Part 1: The End of an ERa - "Generosity"
Pilot
ER hit the ground running, with wit and reality and humor and humanity. Noah Wylie is such a baby here, take a look and compare it to how he looks tonight, on the last show.
ER - Season 1: Welcome Carter - Video - NBC.com
Good, bad, but never indifferent, ER set the tone of medical TV drama for 15 years. Occasionally on life support but always resuscitated, the heart of this venerable show just kept pumping out stories and characters and most of all, Entertainment.
Tonight it dies. Put down reverently (hey, for one night of Clooney-sitings, hype will win), with more than a little relief by most of its denizens and perhaps many of its viewers too. I am not one of them.
This is euthanasia. Which I favor for animals and humans. Not for beloved TV shows. Especially ones as good as ER. Which had just started getting interesting again. There's life in the old girl still, but old is out, bugger the demographics or ratings.
I cannot be comforted by John Wells' new venture, yet another cop show. Oy! Certainly not after ABC unceremoniously dumped the outrageously intelligent, fun, charming and incredibly well acted Life on Mars in favor of more bland, boring, banal sitcoms. BASTA!
Yes, St. Elsewhere was great medical drama, perhaps at times better even, but so what? It died far too early to know if it would have sustained. Chicago Hope had potential and great stars (Mandy Patinkin, Adam Arkin) but it lost out to ... oh right, ER.
Pratt
I watched this episode, and this scene in particular in a what felt like a state of suspended animation. I could not wrap my head around the idea that Dr. Pratt would die, could die, was dead.
ER - Season 15: Pratt Dies - Video - NBC.com
When they wheeled him out of the room and the scene went to black I started to cry. Hard. I felt like I'd lost a dear friend.That's how I feel about ER. Goodbye, old friend. We'll always have reruns.
ER TV Show - Cast, Spoilers, Episodes, Videos, Photos and Games Online - NBC Official Site
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Max Rivlin-Nadler
drlaura2
Kristina Lakes
mhold
L in the Southeast
Jane Brogan
Salon.com
Comments
i'm also very sad and will cry through the retrospective and the ep, i know. it's hard losing a 15 year old friendship. thank you again for posting this. love love love to ER friends and to you for feeling bereft too.
Rated
The west-coasters are settling in.
Tomorrow it's back to Doug and Carol and Mark, et al, still happily living in Season 1 for us on TNT.
It was nice to see the old cast cropping up, and if the show had to end they could not have picked a better way to end it - Mark Greene's daughter coming back and hanging out with Carter; superb. And everyone gathered outside for a huge influx of trauma patients, as if to say "the show must go on". Well, except the show didn't but it had a feel to it that was ... I can't find the words. Like it wasn't really gone, just pushed into the background. I don't know how to put it into words, and that's frustrating.
I'll miss the show. There were times that I railed at the tv, because I thought the writing could have been better. But it was always a show that touched on important issues and didn't shy away from them, and that was more than just entertaining.
So long, ER. Like medicine, in TV land you can't always save the patient.
Maybe you can answer this for me. Susan Lewis was there but was any reference made to her baby, her marriage, where she works? Did I totally miss it?