I know - I had a feeling they’d do something really cheesy with the one Frank took that had Romano with it - play with his face being blurred out or something. Yeah, it would have been lame, but I was half expecting it.
The obnoxious pot smoking med student? First he stole the pot from the old man with glaucoma, and since it seems like he’s disappeared on everyone now, what’s the deal? Can’t they just fire him? He obviously won’t do the work (whether he can’t is another question, though I think he can’t). And isn’t there some policy of drug testing staff?
Luka’s handcuffing (? maybe not the right word?) the patient in the ward that was subsequently hit by part of the helicopter. Well, he’s taken his antics outside the ER - I wonder what’s going to come of that, or if it’s going to be forgotten by everyone since he was so helpful with the carnage.
Sam, the new nurse, and her damn kid. I hate them. The kid is obnoxious, and obviously trying to set up her and Luka. I’m just waiting for him to do it by ‘accidentally’ not testing his blood and taking his insulin, then ending up in the ER…because, after all, then Luka and Sam have to take care of him (I know, it doesn’t make sense since there are others around, but I could see the kid’s mind working that way).
That’s correct, but it will be wrapped up in the next episode:
There is a memorial service for Romano at the hospital and it is exactly what you’d expect for the memorial for a man who alienated everyone he ever worked with, save one woman.
He was also high. I give him credit for not thinking that he was capable of exercising sound medical judgment while impaired. The fact that he was incapable of making a good decision between waiting and acting even after everything was “all over” (as Neela put it) reinforced, to me, that he was in no shape to be dealing with critically injured patients in a mass casualty situation. Morris is a wretched doctor, my fervent hope is that his career will be another casualty of the Helicopter of Doom.
Chuny? I don’t think that the nurse on the roof with Neela was Chuny. Damn, I knew I should’ve TiVoed this episode, but I hate helicopters with a passion and I knew that I couldn’t watch it again, so I didn’t bother.
If it’s any help, none of the ER specific forums, where some posters watch the episode, then watch it again and maybe a third time immediately after, make any mention of Chuny being the nurse who was impaled. I need to search the spoilers for mentions of her in future episodes.
My one critique of this episode was the unsubtle moment. (Lack of subtlety is becoming an ongoing and very disturbing problem with ER and The West Wing and Third Watch. What do they have in common? John Wells! Wells, oh Wells, pull up the heavy hands man! For the love of all that’s good about television!) When Neela and Romano were going up in the elevator to the helipad, the song that was playing was a muzaked version of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” and that was, to me, knowing what was coming, offensively over the top. Come on, we know that people are about to die. Don’t make bad music pun jokes. Don’t make jokes at all.
As for the late great Robert Patrick Romano, Jack Orman (former managing producer) painted Romano into a corner. (Just like he did with Mark Greene.) What good ending could possibly come to a one-handed surgeon? Paul McCrane, like Anthony Edwards before him, was smart to see the writing on the wall and exercise his option to get while the getting is good.
At the moment, I do feel like the absence of Romano will be palpable in a very negative way, but I thought that about Doug Ross, then about Carol Hathaway. I thought that about Peter Benton and I absolutely felt that about Mark Greene. The idea of ER without Mark Greene made me question whether I wanted to continue to watch the show. And it’s turned out that it’s been just fine without Mark. And I’m over Doug and Carol and Peter, too. ER has done a good job of swirling up strong enough stories and interesting enough characters – whether we like them or not – that those who are gone are good memories, but not constantly gaping holes in the fabric of the show.
I also think that this sets us up for having another character arise with some kind of change of attitude or intensifying of attitude to make us love to hate him/her the way that we loved to hate Romano. My guess: Pratt. We’re going to hate his attitude, I think, but like Romano, we’re going to have to recognize that the man knows his medicine. See last night’s stunt with the stent as a prime example – he went against Weaver’s orders, but he was right, and he saved his patient from permanent brain damage.
As a spoiler maven, I cannot say too much more lest I reveal things which people wouldn’t want to have revealed, but I will say this – I cannot wait to see what’s up with Carter and his bedmate and I think we’d all best hang on to our hats.
But no matter what happens with that particular little piece of intrigue, I really think that by January, we’re going to be saying “Rocket who?! Oh, yeah, him. Whatever.”
Mm, non-serious spoiler resolving, IMO, the Chuny question.
Chuny is mentioned as being at work, in the ER, in spoilers for episode 13 of this season, entitled “Get Carter.” This episode was episode 9, so if that was Chuny, even giving more than 4 weeks to elapse per episode, (and in fact, 3 weeks will elapse in episode 11) doesn’t seem that she’d be able to be back at work by episode 13. I’ll stand by my verdict that the impaled nurse was not Chuny Marquez.
I was ashamed of myself for this, but I actually laughed out loud when the helo fell on Romano. It was such a Monty Python moment with him looking up, and then the shot of the hull crashing down on top of him. It might as well have been a giant wooden rabbit.
Then again, this show so delights in torturing the characters that I have begun to see it not as a drama, but a comedy. Remember the ways that they used to pile misery upon misery on poor Dr. Green. I kept expecting a preview to air "Next on E.R., we don't bother to do a plot, we just bend Dr. Green over for an hour and whack him with a pimp stick... Next week, thumb screws!"
