Okay, so I am still sort of watching this but not very intently.
It was interesting to see Chad Lowe back. I thought his character had washed out many years ago.
Haven’t we seen the “parent kills self in order to donate organ to child” premise before, or am I thinking of some other show?
Looks like Carter’s press conference fiasco will be the impetus to his leaving ER. Well, at least they didn’t give him a brain tumor. Really, if Susan was so worried about what he might say, she should have spoken to the press herself.
There was an episode of Chicago Hope like that years ago, but it was with brothers, and it was a heart, rather than a kidney. I think in the end the healthy brother was holding the doctors hostage, demanding that they give him heart (kind of like that recent Denzel Washington movie), and then he suddenly said, “There’s a donor card in my wallet” and turned the gun on himself.
Great Og, was this *show *sponsored by drug companies? We get it, we get it - drugs save lives. Does that mean we should ignore when it when they kill people? Maybe I just don’t “get it,” but if we really are trying to “learn” about drugs adverse effects like Carrie says, wouldn’t it make sense to, oh, I don’t know, tell other doctors when you notice an adverse effect? And report it to the FDA, sure. But I don’t get why Carter was so lambasted for posting a question to a message board when he was trying to get information that could help him better treat his patient, especially given the fact that the manufacturer of the drug told him they would get back to him “within the week.”
Ah well. At least this episode got me somewhat emotionally invested again. It was sort of nice to be screaming at the TV for once, instead of lying back in a dazed stupor of apathy.
That’s not the message I got. I thought it was pretty anti-drug company, with the coda at the end to give some balance and make things a little gray again.
Because she needed to stay home to take care of her dying father, she asked around trying to get someone to cover her shift over Christmas. No one would do it, so she basically begged Susan to let her have the day off. Susan refused, so she just quit.
If the scene with Carrie chewing him out in the meds closet hadn’t been there, I might have agreed with you. That was the scene that, for me, “made it grey”.
The final coda seemed to make it all whitewashed and pretty again. Ugh.
Frankly, I’d like to see Carter fired for HIIPA violations for telling the reporters a minor’s medical condition without prior consent and signed waivers from her parents, but I suspect it’ll be the drug thing that’ll see him gone. More dramatic, you know.
The press ambush in the ambulance bay seems horribly contrived. How did some reporter know that Dr. Carter posted something on a message board earlier? And, don’t hospitals of County’s size generally have a press liaison for the express purpose of preventing doctors from making fools of themselves and blabbing things that HIPAA requires them to keep secret?
As for the father, that development was pretty obvious. At first, I was expecting him to pin a note to himself and jump off the L tracks. Later on, when it was revealed that he was a security guard at the jewelry center, that changed my expectations, and they were soon enough shown to be correct. At least he had the decency to do it outside where it’d be easier to hose off.
The subtext of “all these new drugs are just fantastic and screw any life-threatening side-effects they forgot to test for because the drug companies give us buckets of cash” put forth by the administration (ie: Weaver and the unseen Morganstern) was a little too strong even if the writers were hoping for irony.
Close to home note on the drug makers and their sponsorship - the last time I was at his office, I asked my doc about all the logos in the room. From anatomy charts to the jar of tongue depressors and even the clock, everything smaller than a chair had someone’s logo on it. He bristled and said it was terrible and would rather buy his own clocks, pens, jars and such and not appear to be promoting the “drug of the month” but the others in the practice were apparently eager to accept the schwag so he was out-voted.
Forgot to say that if the show has any sense, they’ll follow a HIPAA theme for writing him out. Dismissing him for jeopardizing a major funding stream may be dramatic, but he could easily have a strong defense in the First Amendment.
Dismissing him for HIPAA violations may be boring, but a lot harder to wriggle out of and would be a nice way to slip in a little education to the public about HIPAA and how there’s a strong standard of privacy now.
I’m thinking he’ll get so sick and tired of the eeeeevil hospital poltics that he’ll head off for a more permanent doctors without borders thing. He’ll go off and “make a difference” . sweeping orchestral music Reunite with his girlfriend.
I for one agree with Weaver, or whoever it was that sounded sick and tired of his “crusades”.
gotpasswords - I used to have a doctor that would slap plain, white sticker labels over top the logos of the posters and stuff. If anyone ever asked, she’d say it was “to avoid the appearance of bias”.
I’m assuming that your asking the question means you don’t want to remain spoiler-free, right?
