I was too tired to stay up to watch it. Can anyone give me a recap?
I’ll give it my best shot.
SPOILER ALERT!!
Abby in med school plot line: Mostly this was about her frustrations while she attempts her surgical rotation. Lots of ER time as Corday sent her to the ER to do all the consults, then call Corday to present. Romano hassled her for pretty much the entire episode. Abby did manage to get the wife of a newly-brain dead patient to consent to organ donation, which was fine in and of itself, but she still took criticism for that – acting too much like a nurse and not enough like a surgeon.
Dr. Carter is still not back yet and we barely saw anything of Kerry Weaver.
Luka spent his episode kicking ass and taking names, trying to clear the overcrowded waiting room. He would go behind all the new med students and interns and basically lop expensive, nonnecessary treatments and procedures to a) get the patients out faster and b) not spend money that could be used to treat the poor people. Words were exchanged with Romano. Although Romano was happy – in his Romano way – that Luka was clearing the board, he was not so happy that Luka gave out “deals” to waiting patients.
Pratt had his own little storyline: A woman showed up in labor at 24 weeks. The fetus/baby was about 6 grams over the “viable threshold” for the County hospital, so they delivered the preemie. The mother didn’t want to save it, knowing what challenges she and the little baby will face and knowing that a 24-week preemie really stands about a 5% chance to have a normal life. Susan basically backed up hospital policy which was anything over 500 grams, we save and send to NICU. Pratt wanted to do this, against the mother’s wishes and Luka tried to get them all to NOT save the baby. He’s on this save resources kick, evidently.
Not much involvement from Gallant, Jing-Mei, Corday.
Oh and Susan has started hanging out with her elderly, going-blind patient. She was shown going to his house to read to him – she’s gone well past just making sure he’s going to off himself and the producers seem to be hinting that she’s nearly dating him. I think she’s just trying to spend some time with him so they don’t both feel lonely.
That’s all I can remember.
[spoiler]A very small bit about Jing-Mei from last night’s episode: one of the new characters – Coop – was hitting on J-M pretty hard. Coop asked her to hang out with him after work. J-M said she had to bring her parents to the airport. Coop offered to drive J-M and her parents to the airport. J-M told him her parents wouldn’t appreciate him doing that, but I got the impression she appreciated the offer and Coop’s attention.
What’s interesting about this is that in recent episodes, Pratt seems to have taken a liking to Coop. However, if Coop and J-M become an item, and Pratt finds out (and he would), some tension is forthcoming.
Someone in last week’s ER thread was interested in Coop’s character, so I thought they’d appreciate the notes above.[/spoiler]
To me it looked like a substitute father thing going on. She mentioned that she hasn’t seen her real father in years, even though he lives in Chicago.
IMHO, it seems to me that Luka is way over-zealous in his refusal to allow tests to be done. A doctor who has had decades of experience might have the expertise to diagnose most things accurately without them, but most of the docs on ER are relatively young, and those tests from the lab probably give important info.
What ended up happening with the baby? Did the story resolve in any way? I fell asleep pretty much right at delivery.
[spoiler]Nothing much – the baby was pretty much only a plot deveice to showcase Luka’s new attitude.
The last time the baby was mentioned, Pratt came in to the mother’s room and told her that the baby’s heart and lung x-rays looked good.[/spoiler]
I agree with AV8R that Luka is a little over the top in expecting the young docs to know things that he knows only because of his years of experience. I especially agreed with Pratt’s point about how he can’t learn anything from Luka if Luka is just going behind his back and cancelling tests. Also, the younger doctors might learn more if he used a different tone when he said some of those things - his comments to Neela towards the end were downright condescending. It wasn’t her fault he’d been dealing with the same issues all day. I just wonder if it’ll take him missing some vital thing that a chem panel ($350!) could have detected, to make him realize that he’s gone too far.
Having said that, I totally loved him last night, and I thought it was cool the way he was saving money, and treating patients quickly.
Oh, and one question - Pratt said he would present to another attending - who, pray tell would that be? Does he mean that he’ll work on another shift? What other attendings do they have?! My understanding was that there was no one else.
