C'mon ER junkies, you know who Carter is ... and you know who you are. Noah Wyle, by the way, insisted on including the heartrending and eye-opening episodes about the genocide in Darfur, some of ER's best and most important work. Along with addressing critical health issues. Take a look. It's an impressive list.

I've welcomed and enjoyed most of the new characters over the years, but the first team was the best. And for a very long time, ER was one of the best shows on TV.

New York Times tells us ER was the most watched show on TV for three years, pulling in over twice as many viewers as any top show today. It stayed popular year after year and remains the 2nd most watched show on NBC, after Law and Order.

To tell the truth, all the hoopla around Battlestar Galactia ending its 5-year run has me feeling a little self-conscious about declaring my allegiance to a TV show 15 years old.

Still, I'll say it loud and proud: I've been a loyal ER fan since Carter was a pup.

The Death of Dr. Greene
Back in the day, Mark Greene was the Carter, the Pratt, the Abby, the hub of today's ER. Yeah, yeah, George Clooney's Doug Ross was the Heartthrob, but Dr. Greene was the Heart and Soul.

Greene was Everyman, overworked, underpaid, faced with everyday problems: stress, marriage, fatherhood, strained friendships, workplace politics, aging and dying parents, divorce, remarriage, and finally, his own mortality.

The show allowed his character to handle it all with gumption and frailty, success and failure, but always with insight, sensitivity and essential humanity. Finally, he becomes a respected hospital physician, remarried with a young child, struggling to keep his life, his marriage and his troubled teenage daughter Rachel afloat.

Then, bam! Brain tumor. But not handled like your grandmother's soap opera. ER gave us a brutal and honest look at the whole painful, messy process. In depth. Real. Horrifying. Uplifting. Finite.

They did it cleverly too. They made it a voyage. Confusion. Misery. Discovery. Hope. Anger. Acceptance. Death. They gave him time, perspective, awareness, dignity. And they gave us a hell of a ride.

The apparent final Dr. Greene episode was in fact prologue to the end. Greene says good-bye to the staff, and to us. He walks away from the ER forever, having handed the ever present hospital basketball, his mantle, to Carter. The hour moves forward with other characters, other plots.

Then a letter from Greene to the staff arrives by fax and Carter reads it aloud. At the end of the letter is a postscript from Greene's wife ... saying he died that morning. She's sent his letter along to let them know he was thinking about them near the end.

Stunned. Silence. As in real life, even when you know it's coming, it hits you like a runaway train. Greene's letter and his wife's note are tacked to a communal bulletin board. We watch as the various characters read the messages, and absorb the news of his death.

It isn't until the next--and truly final--Greene episode that we are shown his last days. Certain scenes resonate. Greene's wife finds him in the kitchen in the middle of the night, writing a list of things he always wanted to do before he died. (Years before The Bucket List, by the way).

Some, predictable male fantasies, he'll never do. "Hit a home run to win the World Series for the Cubs." "Climb MT. Everest." Some, he manages. "Jump out of a plane." Others, poignant fatherhood dreams, are heartbreaking. "Walk his daughters down the aisle."

And finally, his deepest wish, and greatest challenge, "Fix Rachel."

That's the one that shapes the last show. Trying to reconnect with his difficult, rebellious teenager, he takes her to Hawaii, where he grew up. He wants her to know he rebelled as a teenager himself, to understand him as a person and as her father.

He wants them to share the past and the present ... if not the future.

In one scene he reminds her that as a child she loved The Wizard of Oz and would beg him to sing "Over the Rainbow" whenever he put her to sleep. She denies the memory, and him, seems not to hear, or care.

She doesn't want his generational backwash, sees no value in groking his life or comparing it to her own. And of course she's so very angry. Especially at him. For leaving her. But as he deteriorates and moves closer to death, she begins to understand what was, and what never will be.

She comes to him early one morning. He's lying in bed, facing the sun as it rises over the ocean. He struggles talk, tells her he wants to leave her with some wisdom to guide her, save her. "Generosity," he tells her. "Be generous. With your time, with your love, with your life."

"I will," she says. You can see that she's recognized the enormity of her pending loss. She stops fighting him. Wants instead to connect, to ease his pain.

Gently she places earphones on his head, kisses him good-bye, and turns on the CD player. First we hear a 4-string ukulele and hypnotic humming -- then a soft, haunting refrain, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" sung by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole ... her generation's version of the classic, a wish and a gift for her father.

She's found a way to show him her love, and Greene's final smile is beatific, a man at peace.

Schmaltzy? A little. Moving? Absolutely. Will ER's swan song top it? Not a chance. But for two more shows, I'll wallow in whatever they give us. And I'll always have reruns.

Watch this and see. It might give you a little peace too.