So Long, "ER"

I watched the very first episode of ER when it aired, back in September of 1994. I was still living in Arizona at the time. When the buzz was first going around about it, the big news was that it was a TV series created by Jurassic Park writer Michael Crichton. That was creating excitement for some. For me, as a big-time fan (as a kid, even) of St. Elsewhere, this was a promise of the return of medical drama to NBC.

Loved the pilot, had my mind blown by it. This had zero cheese in it! It felt completely real. The characters were all very non-network, believable and identifiable. The medical parts were clearly very, very well-researched with great attention paid to every detail. And the drama was so compelling you couldn't take your eyes off this thing. I had definitely found a new show.

It was an obsession of mine for quite some time, too, one that followed me back to Sacramento. One of my roommates (soon after to become my only roommate), Aaron, started watching it with me, and once he and I left the house we shared with the other guys and got an apartment, it was a major part of our joint TV-watching schedule - particularly since it was part of the line-up that comprised the golden age of NBC's "Must-See Thursdays" (with Friends and Seinfeld in there, both at the height of their popularity).

It also went with us when we moved to San Diego. But things started to wane there. With original cast members leaving and new ones coming in, Aaron started to lose interest, and I'd end up watching it myself. At some point, circumstances caused me to walk away, too - can't remember exactly why, but it probably had something to do with having too much other TV to watch, plus all the basketball (I was in my certified NBA junkie period back then). I think it was around season seven when I let it go. I was sad to, but it was starting to look less and less like the show I'd started out with, and I figured with it having gone on so long, it wouldn't be around the much longer anyway.

Oops.

We're coming up on the end of the fifteenth and final season of ER. Fifteen years. No too shabby. I still haven't watched the show since I walked away, with the exception of the big event that was the final Mark Greene episode in season eight, but have occasionally glimpsed its progression through promos for upcoming episodes - watching as the entire main cast was replaced with newbies (played by some actors that I really like, though, from their other work) and getting that sort of sad feeling of knowing that something I was so close to moved on without me, and now belongs others, not to me.

It was one of those promos this past week that made me set the DVR for last night's episode. With the show finally closing up shop for good, they decided to take an episode to have some of the former cast ("All your favorites", the commercial promised) return one last time. Noah Wyle's Dr. Carter had (from what I gather) already come back this season (he was the last of the original doctors to leave the show - I think that was about four years ago?), and for some reason, he's about to have a kidney transplant. The ad showed me my old pals Carol Hathaway (played by Julianna Margulies) and Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), and that was good enough for me. George Clooney was not shown, leaving an obvious impression of "Right, like they could afford HIM for something like this". Still, though, I remembered the final Carol episode, way back in season six - she was having to choose to stay or to go be with Doug (Clooney) in Seattle. In the end, she leaves and gets on a plane. We see her going around the back of his house to find him, and we see a figure out on the boat dock, his back to us, and quite a ways away. I was thinking, then, how I felt kind of ripped off, since they were obviously just using some actor in a sweater to represent him, since Clooney had already left the show and gotten too big for TV. But, low and behold - he turned around, and there was Clooney. It would have been such an insult to the fans to not be given that moment, and I think Clooney knew that. So while setting up the DVR for this, I started wondering if maybe they might be pulling something like that again...

Well, it would have been a nice surprise, but unlike the last time this happened, there's the internet. Oh, we had the internet in 1999, sure (where else were we going to spread Y2K doomsday predictions?), but it wasn't anything like it is now. So last night, just as I was about to go start some dinner and watch the ER ep, I stopped off at my My Yahoo page to check something, and spotted the entertainment news headline - "Clooney Returns to ER". Spoilers! Arg! Ah, well. Would have been a fun surprise, but I wasn't going to let that ruin my enjoyment.

Watching this big reunion ep was a surprisingly emotional experience for me. This is likely because I have the first three seasons on DVD, and just recently finished up season three, so the memories and the impressions of these characters are close, not something ten years in my past. Just as watching those seasons again brought back all my feelings about the show and these characters and reminded me how much I loved them, seeing them like this, not as ghosts from reruns but their characters in present day, having aged and moved on with their lives as I have, made me feel like I, myself, was reunited with them, catching up with old times.

