I totally agree! But I’ll bet you $50 that Abby and Rock Star Doc hook up within three episodes. They’ve already gone through the preliminary stages of Hollywood Romance:
Anger & Hatred: “Don’t ever touch one of my patients!”
Name calling: “Rockhard”
Reconciliation: “Maybe I was wrong after all”
Flirtation: “How’d you like to come up to my roof for a little BBQ?”
All they need now is a long stressful day with a heartbreaking case so they can bond as a team and then go home together to “console” each other.
And did anyone else notice the Rock Star taking his package of brats from an unrefrigerated shelf at the convenience store? You’d think a doctor would know better than to eat meat that has been sitting out for an undetermined time with out refrigeration!
speaking of Carter; What was up with him last night? He had a couple of instances where he just kind of drifted off, especially the one time when they showed him looking at the person by the vending machine with the tattoos all over the arms. Any ideas?
Yes! I thought it was hilarious that the brats just happened to be conveniently located right next to the buns. Maybe Neela stocked the shelves?
Good thing Carter and Abby turned down his invitation to dinner.
He’s pining for the fjords…I mean, his girlfriend in Africa whose name always escapes me. And the baby that should have been, but isn’t. (It was pretty subtle, but there was a baby crying in the background of the vending machine scene that he might have been listening to.)
That was a supplemental nursing system, often used by adoptive mothers who want to breast feed. With hormone therapy and nipple stimulation, many adoptive moms’ breasts begin producing milk. The feeder is basically a bag of formula or pumped breast milk suspended around the neck with a tube that goes up around the neck and down to the nipple where it’s taped in place. The baby takes the tube and nipple in her mouth to feed. The food comes through the tube, and the stimulation of the nipple helps the mom’s milk come in.
I’ve never heard of it being used by dads, but…um, OK. (I think it was meant to be weird.)
Thanks! Chuck’s struck me as sort of eccentric in the past (but very sweet) so it made sense to me, but I was stopped short by his comment about the nipple chafage and needed a proper explanation of what the device was doing.
As far as Carter’s concerned, I thought he was also exhausted from putting in a lot of hours in the ER not only to distract him from thoughts of Kem but also to keep sober. Abby’s tweaked to it too, after Carter’s drunken outburst with the soldier last week.
In re: Chuck & the SNS: They can be used by fathers, but men usually don’t actually have the child suck from the nipple but just use the tube near it to use the standard nursing position, which gives the baby the benefit of skin-to-skin contact and the belly-to-belly hold which they instinctively associate with nurturing.
[spoiler]Alex Kingston – Dr. Corday – is getting the axe next week. She was indeed the victim of an inexplicable contract non-renewal. Apparently we’re going to now be forced to deal with the hotshot new surgeon, which means that we’re back to how things were, well, no I was going to say seasons one and two, when the surgeons were all arrogant men – Benton, Kayson and Vucelich – but we also had Morganstern and the very female Dr. Hicks.
But we need someone in the surgery department with a little class and compassion, and without Corday, we won’t. And that’s going to suck. In fact, we’re really lacking knowledgeable experienced compassionate doctors on the whole. Carter’s all goofy and on the verge of a sobriety breakdown. Luka’s in a funk thanks to Sam. Pratt’s still the same jerk he’s alwas been, Jing-Mei is out of commission, Weaver was never especially compassionate and doesn’t seem to be dealing with patients at all. Everyone else is a newbie or a scrub. What are they thinking?[/spoiler]
bouv, Carter’s been a doctor for 9 years. He’s well past training stages now. He was cheif resident two years ago (after Jing-Mei and the long gone Dr. Dave botched the handling of a patient with Marfan’s Syndroome and got no help from their attending, Weaver, because her pager was in a toilet stall at the long gone Doc Magoo’s) and is now an attending. ER attending, attending, it’s all the same, a faculty position.
Neela’s going to end up back in the hospital one way or another. How remains to be seen. Things that I’m fairly sure we won’t see:
[ul][li]Kem coming back[/li][li]Luka and Sam getting married[/li][li]Sam’s loser ex staying away[/li][li]Abby and Rock Star Doc getting together and staying together (no ER relationship lasts, I bet you Chuck and Susan break up before the season ends)[/li][li]Any of the current crop of students staying around ala Carter, Abby or Neela[/li][li]Jing-Mei and Pratt staying together once she’s recuperated[/li][li]Weaver returning to active medicine[/li][li]OCD doc lasting more than a couple more weeks[/li]ER lasting beyond next season – the first season without a single member of the original cast[/ul]
I’d never heard of a device that enables a father to breastfeed. But if it helps with bonding, that kid’s gonna need all the help he can get, once the other kids find out his name is Cosmo.
No, good point. I have a hard time remembering that Sherry was there at the start. I suppose I should restate that as “the first season without any original cast member who has been on the show continuously.”
Am I the only one who thought it odd that a job placement center was open on the Fourth of July? The mall, yes. I’ve worked many a Fourth at the mall. But most other businesses close down that day.
I thought it was odd that it was a fourth of July episode, period. I mean, it’s October. Usually when ER does a date specific ep, it’s around the actual air date. It didn’t seem like anything in the plot really dictated or reflected that it was the 4th, except the stink bombs (which are available year round) and Dr. Rockstar’s guitar playing at the end.
It took me a few minutes to be certain that it wasn’t a repeat. Very confusing.
Yeah, that confused me too. For a while, I thought it was a haloween ep., because the desk clerk was dressed up as Uncle Sam, and there was a patient in a minute-man costume, and the stink bombs made me think of a “trick.” But it’s two weeks before haloween! Of course, that’s better than 4 months after the fourth of july.
Well, in this case the elapsed time between last season’s cliffhanger and this season’s premiere is only a few seconds (previous seasons have had the break last several months - “Hey, Carter! How was your summer?”) so the show has to play a bit of catch-up.
Okay, so it’s July 4th…July is when they usually get new med students, correct?
Well, when do residents/interns start? Abby graduated in May. Presumably, she started her residency in June. Is that correct? The reason that I ask is that I remember (or am mistaken) that Carter fretted a bit about getting his surgical internship, got it when someone else backed out, and was told to be back at County in September. Unless it was an internship while he was still in med school, I’m totally confused.
