Yee-gads that was a wild episode. I suppose we know now why they had the special warning about violence before the show. I personally thought it was a little much for TV, but what do I know.
Well, yeah. It was a bit much for TV but it wasn’t too bad. What I’m interested in seeing is if this softens Romano’s personality.
Could someone give a recap? I was a traitor and watched “Without a Trace” instead.
I don’t want anything to soften Romano’s personality, he was my favorite character and I liked him just the way he was. I loved his definite crush on Elizabeth Corday and he had all the best lines!
As you know last season ended with the smallpox lockdown of the ER. This episode opened with a very “Outbreak” exposition of discovering that the virus in question was a mutation of a monkeypox, and resulted in Carter, Abby, Pratt, Sam, and Chen quarantined for 2 weeks in the ER, in the now-evacuated hospital.
In the process of evacuating all patients and staff, Susan, Luka, Romano, and another nurse argued on the roof over whose patient would take the medi-vac helicopter. Romano won out, and when he went to pick something up off the ground he stood up and his left arm was chopped off by the helicopter tail rotor.
Lots of arm-saving stuff from Romano, intercut with the ER quarantine folks dealing with cabin fever, the possibility Sam has TB (he doesn’t), and Abby and Carter’s new lurve. Also, Elizabeth is back in London, and having a really hard time adjusting to British medicine right down to the differences between “male” and “man” when describing a patient. She eventually opts to come back to Chicago with Ella.
In the end, all is well with the pox people, who are released from the ER. Carter and Abby go for a walk on the lake, and presumably go skinny-dipping, at least we know Abby does.
My jaw dropped when Romano’s arm was severed. Romano’s always been one of my favorite secondary characters on ER, and I think it’s going to be really interesting to see where this plot takes him. My only criticism? Not enough Dr. Luka.
We love Romano’s abrassive asshole behaviour. He’s our favourite character! I hadn’t read any spoilers on the episode and for a moment was terrified they were writing him out of the show.
Best line: He comes to on the ER table and says with absolute dismay “Oooooh… I’m at County!”
Romano has shown glimpses of a softer side. As when a stressed Dr. Benton picked up his deaf son – behind his back Romano signed to the boy “take care of your dad.” Or when Dr. Weaver accidentally outed herself to him while yelling at him. Still closeted, a few days later she asked him: “So who knows now?” And he was a bit shocked and said softly “I haven’t told anyone Kerry. I don’t think your personal life is anyone’s business.” (Then being the true bastard we all know and love, as soon as she was outed publicly, he pounced on the opportunity to promote a “women’s health” position.)
I love that little prick!
booklover you sure you want a recap? Well, it’s probably less gruesome than seeing the whole thing. And believe me, it was gruesome.
OK, here’s the condensed version of E.R. last night:
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Pratt, Jing Mei, Carter and Abby along with a patient were forced to stay in the hospital for two weeks. Two weeks with almost no contact from the outside world because the entire hospital had been evacuated. I guess they lived directly on snack food for those 14 days because the only outside food we saw them eat was from Pratt’s friend who snuck a pizza in. Also, Abby apparently likes washing up in a sink despite the fact that the ER is equiped with a full shower system. Abby and Carter naturally hook up and Pratt and Jing-Mei learn to get along and all live happily ever after. No one was infected.
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Dr. Corday went back to London. She started working in surgery in daddy’s hospital but grew tired of the British way of doing things. She’d much rather help the patients than kiss up to her superior’s “arse.” After getting mocked for her American slang and having one of her surgeries outright stolen from her while she was operating, she had had enough. Completely homesick, she decides to go back to Chicago.
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Dr. Romano’s story: during the evacuation there were two patients in need of a med lift to another hospital. One man was a car accident victim (the boyfriend the woman from last season’s finale was looking for. Turns out she wasn’t his girlfriend, she was a psycho stalker who ran him over with her car), the other man had heart troubles. One chopper, two victims. Not enough room. Romano, Kovac, and Lewis are all arguing about who has top priority when Romano finally made the decision that his went first and pushed the gurney towards the heliocopter. His patient’s chart flew off the gurney and Romano went to retrieve it.
