Bitter Pill begins with a bunch of teenagers abusing drugs when one of them dies at basketball practice. Quincy (Jack Klugman) conducts the autopsy and determines the presence of lookalike drugs in his system which interacted with a preexisting condition and killed him. This brings to light the problem of lookalike drugs and the legal loopholes that enable their wide availability. When another teenager dies after overdosing on real drugs which he thought were the lookalikes, this leads Quincy and a group of parents to protest at a local store selling them to the public while also pleading with government officials to do something to address the problem.
We have already seen multiple episodes in this series dealing with teen drug abuse and the potentially deadly effects, so by now this is an overused story that I'm tired of seeing. Perhaps the writers and production crew were running out of ideas at this point, but they still could have done much better than this recycled script. It's a shame because there are some very good guest stars in this one including Simon Oakland, George DelHoyo, William Smithers and Peggy McCay of Days of Our Lives fame featured, but with a tired old story filled with speeches and lots of hand wringing over drug abuse their talents are wasted here.
If that wasn't bad enough, we have the most ridiculous scenes where Quincy goes into the store and starts destroying all of the property and inventory on the premises. When he is taken to jail, Dr. Asten (John S. Ragin) quietly bails him out and he is right back to work and protesting. On what planet would this happen? Any public official who broke the law in such a violent manner would have been fired on the spot and there would have been a media frenzy, but not in this goofy episode.
Overall this is a pretty bad Season 7 entry which I do not recommend watching unless you wish to see the Quincy series at its worst.