worries over the deposition on three separate occasions. So like, if we're going for overall, I think Jack treats Mel poorly in comparison to Robby.
Jack gives zero shits about the day shift workload after the IT hack. He tells McKay (?I think it's McKay anyway) point blank that she needs to get things sorted, and even does a passive aggressive little tip-tap of the clipboard about it. OK, Mr Empathy. Interesting that he's just doing his job and advocating for the night shift here. I think if the tables were turned, and Robby was on someone's case about getting their work done... oh wait. That happened with Santos and people literally accused him of abusing her.
There will definitely be more than 3 examples, but I'm getting too tired to think of them (OMG "I'll call our utensils specialist" is another classic!)
But even with these 3 (4), I'm noticing a pattern. And that is cherry picking. I can cherry pick examples of Jack acting like a dick in a woman's general direction. And I can cherry pick examples where Robby either did the same thing, or acted better in comparison.
Also, I didn't intend this to be a Robby defense post, but apparently that's just what I'm programmed to do. Let's set that aside for one minute, though.
I could use all these examples to call Jack a misogynist. But I won't well maybe with one eye. Because I think he's just someone who doesn't give two shits about what people think of him, and the fact that 50% of the population are women means that sometimes they'll be caught up in his nonsense.
Ultimately, I think Jack is just as complex as any other character on the show. I think he contains multitudes, and within those multitudes are instances of him acting with a shitty attitude towards women. But it's so interesting to me that I've never seen anyone pick up on that. And I'm not saying anyone should have. But the "Robby is a misogynist" discourse has been rumbling on for ages. And people do have good points to make on both sides. But why is the conversation solely focused on one character? Even when people do talk about production bias (which I know I said we weren't going to talk about, but now we are) there's a very strong trend towards a) blaming Noah particularly, and b) only referring to instances of Robby's biases, whilst plenty of the other male characters do questionable stuff too. I have my own theories about why that is, but I'll keep those for another time...
In summary: Does Jack treat women worse than Robby does? No, not really. Is it worth thinking about this more? Maybe. Should we boycott Jack? No, he is a beautiful, grumpy man and we should be more grateful for the beautiful grumpy men of The Pitt
