\n\tR.I.P. Mohabbot.<\/p>\n
\n\tEarly this month, Variety broke the news that Supriya Ganesh, who plays Dr. Samira Mohan on HBO<\/a>\u2019s medical drama \u201cThe Pitt<\/a>,\u201d was departing the show after the second season<\/a>. Per executives, Ganesh was written off for storyline purposes, leaving fans to mourn the beloved character. With her character arc ending abruptly, much of Mohan\u2019s story remains unfinished, including potential future plotlines in which she might find her speciality post-residency, explain her family lore, make friends at the hospital and, perhaps most importantly (depending on the fan) explore her connection with night-shift attending physician Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy).<\/p>\n \n\tDespite only sharing a few scenes, Mohan and Abbot (or simply Mohabbot to fans) are one of the show\u2019s most popular \u201cships,\u201d which, if you\u2019re new to fandom lingo, is how couples are referred to. Sparking after a Season 1 encounter in which Abbot championed Mohan\u2019s medical skills, the ship joined the legion of other \u201cPitt\u201d pairings yet to set sail.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tMohabbot is one ship among many. There\u2019s also KingDon \u2014 Mel King (Taylor Dearden) and Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), HuckleRobby (Noah Wyle<\/a>\u2019s Dr. Robby and Gerran Howell\u2019s Dennis Whitaker) and McVadi (Victoria Javadi, played by Shabana Azeez and Cassie McKay, played by Fiona Dourif), to name a few. Characters are not restricted to one ship; Robby and Abbot are another popular pair. Dr. Robby and Dr. Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) from Season 1 are one of the few ships that actually have a basis in the show\u2019s storyline, in addition to Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) and Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz). Getting overwhelmed? Us too.<\/p>\n \n\tPart of what makes the couplings of \u201cThe Pitt\u201d unique is the plethora of pairings to choose from \u2014 and the fact that the show, which takes place in an understaffed and overfilled emergency room, barely features anything that might suggest romance is blossoming. Mohan and Abbott do little more than share one somewhat private conversation during a particularly tense shift (granted, he\u2019s shirtless for it); the same can be said for KingDon, McVay and the rest (though all remain clothed, in those cases). The lack of source material hasn\u2019t stopped fans of the show \u2014 rather, it\u2019s made it all the more fun to analyze, speculate and imagine what might be going on outside of the singular 15-hour shift we get to see.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cIt\u2019s kind of a wish fulfillment, but it\u2019s also a way to keep the narrative going,\u201d explains Susan Murray, a professor of media, culture and communication at NYU. \u201cThere\u2019s only so much narrative that you\u2019re going to get from the show, because the season\u2019s done. That\u2019s it. That\u2019s all that exists\u2026 But if you\u2019re a fan on that level, you can continue a story by fantasizing, or projecting, or imagining.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tShipping fictional characters is hardly a new phenomenon; it\u2019s one of the oldest fan practices in the book, according to Paul Booth, a professor of \u202fmedia and pop culture at DePaul University. As for why, \u201cthe general consensus is there is no general consensus,\u201d he explains. Yes, the fact that it\u2019s fun to picture attractive people in a relationship plays a role, though there\u2019s an emotional element, too \u2014 if two characters complement one another, it makes sense that fans would root for them to get together.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tCamille \u2014 who runs the Instagram account @thepittdetails<\/a>, and asked to be identified by only her first name \u2014 says that shipping characters makes the show easier to converse about. \u201cIt\u2019s watercooler talk. You gotta have something to talk about, especially on a show like \u2018The Pitt,\u2019\u201d <\/strong>says the co-host of the \u201cThe Pitt Crew\u201d podcast. \u201cI don\u2019t know what lung sliding is! The majority of the people who watch the show have no idea what the heck is going on. What you\u2019re paying attention to is the personal conversations happening during these scenes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAnd while there\u2019s no way to know what TV shows will be enlisted into shipping discourse, there are two elements that are typically present in media that tends to garner dedicated fans, explains Booth. \u201cOne is a set of three-dimensional characters, so people or characters within a narrative that feel like they\u2019re real and that feel like they could exist outside of the narrative,\u201d he said. \u201cThe second thing is a deep narrative\u2026 there has to be some grounding in the human experience.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tIn the case of \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d both are applicable, thanks especially to the series\u2019 devotion to creating an ensemble medical drama that is much more capital R realistic than its forerunners. Compared to hospital-set hall-of-famers like \u201cER\u201d and \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy,\u201c \u201cThe Pitt\u201d keeps a focus on the medicine by portraying the authentic, entirely un-glamorous life of the ER staff without wasting precious time showing the employees sleeping with one another in on-call rooms, or placing their hands inside a patient\u2019s chest to steady a bomb that could explode at any moment.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThis, paired with the show\u2019s real-time format (each season is simply one 15-hour shift in the ER), creates a near-perfect passion-attracting storm. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense when you\u2019re watching \u2018The Pitt\u2019 that you are almost looking through a window at a real day,\u201d says Booth. \u201cWhich, of course, makes it really fun to watch.\u201d (Jules Feliciani, who runs the Instagram account @weinthepitt<\/a>, points out that the format allows fans to \u201cget to know these characters, not super personally, but almost personally enough where you can connect with them.