Also, am I the only one who has notice the rather high (for a TV Doctor show) casualty rate amoung patients, it seems that about 80% of patients coming through the doors expire, usually through staff incompetence. Hey even though they were in a war zone, the 4077th had a higher survival rate.
Unlike you, I didn’t give him credit for sitting out when he was high. I figured that he was sitting there only because Romano told him to, and it gave him the perfect excuse to not have to actually do anything when there was real work to be done.
Sure, he was high and treating patients would not have been a good idea. But I don’t think he was that high - if he really had been, I think he might have jumped into things and maybe been found out. Instead, he just looked like his usual self while his friend who’s carried him for years (the asthma guy) was taking hits off an inhaler while treating patients.
All I could think during the whole break after the chopper crash was…cheesiest. death. ever. I think a lot of it was the shot of Romano realizing he was going to die and yelling “Nooooooo!” It was just so very unRocketlike. Something bitter or sarcastic or bleepworthy would have been a lot more fitting for this character.
Why couldn’t Rocket have had an anuerism while screaming at Pratt, or electrocuted himself trying to defibrillate someone with his new hand? Those would have Romano-esque deaths, complete with dramatic codes where the entire ER busts ass to save their own. Dropping a helicopter on him was just stupid, melodramatic, and verging on cartoonish.
As for the high death rate, it seems pretty inline with the actual death rate for a major trauma center. This show isn’t nearly as much about the medicine as it used to be, but they do try to keep things pretty medically realistic.
Best throwaway line goes to the asthmatic med student who took a hit of nebulized helium or some such respiratory treatment and says in a chipmunk voice “No! That’ll kill him!”
Agreed that Romano’s “Nooooo!” was cartoonish and utterly out of character.
Chuck must have snuck off the helipad in the same elevator Romano took after the other flight nurse kicked him off the chopper. And wasn’t Morganstern up there as well to bid farewell to the bigwig patient?)
The crash animation was cheesy! Better than wrapped cheese food slices - I’ll call it “medium Cheddar.” Apparently they blew the CGI budget for the stunning work they did to remove Romano’s arm and replace it with a stump, especially in the episode where they did the actual amputation. The crash footage, on the other hand, looked like something out of a PlayStation.
I’ve been waiting for Ramano to commit suicide ever since that episode where he threw his headcover over the side of the building. I would rather that happened, or a sacrifice of self to save patients, than the useless death he got.
Did anyone else read the description (tv guide/ digital cable info blurb) for this episode? The end of it it said “…and Abby finally finds a reason to get over John.” Is she supposed to a psychic and know he’s shacked up with someone else? I kept expecting there to be something damning on the roll of film from the year before -maybe him kissing someone else- but…
I thought Neela avoided the room with the AED because Susan was in there, and Neela didn’t want to let Susan know Chuck was in trouble. Or, that the med students were doing proceedures they needed residents to observe for it to be “legal,” as well.
-slight hijack- Has anyone else seen the episode of the X-files where Paul McCrane needed to eat cancer to survive? One of the best, and he suffers an amputation in that one as well.
That was Romano? I’ll have to see that one again now… I do remember that I thought it was a really good episode, though slightly reminiscent of the “Tooms” episodes.
The X-Files episode was the first place I saw McCrane &…he was also in Fame (the movie), but that was before my time.
I haven’t liked ER since Kellie Martin left.
The Noah Wyle/Maria Bello storyline was drop-kicked after Bello optioned out to make Payback & Coyote Ugly. Too bad she didn’t stay on ER for a few years & do hiatus work like Clooney to build up her fan base.
I was glad to see the helicopter fall on him. It was like it came back to finish the job. A formality really, since cutting off his arm essentially killed him in the first place. I thought it seemed more like the inevitable end to the dismal life of a miserable human being. It was almost a mercy killing, a way out for everyone involved, including me.
While I agree that the helicopter falling on Romano was verging on “cartoony,” I don’t quite see the “Nooooooooooo!” as breaking character.
I mainly feel this way because of the way Romano was acting around the helicopter in the moments before. When he was in the elevator just staring at the helicopter, you could tell that he was wanting to get out of the elevator, but just couldn’t bring himself to do it. I think the yelling and crouching just before it hit him was actually a pretty dramatic close.
The whole scene left me with a wide-open mouth for the following commercial break.
No one knows about the pot. Romano got squished before he told anyone about it or had time to write it up.
And to whomever thinks he exercised good judgement for sitting out while high. Thats just nuts. This guy was too scared to act, like he always is. He used the “Romano told me to sit here” thing as an excuse to be a pussy.
When the helicopter dropped onto Romano, the first thought in my mind was ‘Wile E. Coyote.’ It seemed like such a Looney Tunes moment, it would have been fitting for Romano to bust out a tiny umbrella and hold up a sign that said ‘Mother.’
As for needing more characters to dislike, my feeling is that Carrie is going to revert to being a Grade One Bitch real soon.
Revert? Where have you been, Survey? Weaver’s always been prickly, but I think it’s going to be interesting to see her reaction to Romano’s death. Actually, her and Corday both.
