Wyle hints at Robby and Dana’s friction being the tip of a future iceberg: “Some of the stuff that was going down between Robby and Dana plays a big part in season three in terms of what makes Robby tick.” The finale also deliciously withholds any sense of closure to the season-long tension between Robby and Langdon, his protégé turned problem child.
“I loved how we paced that [arc] because there were so many lovely nuances to it,” Wyle says, breaking down the beats. First, Robby claims he doesn’t want to have to “deal with” Langdon’s return; then he tells Langdon he can’t trust him. The truth is more complicated, Wyle says, paraphrasing Robby’s inner monologue: “I don’t know if I can trust you, because you’ve done work on yourself that I’m not willing to do. So you’re kryptonite to me right now—coming back here as a fully actualized, healed, sober human being, and looking at me in the state that I’m in is like holding a mirror up to a junkie.” Having walked the penitent road, Wyle suggests, Langdon is coming back and saying to Robby, “Your turn.” And in the episode’s final scene, Langdon “says the thing that keeps [Robby] from going over the edge, which is, ‘I went to rehab and all I saw was you.’”
But back to Robby and the ladies: Wyle realizes Robby’s behavior with Dr. Mohan, played by Supriya Ganesh, is less defensible. “Mohan’s a little trickier,” he says, “because I don’t know that he’s right in his methodology with her, but ultimately, I don’t think he’s wrong either. She’s needing an exterior catalyst to get her in line, and he’s just trying to be a little tough love-y, but it’s a bit of a dinosaur technique.”
When I sat down with Wyle, it was two weeks before the announcement that Ganesh won’t be returning for season three, but he explained the mindset behind the show’s ever-shifting cast when we spoke about Tracy Ifeachor not returning as Dr. Collins in season two.
“We’ve always designed the show to be a revolving door,” Wyle says. “There’s going to be characters that don’t come back next year. There’s going to be characters that’ll come back after the end of season three. There’s going to be new characters we’re bringing in next year by design to tell another version of a story that we feel is important. All of this stuff is part of the fabric. The hard part is when you develop these relationships and these bonds with your cast members. We saw Tracy the other night at the SAG Awards when we were up onstage together. And it’s lovely to be able to celebrate the achievement that we all had together.
“And you never know,” Wyle teases. “If the show goes many years, characters could come back.”
Ask Wyle to look ahead to the future, and the furthest he goes is about a half-mile across the lot, to some of the most hallowed ground on the premises—the offices of Malpaso, Clint Eastwood’s production company, headquartered here since Eastwood left Universal for Warner Bros. in 1975. Wyle jokes that he’s had his eye on it “for the last thirty-five years. And I’m not telling him to go. I’m not hurrying him out or anything. I’m just saying, it’s a nice bungalow.” Whenever Eastwood retires, Wyle sees himself as a worthy successor to that space, ideally continuing to produce and star in more envelope-pushing content for the studio.