I don't typically think of a Chekhov's gun catching the viewer off guard. Somewhat by definition, a Chekhov's gun is something that you're supposed to notice and keep in mind as the story progresses (whether it's very obvious or not). But The Pitt did something really interesting in its second season. It introduced a "gun" early on, in the first episode. The gun then reappeared numerous times throughout the season and was mentioned frequently. And it ultimately "went off" in the finale, where its implications touched the show's main character, Dr. Robby.
I'm talking, of course, of Baby Jane Doe.
Season 2 does a great job of making you think that the motorcycle is the gun. In fact, at some point it stops feeling like a subtle hint and more of a blatant reminder. "Robby rides without a helmet! He's depressed! He's got a death wish!" It becomes so obvious a Chekhov's gun that I found myself grimacing a bit at the sloppiness, even as the story itself treated Robby's mental health crisis with increasing care.
It was only hours after finishing watching the episode that it occurred to me that Baby Jane Doe had been the real Chekhov's gun all along. Introduced in the first episode, she recurs at the edges of most of the season. After all, she is not a particularly difficult case medically speaking. She's a baby! She's generally healthy! But she's been abandoned and it's unclear who can care for her. And this fires in the final moments of season 2, with Robby holding her close and soothing her, in a way that seems like he's really soothing himself.
There are three babies in the season 2 finale and Robby softens with each one.
We see him tear up after saving a mother and baby under the most intense of circumstances. We see him softening with Whitaker, when Amy and Theo come to pick him up, perhaps imaging a future that could have been. And we see him tenderly hold an abandoned baby and tell her that she's going to be okay, that she'll be loved, and that there's so much yet ahead of her.
Three babies. Three opportunities to demonstrate a particular kind of love that Robby very clearly wishes for. In season 1, we see him much more positively in a father-figure role than in season 2. He gets called on it directly, in the context of how he would teach/impress himself upon his mentees (by Duke, Mohan, Langdon, and Al-Hashimi). He's less patient with the med students and his staff. And there's the explicit absence of Jake, the son-figure. So when we see him with each of the encounters with babies in S02E15, it feels extra meaningful. When speaking with Mohan, he even says how he thought he'd have two kids in college by now. She later asks if it's a real, honest story, and he evades her, smiling instead. But it's hard to imagine that it's entirely made-up, given everything we see in the episode.
The finale also offers another Chekhov's gun of sorts. We see Dana running around and asking who can foster Baby Jane Doe, with the doctors all shifting away. In the end, it's not hard to imagine that Robby could volunteer for this task, instead of going on the motorcycle sabbatical from which everyone is trying so hard to dissuade him. I don't know that he would, but he could. And there's a ray of light in that too (literally seen behind Robby's head, painted on the wall). There's hope for Baby Jane Doe and there's hope for him.