Another question is about the last scene, with him, Sam, and Sam’s kid. First of all, how was he supposed to know that was her kid? Second, how was he supposed to know the kid is diabetic? Maybe the kid shares some responsibility too - at the age he looked to be (8/9?), kids should know enough to say something if offered ice cream. Third, he was playing a game with the kid, so how was he supposed to have noticed that he was sick? He was looking at the screen. And he’d already said something about how the kid wasn’t playing right, as soon as the game finished, he would have noticed if the kid was like fainting or something.
I was so mad at Sam for yelling at him. Look lady, it’s your kid, don’t bring him to a hospital - find an appropriate baby-sitter. Regardless of whether or not he made it into the morgue (:eek:), he still shouldn’t be hanging out in a hosptital emergency room! Don’t take it out on Luka for being nice to your kid when he didn’t have to be. Hey, just be glad he’s not buying ice cream for the hookers! 
Did anyone else feel that way about Sam, or am I way off base? I really like her character, and I won’t miss Abby if Sam is around. But last night made me kind of not like her a bit too.
grumble … my first attempt at :eek: and I screw it up …
In addition to Susan’s father, Newhart has a daughter that he is estranged from. Very surrogate/substitute father/daughter thing going on. Except Newhart came in for his appointment (late, causing Susan to panic) and brought her flowers and the first edition of the book (Red Badge of Courage?) she’s been reading for him. She couldn’t accept such an expensive present and he was a little upset, I think.
Is anyone impressed by how good a serious actor Bob Newhart is? Maybe it’s just a perfect role for him, but he’s doing an excellent job.
Also Frank was observing Deb and Coop flirting and gave Pratt a running play-by-play, so Pratt already knows they are flirting. Deb also worked with Neela in the OR, they seem to be getting along much better.
Isn’t Susan an attending?
Sam’s attitude bugged me too, especially when she blamed Luka for buying her son ice cream instead of, oh, maybe chewing out her kid for accepting something like that from a stranger and roaming around all over the place. I don’t know why Jerry didn’t take him to the morgue for $5; it’s totally something he’d do.
That was one of the cutest puppies ever, but did its sex keep changing during the episode? I thought I heard people refer to it as a boy or a girl multiple times.
I agree that Luka was a little overzealous in his handling of the tests, but too idealistic in his expectations that the standard of care at County would change based on his solo efforts. I see it as a clash between practitioners and administrators, and Romano’s sort of caught in the middle of it. He’s excited when Luka and the students clear the waiting room, but then he gets pissed off when he doesn’t see a huge bill for their services. (I also thought Jason Cerbone was a little wasted as the pissed-off father with the anxiety attack.) I think it’s always interesting to watch Luka deal with children as well, and last night he had Sam’s kid, the Will & Grace/Almost Famous kid, and the preemie. I agreed with his stance on the preemie, and very nearly convinced myself Pratt deliberately flubbed weighing the baby just so he could save it. That’s also my Pratt-dislike talking.
Frank was actually funny this episode, especially in the play-by-play. I hope the writers erase the nasty bigot Frank from the first couple of episodes and stick with this one.
:smack:
Oh yeah …
*Frank: “Watch … she’s going to touch him next.”
Pratt: “That was a slap!”*
… or something like that.
Pratt was surprisingly cavalier about it.
Thanks guys…so nothing earth-shattering? Ah well, sweeps has barely started…give it time.
Heater, I"m agreeing with you about Sam. The an 8-10 year old diabetic knows better than to eat stuff without an insulin shot, especially ice cream chocolate, and stuff like that. Luka was just being nice.
And I agree with Luka about the preemie. It wasn’t so much as the money thing, I think. He emphasized more that the mom didn’t want this—she knew the little thing would just suffer and probably die anyway. And it probably will. They should’ve just let the baby die in peace. Luka was just being objective and thinking about all the aspects.
But I"m mistaking this forum for Great Debates. sorry.
Good episode though.
Romano needs a kick in the balls.
I thought this was a pretty good episode. I continue to enjoy Sam, the new nurse (only partly because Linda Caredllini is gorgeous beyond belief). I particularly liked them watching the carjacking. But haven’t they done the whole organ donor thing several times before?
However, the highlight of this episode was… Luka playing Streetfighter II!
