Er 10/2

Cafe Society
21

Maria Bello’s character, Anna DelAmico, never hooked up with Carter – she discovered the full extent of John’s family’s wealth totally by accident (she accompanied Carol Hathaway to solicit funds from Gamma and the Carter Family Foundation) and was disgusted with him, and never recovered despite his attempts to get back in her good graces. Since he’d attempted to play “normal, poverty stricken resident” with her (eating poptarts in her slum apartment, going to the laundromat, etc.) she felt that he was making fun of her, and didn’t buy his “I just wanted you to like me for who I am” schtick. She left Chicago to go back to CHOP with her ex-boyfriend shortly thereafter.

As for the sudden change of heart in the rebels, I think it was three-fold: first, Luka wasn’t just praying, he was almost in a state of rapture, rambling his prayer (the Lord’s Prayer in Croatian, btw) in almost delirious fashion. To the Mai Mai, it may have seemed like a religious fervor, in reality, Luka was having febrile delusions from the malaria.

Second, Luka was praying in a language that they’d never heard before, and they may have thought it to be Latin, which would be further “proof” that he was a priest.

Third, Patrique, before he was murdered, told them that he and Luke were aid workers, and they were probably familiar with missionaries and priests being among the western aid workers in the region.

With the extraordinarily selfless confirmation from the girl’s mother – who had just been gang raped, and who the rebels probably thought would be submissive and cowed thereafter in fear of more torture or death for herself and her daughter – the whole thing seemed quite believable to me, if indeed a completely “hand of Providence” sort of situation.

Noah Wyle will only be appearing in 12 of the 22 episodes this season; he won’t be in next week’s episode (entitled “Dear Abby” thanks to the letter Carter sent home with Luka, insert barfy smilie here) nor does it seem that he’ll be in the episode following, reportedly entitled (proving that ER writers retain their sense of perversity) “Shift Happens.”

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This is kind of off the subject, but does anyone know what the music was that accompanied Luka’s praying scene? I’ve heard it before and absolutely love it.

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Sounded like Adagio For Strings, Op. 11, written by Samuel Barber, to me.

You might have heard it in the movie “Platoon.”

Hope this helps.

24

In the closing credits, I noticed that one actor had the surname M’Ba, which is the same as that of a former president of Gabon; also, much of the soundtrack was done by Senegalese artist Youssou N’Dour. While I’m sure that all of the actors portraying the Congolese were Africans, I suspect that they may have come from a number of different countries, which may be why they spoke French exclusively, even to each other (one would presume that real Congolese would occasionally speak Lingala or some other local language). All nitpicking aside, it was a riveting show.

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Chefguy said:

No they won’t. Trust me, I’m a Breazilian and I’ve never heard of brujas, which I believe is Spanish for witch, bruxa in portuguese.