The use of Louie Cloverfield, a longtime patient of the ER who is Black, to further the tensions between White characters, Whitaker, Robby, and Langdon, without adequately addressing the role of medical racism here is so frustrating. One of the last things Louie asked for was to be treated by Collins, a Black doctor whom he knew would help him out and give him the care he needed. Instead, Louie had been there since 4:00 AM and was tended to by an intern who was only a few days into his emergency medicine residency.
It is fortunate that Langdon stops by and addresses Louie's withdrawal symptoms, but it saddens me that Whitaker hadn't addressed that previously. Then, Langdon was pulled from triage and checks on Louie, who kept pulling off his pulse oximeter. Langdon is right there when Louie's blood oxygen levels are low and Louie becomes unconscious. But still, the primary physician assigned to handle his care did not address his needs in time (Whitaker), and another doctor was about to enable his addiction, which you could at best argue is treating his withdrawal in a very inappropriate manner (Robby, and in any case, I disagree with this interpretation. Robby has known Louie for a long time and in season 1 was still encouraging him to quit, yet in season 2 he takes a can of beer from some hospital visitor as a farewell gift. There was nothing medicinal about that gesture.). It is all the more frustrating when the show acknowledges medical racism, but it is apparently not a conscious effort or thread to show Whitaker and his biases, which match the ones he had against the Black sickle cell patient, Joyce, then brought up by Mohan in season 1. Additionally, even though Whitaker did not kill him, his first patient death was another Black man, Mr. Milton. There is an obvious through line here that the show could follow through on.
Plus, this show consistently has a lot of White patients/families getting significant storylines, while many of the people of color do not get as many, or they are essentially rendered to giving PSAs. Black patients especially are used to mention how representation matters (both Louie and the patient with the eating disorder, Phylicia), yet it falls so flat when they do not have Black healthcare workers there to address that, and the conversation just ends there. Now, Louie is dead, and it is about how Whitaker feels bad because there was nothing he could have done, and him being comforted, bringing up his own family history with alcoholism, when the one who ultimately suffered was Louie. Even Louie's own history and life, his deceased wife and unborn child are things we do not get to learn from his own mouth. The optics of the exploration of White characters at the expense of Black characters (multiple who do not show up this season, namely Collins and Kiara) is also annoying because I can feel people saying critiquing this is overreacting or being overly critical, or it is realistic for medical racism to occur, or whatever, but enjoying a show does not mean it is above criticism.
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