This week I’m analyzing some of the new Fall TV shows– medically speaking.

I’ve always been a fan of James Spader. No one does evil genius as good as he does.

The Blacklist is set up similarly to Hannibal (the first Anthony Hopkins movie) in the sense that he is a criminal mastermind and for some reason, as yet undiscovered, is only willing to talk with an FBI ingenue about criminal plots that he is aware of.

In one of the early episodes, the two attend a fund-raising event for a human rights advocate who is being targeted for murder. It just so happens that she’s really trafficking humans and thus perhaps is justly murdered to prevent her from continuing this criminal enterprise. Of course, the young FBI agent is a big fan of this woman and has written papers about her humanitarian efforts.

When the trafficker’s secret is exposed, James Spader’s characters says:

“She’s been given a lethal cocktail of the same barbiturates she used to drug her children. I have the antitode.”

Then the FBI agent proceeds to do the pen to the trachea maneuver to help her breathe.

And my eye-rolling begins.

First of all– what are the barbiturates? These would be drugs like amytal sodium (AKA a supposed truth serum drug), phenobarbital and Seconal. Oh, by the way, there is not an “antidote” for this type of overdose. There are only two antidotes for overdoses and they are Narcan for opiates and Flumazenil for Benzodiazepines (like Valium).

The purpose of an emergency tracheotomy (the pen to the throat for breathing) is to bypass an upper airway obstruction. The effects of an OD of barbiturates is a decrease in breathing or breathing cessation but the airway is not obstructed. To “save” this patient– all our trusty FBI agent needed to do was give her mouth to mouth and all that extra blood could have been avoided.

You can read more about Barbiturate OD here.