ER in 2025 i guess

Carter, internally: please say you own me please say you own me please say you own me please say you own me—

ER S01E25 - Everything Old is New Again

Carter finding out what Benton said about him in his evaluation

he can really only accept his residents/students when they're doing exactly what he wants them to do. when langdon is able to be the "best resident," they're on great terms, but as soon as langdon shows weakness, robby takes it personally in a very unhealthy way and isn't able to display any of the compassion he does for his patients (and as many people have said before, it's incredibly telling that langdon didn't think he could ask for help; robby's reaction proves that he was right to be scared to tell the truth). when langdon "fails" him, he immediately switches his attention to whitaker.

he pushes collins to do something she's uncomfortable with and which has huge risks for her and only relents after a lot of pushback from her; this is one of the only times he backs down, and i think that's 100% because of their past relationship. he is really terrible to cassie about the david thing (making her face him in the last couple of episodes even though that can only inflame the situation? he's punishing her in the way we see him do langdon by putting him on triage when he comes back). he consistently gives samira a hard time for doing the exact same things he does, he doesn't pay attention to mel. the only times he really praises samira, mel, cassie are in the midst of/immediately after the mci which was a time when there wasn't time/space for any of the characters' personalities to emerge in the same way they did beforehand. everyone was in crisis mode, so he was able to see their strengths instead of becoming irritated with the way they do things differently (or in samira's case, exactly the same way) as he does.

and he doesn't take care of himself, either, leading to his breakdown in pedes.

so this season we're going to have all of these chickens come home to roost. langdon's done a lot of work and is on the right track (i assume we'll find out that things are still rough for him, but he's clearly changed a lot) and robby can't handle that because he feels (incorrectly) that it's an indictment of him. he takes everything too personally and he resents it. you've got samira who has a real mentor arriving in the form of al-hashimi (they hugged!) and robby is already set up to resent al-hashimi so there's no doubt this is going to widen the rift between him and samira. he (along with everyone else) has totally missed out on what's going on with mel, and she's going to reach her crisis point too. i don't know yet what's going to happen with cassie or trinity or victoria, but i assume something will.

and then you've got whitaker, who has basically turned himself into a mini-me of robby, directly quoting him on multiple occasions, taking on a kind of authority that he really hasn't earned. i think we're going to see this blow up in whitaker's face in some way (unclear how).

and on top of all of this, robby is in such a rough place that he's riding around without a helmet (contrasted with the bike guy and langdon's "you should always wear a helmet) in what has to reveal some suicidal tendencies. going to head-smashed-in buffalo jump? can we be any more on the nose? (i love it.)

Because, of course, Robby is Langdon's mentor, the way Adamson was Robby's mentor. (And of course it's a boy's club, but that's another post!) And Robby clearly feels like he failed Adamson. During this shitstorm of a shift from hell on the day Adamson died, he finds out that Langdon didn't feel comfortable coming to him about his addiction, didn't trust him. Added onto that, Langdon sees through Robby and is quite viciously truthful about Robby's poor mental health in a way no one else is at the hospital.

So I think the avoidance and harshness of Langdon isn't a complete picture if you don't take in Robby's guilt complex, and fear of the mirror that Langdon holds up to him, along with everything else. Their confrontation at the end of season 1 was so delicious precisely because of the layers in it, and the amount of vitriol on both sides, since Robby unfairly blames Langdon for Robby's breakdown.

And now, Langdon finally wants to have an honest conversation with Robby, but Robby's slid into actively suicidal, so he's even less capable of doing that. Ironically, it's the same reason he feels he failed Langdon in the first place.

Furthermore, I don't think this post goes at all into the seriousness of what Langdon did. Langdon should have lost his license. He was on drugs while treating critical patients. He was stealing drugs from patients, directly endangering patient care ieg. people's lives.

And Robby protected and covered for him. Robby almost flushed Langdon's stolen pills! But since the pills were Louie's, it would endanger patient care not to return them, so that's what Robby did, still effectively covering Langdon stealing pills. Which makes Robby culpable, too. That's very bad!!

And when told to go to rehab, Langdon threw Robby's breakdown in his face.

So I think that it's understandable that Robby isn't saying "Hey, good to have you back!" Like just imagine your boss being five seconds from flushing your stolen drugs down the toilet after you've been high while treating critically injured people. That's a huge part of the baggage between them right now.

And also a huge sign of how much Robby does care about Langdon. He's willing to go against the law for him, just like he was for that patient who wanted an abortion. So this is where I disagree: It's not just the patients that Robby will put himself on the line for and have compassion for, and really, Robby's reaction of anger is justified in the face of what Langdon did.