I was very pleased with how the story got put together. Once I saw the "Carter needs a transplant" plot on the commercial, I just assumed that was the dramatic catalyst to get all these characters to fly back to Chicago and be there for him. Not so. "ER" has always been about capturing real life, and real life doesn't always work that way. So Carter wasn't even reunited with Carol and Doug. Our look at them came with cutting to the hospital in Seattle where they, now married and with kids, both work, with Doug as chief of surgery (or something...I can't recall) there. A pair of the new ER cast members from back in Chicago were there waiting to pick up and fly back a heart for transplant, and Carol and Doug were having to try to convince a grandmother (guest star Susan Sarandon) that her brain-dead grandson is really gone and that his organs can save the lives of others. Very old-school "ER" situation, and seeing Doug and Carol back in one like it was fantastic. A favorite moment of that sequence is when Doug goes into the break room for coffee and talks with the new cast members, finding out they're from County back in Chicago. He asks about different doctors, all names familiar to ER fans, only to find that none of them are there anymore (except Dr. Anspaugh. Hey, Donald's still in the house!) and that the newbies haven't even heard of them. That moment rung to true to anyone who's ever found someone who works at a place where they, themselves, used to. I've done that. Just did that recently when I called a former insurance company I worked at and asked the adjuster there about some names. No one still around. People move on. Life moves on. And co-workers rarely keep in touch once they're no longer together every day.

What was great about the Seattle part was that a kidney was now available too, and Carter was the next one on the list. Doug and Carol ask the County docs if they can transport the kidney back with them, too, having no idea that it's for Carter. And they never know. In their final scene, with them in bed, Carol gets a call that lets them know the heart made it in time and saved the woman. And that the kidney made it, too, and went to "some doctor". Bravo. They play a major role in saving their (and our) old friend and don't even know it. That's "ER". Great reappearance by them, and a big thumbs-up for Clooney for once again showing that he remembers well, and respects, where he came from.

As much as I liked Carol and Doug, I was always about the John Carter / Peter Benton dynamic. Carter was our "eyes" when the show first began, an intern just starting out, and we followed him from the beginning of his career. And his resident was the very intimidating type-A doc known as Dr. Benton (I don't believe Carter ever called him by his first name throughout the run of the show, and thankfully did not in this ep either, as it would have felt wrong). Their up-and-down, often tense and often hilarious (but painfully so) professional relationship was one of the best parts of the early seasons. So seeing Benton (a surgeon there are Northwestern, where Carter was getting his transplant - another detail that I loved, because why would he have it done at the lower-rent County Hospital, realistically?) walk into Carter's room and surprise him was an amazing treat, as was seeing how they reacted to each other after all the history between them. It felt really right, a huge relief to me (as one of the old-schoolers suspicious of new writers who might not "understand" the characters as I, myself, of course do). What an awesome moment when Carter shows Peter a picture of his wife, and Benton's amused and surprised reaction - "You? YOU married a sister?". Awesome. I really soaked up the weight of these characters and all the many things they've been through - much of it that I went through with them - and felt heavy pangs of nostalgia...and my own age. Loved seeing their reunion, and also Benton's choice to want to be in the operating room as an observer, where we got treated to some old-school Benton as he schooled the cocky surgeon performing the operation. A great moment, as was their final one in the recovery room, where Peter talks Carter into calling his estranged wife to try to fix things. These characters, fifteen years later, are still saving each other as much as they're saving the patients.

As my expectations were low for this, not believing that it was going to "feel" right, I was pleasantly and gratefully surprised at how much it moved me. I also found myself smiling at finding out that several of the supporting cast are still hanging around, right up to the end - Chuny, Jerry, Haleh...all old friends of mine too, and as important to the run of this remarkable show as the big names. I'm really glad I decided to step back into this world, even if only for an evening. Once I can justify the spending, I plan to keep picking up these seasons, first reliving all my favorite eps from the past, then moving on to the new tales and new characters to find out if they'll click with me like the old ones did. Looking back on all the shows I've watched over the years, and all the ones I've come to call my favorites, "ER" still stands out as #1. It raised the bar for TV drama so much higher, and challenged network television to live up to its example. Like so many other people in these final days of it, I'm thankful for "ER", wish it a very warm and fond good-bye, and will miss it. Thanks for the memories, guys. Thanks for everything.

Now get me a CBC, Chem 7 and chest x-ray. Stat.

MOVE, people!