A quick analysis, in case anyone else here is a Streetfighter fan:
(1) He was almost certainly playing Champion Edition. It wasn’t fast enough to be Hyper Fighting, didn’t look like Super or Super Turbo, and had Sagat fighting on Ryu’s stage
(2) When we first saw it, Blanka and Dhalsim were duelling on Dhalsim’s stage. Luka must have been playing Blanka. However, he kept pressing buttons even after the round was apparently over
(3) The kid (Alex) suggested he use a fireball (Blanka has no fireball) or a dragon punch (Blanka has no dragon punch), and referred to a “psycho crusher” move, which I believe is the never-used official name of M. Bison’s flaming torpedo
(4) While Blanka and Dhalsim were fighting, the audio was definite Sagat. Tiger! Tiger Uppercut!
(5) Later, we see Alex. vs. Luka playing Ryu vs. Sagat. We hear what could plausibly be Ryu.
(6) One thing they got right: the machine did have the appropriate 6 buttons.
All in all, I was excited to see one of my past obsessions featured on ER… the only thing that could top it would be if Abby and Sam threw down in a quick Magic: The Gathering duel
Okay minor rant here, and I realize WHY they did it, it just annoyed me. The whole baby storyline drove me nuts. My mom’s a neonatologist so I couldn’t help counting all the things they got wrong. The most glaring example was when Pratt was able to tube the baby with no trouble whatsoever. The windpipe of a 24 weeker is tiny. They would have gotten a doctor from the NICU down there as soon as the woman presented. Speaking of that, there was one scene with the neonatologist then we didn’t see her again. What was up with that? Rant over, sorry.
This exact scene was done before, with Mark watching Susan, years ago when he had a crush on her before she left the show the first time. A documentary filmaker told him the whole bit, and he was watching Susan flirt with someone else, doing the laughing and touching thing.
The bit with the preemie was done before, too, and the bit with the drug rep.
The scene last week with Luka trying to clear the board quickly was done before, too, with Mark. He went right out into the waiting area and cleared the board in just a couple of hours, as opposed a whole shift.
Even Susan’s line about her father (“He’s a test pilot for Barca-Lounger”) is lifted directly from the episode where she, Abby, Carter, Gallant and Luka spend the day in a Sexual Harrassment Seminar.
You could just watch scenes from a few shows over the years, and you’d have last night’s show. I swear it should have been titled “Recycled Plotlines.” :rolleyes:
This exact scene was done before, with Mark watching Susan, years ago when he had a crush on her before she left the show the first time. A documentary filmaker told him the whole bit, and he was watching Susan flirt with someone else, doing the laughing and touching thing.
The bit with the preemie was done before, too, and the bit with the drug rep.
The scene last week with Luka trying to clear the board quickly was done before, too, with Mark. He went right out into the waiting area and cleared the board in just a couple of hours, as opposed a whole shift.
Even Susan’s line about her father (“He’s a test pilot for Barca-Lounger”) is lifted directly from the episode where she, Abby, Carter, Gallant and Luka spend the day in a Sexual Harrassment Seminar.
You could just watch scenes from a few shows over the years, and you’d have last night’s show. I swear it should have been titled “Recycled Plotlines.” :rolleyes:
In the previews for upcoming episodes, there’s a shot of a helicopter crash (On the hospital roof, presumably) and flaming wreckage falling to the street. Perhaps it came back to finish off Romano? 
Yes, indeed it does. In last week’s thread I posted that I read a spoiler that Romano kills himself in an upcoming episode. I was mistaken. (I was trying to remain spoiler-free, but read some things by accident on the TWoP board. I just assumed from what I read that he offed himself.) It seems he is killed in the helicopter accident seen in the previews last night. Guess the one that took his arm is back for revenge. 
Luka telling Sam that he thought Alex was a street kid should have gotten her attention. I can’t imagine that a hospital would allow a child that age to just hang out, unsupervised. Sam telling Jerry to go find him was out of line too.
But I guess he’s only been there for a couple of hours, in “real” time.
Is the puppy going home with Newhart? I think he/she fell asleep in Newhart’s arms as he and Susan were walking around. That was so cute. Awwwww.