ER nostalgia

I used to follow it with my dad. He would tape ER and NYPD blue and we'd sit down and watch it. Usually on a Saturday or some such.

I used to watch it a lot. I kind of lost interest once Greene died though. He was the heart of the show. I still watched after that, but I stopped a few years ago. It started getting pretty bad.

I just remember peeking in one time and finding out Weaver went lesbian and pregnant. Wha huh?

If there were a couple things I remember. I remember Sally Field as the crazy ass mom. Alan Alda as the doc with Alzheimers. The high school brawl while the janitors were on strike. And the Benzene freak out.

The first four seasons were great. Like Homicide, almost revolutionary television with a very cinematic feel. (Show had an energy that set it apart from usually stale primetime) The writing was excellent and the original ensemble was about as great as we'll ever see.

Then it got silly, gimmicky and soap-ish. The last thing is what hurt the most. Flew in the face of everything the show originally stood for--be about the medicine first.

The show was still okay thru the rest of Julianne Margolies run. Better at least than popular empty drama like Gray's Anatomy. (You could watch it and still have functioning testicles)

The Clooney "surprise" return episode was the last one I continuously tuned in for.

Said it before, but i never forgave the show for fucking up with the Peter Benton character.

Eli Mitchell. Clooney beating an abusive dad. First time I saw Maura.

I was pissed when they killed Greene and took the exit around the second chopper crash. As soon as the young wealthy dude left the show.

Oh and I remember my dad telling me about the fucked up way Omar Epps killed himself.

But it's certainly amazing to see how grainy the first season was.

Funny how the complaint was at the time was that the show was too fast paced that no one would understand what was going on.

I've been watching the show from the beginning this season, and it still holds up remarkably well. The second season in particular is notable because it's one of those rare TV seasons where you see an actor go from "tv star" to "movie star" over the course of a season. I'm talking about "Hell and High Water" here, of course, but it was clear from very early on that Clooney was on a different level than the rest of the guys.

I'm trying to think of another TV show since then that's produced a star like that. During the second season of Friday Night Lights, Taylor Kitsch had some moments that made you think, "This guy is the next Brad Pitt"*, but that has yet to be seen.

Also, "Mookie, I'll make a surgeon out of you yet!" Weaver telling Clooney "YOU ARE NOT WORKING AT THIS HOSPITAL." Crazy David Krumholtz. The way Romano pronounced "lesssssbbiiian" in this one monologue he had with Weaver. "Did you think I'd invite you back into my life? Into my bed?" Any number of moments with Jerry the desk clerk, Deezer D, and Yvette Freeman.

And the passing of "You set the tone", starting with Macy's Mamet-like delivery in the pilot:

“The unit’s looking to you, Mark. You set the tone…She was one of us. We loved her. We worked with her. And now something’s happened to her. It makes us feel guilty and angry and scares the hell out of us. But we take care of her, and then we go on with our jobs. You set the tone, Mark. You get the unit through this.”

*"I know you want to walk again, but guess what? Never gonna happen. Fact."

I thought the two episodes where they killed Greene were some of the worst in the series, to be fair. But he was the shit indeed, even though he was a lousy husband and probably fucked up both his daughters.

The show's guest stars were pretty awesome in their day, too. I liked Frances Sternhagen and George Plimpton as Carter's grandparents.

I used to watch semi-often with my mom but we checked out after Greene died.

One of my mother's favorite stories about me is actually us watching Greene die and how she was barely phased by it and I was physically shaking from crying so hard. It's one of course that she loves to drag out when girls come home. It's one of course that I will throw back in her face later in life in the midst of some argument.

I just stopped watching because I couldn't take the punishment on a week by week basis. Things like the Omar Epps death just reinforce how glad I am that I did stop. I tuned by it years later while babysitting just as a blind man shot himself because he couldn't find the phone to call the hospital and he didn't want to bleed to death or something and it just struck me as excessive suffering. Omar Epps's death reinforces this as well. Shows like Battlestar and The Shield feature very unpleasant situations, images, characters and plot points but I feel they're justified or make good points. ER doesn't to me.

