Cracked, Not Broken: What Fictional Role Models Teach Us About Showing Up Anyway

We used to idolize the perfect hero: the infallible captain, the incorruptible detective, the genius surgeon who also somehow had time to be a flawless spouse. But perfection has aged poorly.

In the post-pandemic, post-truth, perma-crisis world, those characters feel like museum pieces. Today, we need a different kind of role model: someone who is bruised but functional, complex but committed. Someone who may wake up every day with ghosts and regrets—but still shows up, does the job, and does some good.

Fiction has quietly been supplying these characters for decades. They’re not always flashy, they don’t wear capes (however, there’s a new Superman movie coming out, btw), and most don’t get the kind of pop-culture canonization afforded to antiheroes or icons. But they endure. And maybe, just maybe, they show us how we can, too.

Let’s talk about five of them.

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Dr. Robby – Carrying the Weight, Still Healing Others

Dr. Robby, the steady hand at the center of The Pitt, doesn’t wear his pain like a badge—but you feel it in every sideways glance, every silence too long to be professional. He’s brilliant. A diagnostician with intuition honed by both experience and empathy. But he’s also wounded, maybe irreparably so. We’re never spoon-fed his trauma, but it seeps through: the failed relationships, the haunted look when patients remind him of someone he couldn’t save, the exhaustion.

And yet, he shows up. He’s not the charming cowboy doctor who breezes through surgeries with a wink. He’s the guy who stays late, who fights the system for his patients, who doesn’t flinch when the hard calls land on his shoulders. He’s functional. He’s reliable. He’s kind. And all of that despite—or maybe because of—his pain.

🎬 Watch This:
The Pitt, Season 1, Episode 4: “Second Opinions”
Robby goes to bat for a patient whose condition doesn’t fit the usual pattern. His intuition is right, but his choices cost him politically. It’s a portrait of someone who risks personally to do what’s right professionally.

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