“Give me libirum or give me meth” — Leonard Frey‘s Harold in William Friedkin and Mart Crowley‘s The Boys in the Band (’68).

I was completely taken and fascinated with R. Scott Gemmill‘s The Pitt during the first nine episodes, but in episode #10 something happened that really pissed me off — something that felt a teeny bit wokey by way of anti-white-male bias. It made me pull back emotionally.

I’m speaking about Patrick Ball‘s Dr. Frank Langdon, a brilliant, highly-stressed, wrapped-too-tight E.R. doctor, having illegally and unethically used librium — a chill drug — to take the edge off.

Technically known as chlordiazepoxide, librium, according to WebMD, “produces a calming effect on the brain and nerves, which helps to reduce anxiety symptoms and promote relaxation.”

It was obviously not cool and a blatant violation of the Hippocratic Oath for Langdon to have occasionally dosed himself. But in the greater scheme of things, taking librium isn’t that different from popping an occasional valium. It didn’t strike me as that big of a deal.

Did Langdon need to face up to a potential health issue or worse? Yes, but aside from making him detour into stridency or excitability, taking lithium wasn’t interfering with his abilities or duties. Not as dramatized, at least. It would have been far worse if Langdon had been drinking, say, or taking morphine as a stress-alleviator. Langdon is a first-rate physician. He was just moderately medicating.

If I was a fellow doctor in this situation and I’d discovered what Langdon was up to, my first and only response would have been to speak with him after-hours. I would say “Frank,this really has to stop and not only that, you have to seek counsel from an outside doctor, or perhaps even from a psychologist. But it has to stop, and on a provable basis. You can’t jeopardize your career like this.”

I would add the following: “If you don’t take immediate steps to remedy this situation I’m definitely going to report this matter to our supervisor (Noah Wyle‘s Dr.’Robby’ Robinavitch). I don’t want to torpedo you, Frank — you’re too good of a doctor to just be thrown over the side by a mistake. But this has to stop now.”

So what happens? Langdon’s adverse relationship with a rookie female doctor quickly turns petty and vindictive, and the shit hits the fan.

Isa Briones‘ Dr. Trinity Santos, an assertive feminist firebrand who’s only been working in “the Pitt” for a few hours, gets wise to Langdon’s behavior. She and Langdon have already developed a dislike for each other, partly because he’s been overly critical and scolding of some of her judgment calls. So not long after she discovers his librium problem, she tattle-tales to Dr. Robby. And then Robby, ignoring the fact that Langdon is one of the two or three best physicians he has in the E.R., angrily tells Langdon to “go home”. No warnings, no scoldings….just “fuck you, you’re done.”

If someone is really good — brilliant, amazing — at a tough and demanding job, the fair-minded thing is to give him or her a chance to man up and fix a personal problem. If he/she fails to correct it, then you lower the boom. It would be one thing if Langdon’s librium-chipping was causing medical mistakes or jeopardizing the well-being of patients, but that’s not the case.

So now I don’t like Dr, Robby any more. Noah Wyle‘s performance is awesome and he’ll almost certainly win an Emmy, but I don’t like how Dr. Robby reacted. In my mind he threw a good man under the bus for insufficient cause.

And I really don’t like Isa Briones. And I’m not the only one who feels this way. When Briones/Santos confides her concern about Langdon’s unethical behavior to Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), the latter says “I don’t want to hear about it…I don’t want to know this!” And then she adds, rather angrily, “You’re trouble.”