The Pitt Season 2 finally gives an answer to fans who have been hoping for a romantic relationship between Dr. Mel King and Dr. Frank Langdon since the very first season. The shipping has only gotten louder heading into The Pitt Season 2. But Taylor Dearden, who plays Mel on the HBO Max medical drama, has now come out and said pretty clearly what she and her co-star Patrick Ball actually think about the whole thing, and it is not quite what those fans are hoping to hear.In a recent interview with ScreenRant, Dearden was asked directly about the possibility of a romance between Mel and Langdon in The Pitt Season 2, and she did not say yes to it. Both she and Ball have talked about this already between themselves, she said, and they are both firmly in the same camp: these two characters are friends, not a love story waiting to happen.Dearden used a comparison that felt very personal and very real. She said one of her own closest friends is a straight man, and some of his friends are straight women, and the question she keeps coming back to is why that always has to be turned into something more."one of my best friends is a straight guy, and some of his friends are straight women, and it's just like, 'Why does that have to be a thing? Why can't we just be two people who are friends?'"She also pointed out something that she feels gets overlooked when people are busy shipping Mel and Langdon: the man is married with two children. "That's something I don't think Langdon or Mel would ever do," she said, making it sound like the very idea feels wrong to her at a character level, not just on paper.Both she and Ball felt they were putting something genuinely unusual on screen, a warm, caring, real friendship between a man and a woman, and were a little disappointed that so many viewers of The Pitt Season 2 defaulted to reading it as a romance waiting to happen. She said,"Both Patrick and I, we understand, but we're not bummed, but a little bit bummed, because it's like, 'Oh, we thought we were portraying a unique thing to see on TV, because you always see shipping, but you don't see platonic friends,' and we both kind of wanted that."She said she understood why people shipped them, but that The Pitt is not really the kind of show that does that kind of trope; thus, viewers will clearly not see something between them in The Pitt Season 2.Why does the friendship actually matter more?What comes through in the interview is that both Dearden and Ball see the Mel and Langdon dynamic as something genuinely valuable precisely because it is not romantic. Dearden talked about what both characters need right now in their lives, and the answer is not a love interest; it is a loyal, steady friend who shows up and stays.Langdon is coming back into the ER in The Pitt Season 2 after going through rehab for stealing pain medication, and he is finding that most people around him are hesitant or distant, but Mel is not. She is one of the only people who does not pull away from him even after he tells her the truth about what happened.On Mel's side, things are not easy either. Her sister Becca, whom she has always taken care of and whose presence has always been part of how Mel defines herself, is growing more independent and more separate from Mel's life. People in the ER still do not really know Mel or get her all that well, even though she has been there for months.And then Langdon comes back in The Pitt Season 2, who, for Mel, is a person she knew for only one shift more than ten months ago, but who made a real effort to understand her during that time. Dearden said that means everything to Mel, to have someone be curious about who she is rather than confused or impatient with her. That kind of connection, she said, is what both of them need right now more than anything else.What this means for where Mel's story is going in The Pitt Season 2The ScreenRant interview also touched on whether The Pitt Season 2 might explore Mel's love life at all, and Dearden's answer there was interesting, too. She told TV Insider in a separate interview that she has always seen Mel as an asexual character, and the romantic aspects of a relationship don't matter to Mel, while companionship and friendship will always be the important things in her life. And she stated that she has a number of friends who have an asexual orientation in her life, and she has always wanted to see that shown on TV as something that felt true and positive, rather than solely as a negative or incomplete portrayal.For this time, Mel is completely stressed out and busy with her issues, and adding additional complications of a romance would only create greater stress and burden for her. Mel's concerns and priorities at this time involve waiting to hear about the outcome of a deposition that was related to a malpractice lawsuit, trying to come to terms with Becca having her own life, and adjusting to working in a poorly run shift.Her relationship with Langdon is going to be very straightforward and stable as opposed to some sort of love story type will-they-won't-they relationship, based on what Dearden mentions will be portrayed in The Pitt Season 2.