\u201d)\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tThe format has its limitations, though \u2014 the most obvious for fans with an inclination to ship is the sheer inability to develop romantic relationships over the course of a season. (X users often joke they\u2019ll have to hold out until Season 50 to get the first \u201cPitt\u201d kiss.) \u201cIt would be utterly awkward and not in the spirit of the show to try to develop a romance over the course of 15 hours,\u201d says Suzanne Scott, an associate professor in the Department of Radio, TV and Film at U. of Texas Austin. \u201cBut it also means that, by the nature of the format, there\u2019s so much time in between seasons, narrative time for these characters, that fans could sort of color in on their own.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBooth refers to this as \u201cfilling in the gaps,\u201d and in the case of \u201cThe Pitt,\u201d there\u2019s a lot left up to the viewer\u2019s discretion: characters\u2019 living situations, family relationships, building friendships, etc. It\u2019s not until the Season 2 finale that audiences get a glimpse at Langdon, Mel, Santos and new attending Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi outside of scrubs. Mel and Santos\u2019 post-credits karaoke scene is the first time we\u2019ve seen any of the characters beyond the four walls of the hospital or its immediate surroundings. Conversations are often left unfinished, thanks to the \u201cfrenetic nature of the ER,\u201d Murray says.\u00a0 \u201cA lot of things just don\u2019t get resolved,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of opening of possibilities rather than closing off of possibilities.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tSeason 2 has seen the plot lean into the show\u2019s popular pairings (which some might call \u201cfan service,\u201d or material intentionally added to please the audience): Langdon taking care of Mel\u2019s sister, Mohan tending to Abbot\u2019s wounds, Robby asking Whitaker to house-sit for him. When discussing the Mohan and Abbot scene, creator and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill told TVLine<\/a> that he \u201cleaned into\u201d the romantic subtext, calling it \u201ca flower tossed to the crowd.\u201d Though, at a certain point, it doesn\u2019t matter what occurs onscreen, explains Scott; \u201cSome of the enjoyment starts to become a little bit more divorced from what\u2019s actually going on in the show, because the fun is in the speculation.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tFans aren\u2019t the only ones with an opinion on the show\u2019s pairings. While Dearden and Ball have played coy about their onscreen connection, saying they view the relationship as platonic, Hatosy, for one, is all aboard the SS Mohabbot. In an interview conducted after news of Ganesh\u2019s exit went public, Hatosy told The Hollywood Reporter<\/a> that Abbot \u201cdefinitely has feelings\u201d for his co-worker and \u201cwill miss her,\u201d stating \u201cshe could go to Jupiter, and he\u2019ll find her\u201d \u2013 the type of swoonworthy remark you\u2019d expect to hear on a Shonda Rhimes show.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a real danger of doing that,\u201d according to Booth, who feels that actors expressing their opinions on the show\u2019s content could possibly alienate parts of their fanbase who don\u2019t watch the show in that way.<\/p>\n \n\tThere\u2019s also the fact that said fanbase is hard to pin down, and huge: Season 2 is averaging 15.4 million viewers per episode, Variety<\/a> reported. While other hit shows like \u201cHeated Rivalry\u201d or \u201cGrey\u2019s Anatomy\u201d have audiences easier to broadly categorize, demographically, \u201cThe Pitt\u201d doesn\u2019t fall under that umbrella; young fans make up a portion of the show\u2019s viewership, but the hit series appeals to viewers of all ages, some of whom are totally unaware of the wider world of fandom, shipping and vigorous discourse centered around the show.<\/p>\n \n\tSome observers are perplexed as to why a serious adult drama is attracting the level of fan scrutiny usually reserved for genre material. \u201cIs this your first time watching a TV show?\u201d is a common remark on X, fueled by pieces such as a SlashFilm article<\/a> titled \u201cMany \u2018The Pitt\u2019 Fans Are Proving That Yes, It\u2019s Possible To Be Bad At Watching A TV Show.\u201d The inter-fandom discourse goes beyond just shipping; cast members leaving, Wyle\u2019s comments to the press and on-screen plotlines are all subject to heated debates.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThere\u2019s often a sort of misconception that cult television fandom needs to be orbiting around [shows] like soaps or horror or sci-fi,\u201d says Scott. \u201cPart of the reason fans are getting as much coverage as they\u2019re getting at this moment in time is, in general, a sort of perceived disconnect because of that realism \u2014 like we are meant to just consume this and not speculate about it is the implication.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tBut to ask a fan to simply consume something is unrealistic. Fandom, whether people like to classify themselves as members or not, has existed as long as there\u2019s been entertainment, and extends beyond whatever TV show happens to be the current hit; athletes, sports teams, musicians, books, superheroes and more all have their avid fanbases. \u201cFans have long-standing reading practices,\u201d says Scott. \u201cAnd it doesn\u2019t matter what text they\u2019re approaching; they\u2019re going to approach a text with those reading practices kind of in their toolkit.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe Pitt,\u201d clearly, is not the singular exception to this. And that\u2019s got to be good news for HBO.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tAs Scott explains: \u201cFans are often the loyalest, most active promotional agents a television show can have, and those are two things you need in television \u2014 particularly at this moment in history.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n