In what can only be considered the most graphic half second ever to be shown on television, Dr. Romano’s arm hit the helicopter’s back blade and severed instantly. Romano falls to the ground, throws up, and the other two doctors try as best they can to stop the bleeding. They eventually do get his arm reattached (not on the roof, but over the course of the next two weeks), but he hasn’t fully regained full usage of it. As we last saw him, he’s in a bed mostly lucid, but still somewhat strung out from drugs.
And that’s an hour of ER for ya.
Yeah I wigged out when his arm got cut off. It was very, very surprising.
Mrs. Undhow was pretty freaked out for a couple of minutes after the arm-in-the-rotor thing. It was just so unexpected, with no warning of any kind – it really caught the viewer off-guard.
I noticed he got the old Benton credit at the beginning… and XXX as Dr. Romano or whatever.
We commented at the beginning that they’ve never shown a disclaimer. As soon as the arm comes off we knew why.
I hope they don’t use this to soften him up. We saw that already in that William Hurt movie. Early on it looks like it won’t. He was still being a jerk.
I also hope that the two people quarantined, the Black guy and the Asian (I don’t know their names, sorry), don’t get together. It looks pretty cliche so far. Do people in hospitals sleep with each other like that? Didn’t Mark sleep with 3 of them?
My only complaint about the show was the whole “let’s evacuate the hospital” idea. I’m sure several of you dopers know what the CDC does in a situation like this and will correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t the whole hospital be quarantined instead of evacuated? I mean, we’ve got this disease that turns out to be a mutation of monkey pox and instead of possibly trying to, oh I don’t know, contain the spread. They evacuate the hospital, risking the possibility that the disease will spread throughout Chicago. Remember that the children spent hours in the waiting room around other people where they might have contaminated other people.
Other than that, it was an interesting episode
I stood, horrified, outside our kitchen thru the commercials that followed. Mrs. KVS came upstairs, saw me, and asked what was wrong, why was my mouth hanging open? It was that kind of scene. :eek:
One teeny-tiny correction (and only 'cause it does show his common sense and that his injury wasn’t as direct result of being a jerk.) Although he was insisting that his patient was the one to go first, at the last minute, after all the squabbling, Romano said: “You what? You’re right. You go.” It was when he shoved his gurney out of they way to let the other patient go first that he lost the chart (and his arm.)
Itty-bitty knit-pick, but mildy important so one doesn’t go thinking “that’ll teach him for being such an ass.”
One teeny-tiny correction (and only 'cause it does show his common sense and that his injury wasn’t as direct result of being a jerk.) Although he was insisting that his patient was the one to go first, at the last minute, after all the squabbling, Romano said: “You know what? You’re right. You go.” It was when he shoved his gurney out of they way to let the other patient go first that he lost the chart (and his arm.)
Itty-bitty knit-pick, but mildy important so one doesn’t go thinking “that’ll teach him for being such an ass.”
I stood, horrified, outside our kitchen thru the commercials that followed. Mrs. KVS came upstairs, saw me, and asked what was wrong, why was my mouth hanging open? It was that kind of scene. :eek:
Most intense episode ever.
Romano had a hilarious line when he was yelling on the phone to the staffer of another hospital, saying that he was sending four traumas over, and concluded with something like:
“Tell your Chief of Staff to treat them with the same care he’d give his own mother, ** except without all the inappropriate touching!”**
I loved it! I actually yelled “OH MY GOD!” when his arm came off. I have never done that before. It was great!
And thanks to TiVo I was able to watch it again and again. 
I got the impression, from what little we saw of Romano post-reattachment, that he blames Luka for his losing his arm. He was was pretty snippy to Kerry, too, with that “redecorated my office yet?” comment. It appears to me that, impossible though it may seem, Romano is gonna become more bitter and mean than ever.
The guy that plays Romano is awesome (name escapes me at the moment, brain freeze) I’ve loved him ever since fame.
I hope he doesn’t lose his edge, I love the TINY moments when the “softer” Romano appears, like the melting way he looks at Elizabeth.
Like the time Elizabeth was trying to get her surgical confidence back and he watched silently through the window, watched her struggle, overcome and continue, and then he walked away.
LOVE HIM!
Paul McCrane. He also rocked in the X-Files as Leonard Betts.
I’m eagerly anticipating the first post-amputation meeting between Corday and Romano.