Chicago Med Had Me On Ripley's Side For Being A Little Petty, But He Just Went Too Far For My Taste

Warning: spoilers ahead for Episode 6 of Chicago Med Season 11, called "The Story of Us" and available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.

Believe it or not, the fall finale of Chicago Med in the 2025 TV schedule is nearly here, but there were still some big developments in the penultimate episode of the year. Goodwin had a bombshell to drop on her kids while Bert lay dying, Frost was building a romance with Chicago Fire's Novak, and Lenox got a tattoo. But the storyline I'm stuck on is Ripley's, with the return of the lovely Sadie... and the less lovely resurgence of his pettiness about Hannah and Archer, which I was fine with up until a certain point in "The Story of Us."

Now, I wasn't rooting for Ripley to be the father of Hannah's baby when Archer was an option after the Captain Crunch foreshadowing, and Luke Mitchell's performance when Ripley got the painful news that he wasn't going to be a father after a few hours of getting excited about it was one of my favorite moments from the One Chicago 2025 fall premiere night. Even though I got my way with Hannah and Archer, I was on board with Ripley getting to be kind of petty. Who wouldn't be?

Even though he and Hannah were already broken up by the time Hannah and Archer spent a night together, it was just realistic that he'd act out a bit while having to work with both of them. Not too long after he'd told Hannah he loved her, she was pregnant with the child of their much older coworker. She didn't do him dirty, but who wouldn't have some commentary if they had to work with them both? I could give him a pass for not being perfect. I wouldn't support it in real life, but fiction is a different story.

Even though it wasn't a good look for either Archer or Ripley when they were clashing in the workplace, I got it, and it's nice to have realistic character beats in One Chicago when the crises can be over the top. But one comment from Ripley in "The Story of Us" has me decided that he's hit his limit of pettiness in the workplace, and it wasn't actually made to either Hannah or Archer.

Frost confided in Ripley that he'd asked Naomi out, only to be turned down because they work together. Ripley chose this method of trying to make the pediatric ED doctor feel better:

Okay, Ripley, that's officially enough! It was one thing when he was being snippy toward Archer, awkward around Hannah, and all around uncomfortable with the situation, but that snide remark to Frost while bringing Naomi into it rubbed me the wrong way. After what she went through last season, I'm just glad Naomi herself wasn't within earshot. He's officially out of leeway to be realistically petty, as far as I'm concerned, unless the story is going to follow him spiraling again and this is an early symptom of it.

And I can't rule that out, honestly. He and Sadie clearly weren't on the same page about how well their relationship was going, despite enjoying taking Emilia trick-or-treating in group costumes for Halloween. For her part, Sadie was more comfortable confiding in Hannah – who she knew was Ripley's ex – about her struggles with her recovery from the Season 10 ordeal, and Emilia calling him "Daddy" seemed to be the nail in the coffin.

The episode ended for them with Sadie telling him that he doesn't really love her, although she loves him. It didn't help that instead of reading her mood, he proposed that they all move in together. She just wasn't ready to put Emilia through getting close to Ripley, since she didn't think their relationship "would last." Ouch!

Well, one takeaway for Ripley might be that he should probably stop taking his love interests for walks along the Chicago River when he thinks their relationship is going swimmingly, because both Hannah and Sadie realized they needed to break up in the same place, months apart. The more pressing takeaway is probably that Ripley needs to work on himself as he processes the heartbreak. Whether he truly loved Sadie or not, he was clearly blindsided by the breakup, and he doesn't quite have a history of handling losses terribly well.

I will say that Luke Mitchell has been great to watch this season even though it's been rough for his character, and I could definitely see this episode as the beginning for Ripley to start spiraling again. I just hope that he's done with aiming his bitterness about Hannah and Archer in anybody else's direction. He's well past that point in the workplace.

Tune in to NBC on Wednesday, November 12 at 8 p.m. ET for the fall finale of Chicago Med, called "Double Down." Considering how the medical drama managed to deliver one of my top cliffhangers of the 2024-2025 TV season when Goodwin was stabbed in the Season 10 fall finale, I'm optimistic for whatever's in store next on Med.