I watched Seasons 1-4 pretty religiously, though I can't remember jack shit about them now. I forget why I stopped watching but I've never looked back.

You could make the argument that ER's central theme is about complete devotion and sacrifice to the job of medicine, and any character who attempts to have a life outside of the hospital -- a family, an easier job, etc. -- is punished, and punished hard. Hathaway is the exception to this rule.

I thought Omar Epps died early on, like season 3.

Was the serial killer storyline ending in Lucy and Carter getting stabbed as ridiculous as its reputation?

You're right about the show having great guest stars back in the day. Ewan McGregor and Kirsten Dunst were memorable. (Remember the first couple of years seemed like every semi-famous celeb Clooney or Greene ever worked with (or related to) made an appearence)

Also, the live broadcast season opener was pretty cool

It wasn't a serial killer. It was David Krumholtz as a paranoid schitzophrenic. And he really only stabbed Carter and killed Lucy. There was a later-follow up where his character came back, having gotten treatment and going to law school. He was married to Paris from Gilmore Girls and I think they had a kid.

Oddly enough, the thing that got me to start watching the show was From Dusk Til Dawn. Up until then, Clooney was the guy from Return of the Killer Tomatoes. He blew me away, so I thought I'd check ER out.

I watched from around season 3 through whenever Marguiles left. I tried watching a few episodes of the subsequent season but got bored immediately by Croatian Clooney, Brian tumor Greene and Abby's Crazy-Ass Mother.

They never did reveal who kicked the shit out of Greene during that one episode.

I just remembered that the Greene beating arc was one of the show's attempts to deal with racism in an "adult" way. See also Casually Racist Ron Eldard.

The one episode I ever saw from start to finish was the one where that pretty girl's in the convenience store, and it gets taken hostage by two would-be bank robbers, and she's trying to nurse gunshot wounds using every day convenience store stuff. I thought that was pretty neat when I was 12.

Isn't that Ewan McGregor's guest star appearance? I've seen that ep and I swear he was one of the robbers.

^Pretty sure that is.

I remember one epiisode where you had some foreign girl, and she was waiting in an operating room with a guy having some sort of internal issue, and there's no doctor and the guy is going to die, so she jumps in, makes a surgical cut and saves the guy's life. She then flees for fear of something or other, at least partly that she had no license to practice medicine in the US. I always wondered if they did something with that character.

Tangentially ER related: Did you know that Doug Ross is also the name of Gene Wilder's sheep-fucking doctor in Everything You Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)?

That's fantastic.

There was this one episode I'll never forget in which a family comes in from a car crash and has to send the daughter into surgery. While in surgery they find that her ovaries seem weird. They do a biopsy and discover that they aren't cancerous but in fact testicles.

Turns out that the ovaries became testicles but failed to move downwards. That genetically she was male but from all outward appearences she was female.

I had never heard of such a thing before that.

Fave ER memory: Mark Greene...home to reconnect with his father. New girlfriend in tow. Both of them on his old bed in his old room. And he says something along the lines of "I guess I'm just a beacon for needy people".

BANG...girlfriend is nuked. You could freeze frame the moment where her heart broke.

More recent...last year, maybe? Everyone's over at the bar across the way and Chuni and one other nurse are sitting with the other nurses and are like "Yeah, but I remember when Dr Ross and Dr Greene were here" and the new nurses were like "Who?". It was a nice callout to the fact that while the docs rotated in and out, the nurses in the background had been there for the duration.

And I'm sorry, but Romano vs the helicopter is simply the greatest thing ever. I think any series that kills a character by dropping a helicopter on them is made better. Of course, I think that any movie that ends with Gwyneth Paltrow's head in a box is made better by *that*, so I could be at odds with most people.

Still watch it, the past weeks episode with the Greene/Weaver/Romano flashbacks was well done.

I hated the way they killed Greene but shit it was a tumor, what ever.

But it got very hard to watch after he died, Carter went to Africa, Euro Clooney became the lead and they turned Weaver into a likeable, sympathetic, Lesbian.

In fact it's still hard to watch knowing how good it used to be...kinda like the Simpsons.