Yes, maybe. Noah Wyle indicated in a E! interview in September that he’s leaving the show at the end of this season. However, it seems he hasn’t yet told his bosses at NBC. Oops! Here’s what CBS News had to say about it.
So the whole hormone stuff last night, how weird was it for Abby not to mention to her buddy/coworker/roomie Neela “Oh, yeah, Dr.K and I were an item for a while” when Neela mentions her crush on him?
Susan zinging Abby about “aren’t you done with doctors yet?” rang true for me, Sam’s jealousy bit, but Abby not mentioning it to Neela was just odd.
I think Abby oughta go for Mr.Intern, especially if he regrows his beard.
Somehow, with all the news and drugs taken off the market recently, I couldn’t help thinking during the last scene: yeah, old man, it’s a medical miracle all right…until people start dying from the thing they thought was helping them.
I'm biased and a bit cynical on this subject because of all the deaths and the side effects as well, in regard to so many meds.
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Is it me, or was Sam being paranoid just because Luka is working with Neela?
EEP! :eek: Oh, I’m so sorry! I didin’t think that was a spoiler because after Wyle’s statement went public, I thought it was pretty well “general news”. Sorry.
He took a break when his baby was born, and it seemed that he figured since his contract was expiring he might look into other things. The media made a bigger deal about it since he’s the only uninterrupted-since-the-start cast member. So I thought it was widley known that he would most likely be leaving (I don’t think it’s definite).
So sorry.
Personally, I think they should wrap up the series if/when Carter leaves. He was a med student at the start, and if would just be a good way to finish the series as if it was sort of his story – boy-to-man kind of thing.
I haven’t really watched since Mark died. And Romano was the only thing that kept us watching the show. We hated him – he was the best!
I watched regularly until Mark got mugged, and then lost interest. I think that was around the time Clooney left. I started watching again last season because I’m a big Linda Cardellini (Freaks & Geeks, Strangeland, Scooby Doo) fan. I’ve been so dismayed by the lack of quality in the shows I keep up with, that I’ve been FFWD’ing through most of them and watching the old ER reruns on TNT. (Except Lost. Lost rocks.)
On the off chance you want to catch up with the reruns on TNT like I am, this post contains previous-season spoilers. Fair warning.
So I started the TNT reruns with the torture victim episode, where Greene finally talks about his mugging, and shortly afterward Clooney leaves. I have no knowledge whatsoever about the many seasons between that point and last season. It’s been fun watching the cast morph slowly into the current cast. I got to see the entire introduction and backstory on Abby and Luka, not just together but as two of the main focuses of the show.
It’s been great fun catching up, and it also makes me sad in that this season is definitely not up to par with the previous. It was fun trying to guess how and when Benson and Greene would be written out, among many others. (Melucci’s “Nazi Dyke Bitch!” exit line was great, if not quite his final line.)
I agree completely. This would be ideal.
Romano really was the best. Last season I kept wondering “Who the hell is this guy and what happened to his arm?” No “spoilers” though, as he just got his arm reattached. Can’t wait to see it finally fall off. He so much more fun before he lost his arm. I loved the way he convinced Benson back all of three seconds before the press conference about diversity in hiring. It looks to be all downhill for his character, though, but I’m sure he’ll still have his moments.
But Mark’s death was excellent. The storyline was annoyingly protracted, though his various symptoms were pretty interesting. But I wanted to chime in that I loved both of his death episodes. The one where they got his letter was very touching. I figured he was done. A couple days later I was rewinding the tape and checked for time only to see his face, and thought “oh crap the tape fucked up.” Then I thought they got the order wrong. By the time I watched it and realized it really was the Mark Signs Off episode, I loved it. I thought they did a great job with that. (And anything with that Over the Rainbow song is aces in my book.)
Many people complain that it doesn’t stay in the ER enough and goes too much into the personal lives, but that Hawaii episode is far and away my favorite of the series. I found it much more touching than Ray Liotta’s excellent walk-on episode, which was my favorite until this week.
TNT shows two episodes daily, which means you get through a full season (roughly) every two weeks. I started in mid December, and I think today’s was the Halloween (and one after) of 2001, so I’m interested to see if/how 9/11 will be handled. No spoilers, please! (We could already be in 2002’s season; it’s kind of hard to tell. I’m basically going off the fact that a conversation once had a reference to a 5 year contract, and Greene responded with “2002? What are we going to call that decade, anyway?” The seasons simply fly by with 10 epis per week.)
