I did think the scene where Lizzie finds out she is the new head of surgery was funny, but since I knew all that was coming with Sandi and baby Henry, I couldn’t really concentrate on it.
Is Abby going to quit med school and go back to solely nursing? I am guessing that Neela gets a reprieve in the e.r. b/c Kerry will be too busy, Carter will be in Africa he is still leaving at the end of this season, right? and Susan will be busy with baby. They will be short-handed so they’ll let Neela stay (based on her test scores, etc).
I was crying too. I kept hoping Sandy wouldn’t die, but when she did I knew what was going to happen to the baby. Didn’t know it was going to be that harsh, though. Damn.
I agree with all of this being so deja-vu. I just knew they were going to let Sandy live if only because too many people have died on the show as it is. But I was wrong.
Even if it was Kerry’s egg there is a precedent for the birth mother being considered the custodial mother. I don’t remember enough details to search for a cite but there was a case where a lesbian couple had twins, one woman provided the eggs the other was the incubator and was the “stay at home” mom. One could not carry and the other could not conceive. They split up and even moved apart. The egg mother sued for custody and lost to the birth mother. You would think though that with the death of the birth mother the egg donor would be considered the mother but you never can tell what courts will do and considering that it’s ER where no one is ever allowed to be happy for long, Kerry will probably lose.
And the running gag about “no one is ER is ever allowed to be happy for long” is so true and it’s worn thin for me.
That just doesn’t seem right to me. Kerry (if she really did donate the egg - again, I can’t remember), wasn’t just a “donor” in this case, such as would be the case in most sperm/egg doantions. It could make for a really interesting court battle. If Kerry loses, I’m going to be extremely pissed.
You’re right about the “no one is allowed to be happy” thing wearing thin, Tiramisu. If they’re going to bring the characters’ personal lives into it, only to get us attached to them, why can’t they be a little more realistic about their lives? If that many bad things happened to the people in my office, we’d think we’d been plagued by some terrible curse. So maybe their lives wouldn’t be that interesting in real life. Maybe they should just leave some of the personal stuff out all together.
Didn’t ER used to be more of a medical drama than a soap opera?
I may be remembering incorrectly but it seemed to me that we rarely ever saw the cast outside of work. Mark Greene was my favorite and I started getting pretty pissed when they started having all kinds of shit happen to him but it seemed most of it actually happened in the hospital. Like the episode where the pregnant woman Dr. Greene had discharged as just a UTI came back in seizuring (from hypocalcemia?), went into labor, then developed DIC and bled out. That was some pretty heavy medical drama and one of the best episodes they have ever had. It seems like they just don’t follow the medical cases as much as they used to.
It’s not that I mind personal stuff on the characters, it’s just too much. It’s like you said, if a workplace had that much tragedy happen they’d have had someone in to exorcize the place a long time ago.
Couldn’t Sandy have written in her will that Kerri would have custody of the baby if she died? I hope they were smart enough to have the foresight to do this, especially since she was in a dangerous profession.
I thought the last scene with Kerri at the door trying to get her baby was heartbreaking. The way the brother manhandled her and pushed her out the door, then she stood at the door wailing for her baby, it was so sad.
I am still annoyed with Abby going from being second in her class to Abby having really great clinical skills, but no academic skills whatsoever. What happened to them? Did they just disappear? Does nursing remove your academic ability?
I know I should just let go - but it’s shoddy writing.
I also miss the days when the drama was more about the cases than the horrific unending miseries of the doctors/nurses.
Yes, it was centered completely on the workplace. We saw just little snippets of their personal lives, and the medical part was much better. It even had some humorous parts.
It’s become way to soap opera-y now. But I’ll keep watching. I haven’t missed an episode yet… I way too invested now to quit. (I’m sooo embarrassed to admit that)
Another thing: it seems that of the medical cases we actually do see now, they have to focus more and more on something “radical,” i.e. the pregnant teenager who not only was having sex with her boyfriend but all of his friends as well. Not every case has to have shock value. Or at least it never used to.
Abby’s also working a full time job (nursing) while trying to study/train as a med student. Seems pretty realistic to me, she doesn’t have nearly the same time to study as someone who doesn’t have the same responsibilties.
I agree about the soapiness of the show, especially the last couple of seasons. Now all they need is an evil twin (I vote Dr. Kovac) and a case of amnesia, and the transformation will be complete.
Chen, Abby, Corday, Alex, and Neela will all learn that they’re pregnant. At least two of the babies belong to Frank, but it will not be revealed which one.
Kem will give birth to a CGI baby who, due to the curse of an African shaman, will have the voice of Carter’s grandmother, Frances Sternhagen.
Kerry will wake up to find Romano in her shower and realize that her latter-day-lesbiasm and baby as well as Romano’s brushes with helicopters were all a dream. They’ll hold hands and walk outside where Romano will be run over by a tank
Abby’s mother goes missing, so her alcoholic father (Burt Reynolds) and crazy grandparents (Mary Tyler Moore and Ed Asner) will go looking for her. She will be found in the last place they look.
Haley Joel Osment will join the cast for a few episodes as Dr. Ibeza, a Portugese intern with a deep dark secret that involves a cannister of film and morals charges.
Meredith Baxter will guest star for 3 episodes as a Lifetime actress who is suffering from every major disease imaginable.
Pratt will have a major life-crisis when he realizes he’s in love with Luka. His foster-brother returns, now a lobbyist for the NRA, and falls in love with Pratt’s new roommate (Oprah Winfrey in a 3 episode guest appearance).
Sam’s son Alex gets loose again and accidentally causes a leprosy outbreak which strands everybody in the hospital while the greatest fire since 1871 demolishes downtown Chicago and crossover terrorists from the fictional nation of Qumar (West Wing) plant a bomb in the cafeteria in order to assassinate Shia cleric Louis ibn Musaid (Danny Devito in a 3 episode guest appearance), who is being treated for Lyme Disease. Mark Greene’s oldest daughter (now played by Mayim Bialik) returns as a member of the terrorist squad in a plotline ripped from the life of Patty Hearst.
For those of you who are trivia minded, this episode showed us that Gallant lives/lived in the Fisher Building at Dearborn and Van Buren, right by the Library “el” stop (which they seem very fond of filming).
Good, except Ed Asner was already on, as the clinic doc who scammed Carter out of a lot of money. How about James Garner, instead? Noooooo, even better! Colonel Potter from MASH in a special retrun-to-tv appearance.
No, but being out of school for five or six years will make you forget a lot. Use it or lose it, you know. She didn’t use a lot of her technical knowledge, so she lost it, and there’s too much of it for her to work as a nurse, do her clinicals, and adequately relearn all of it at the same time.
But, she was also working a full time job the first time she was in med school (she was a full time OB nurse, working her way through school then) getting great grades.
Crazy Cat Lady,
It’s only been 3 years, but I guess that’s what the writers want me to think (and perhaps I would, if it seemed that she’d lost knowledge - problem is, it’s coming across not that she just lost the knowledge, but also the ability to learn anything).
Alas, I’ve become one of the annoying, soap opera, detail fixated people with this show. I hate it when that happens.
Just of interest, the boards Abby failed would have been the USMLE Step II, the second of three tests required to be a licesnsed physician in the US. The first step is taken between the second and third years of med school, and the Step II is taken sometime during the fourth year.
It’s not very common to fail the Step II, but if you did, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. It certainly wouldn’t preclude you from working as a student, though you probably couldn’t start a residency until you passed it. She can take the test again pretty much immediately.
