*Carter has a rather nice and easy exit. His celebration was cut short by the accident, but he had a lovely meeting with the parents of a girl he had delivered ten years earlier who had come in for treatment. Full circle. Some nice slides of his old pals.
*Even if Sam had told her son, The World’s Most Annoying Kid, about his jailbird dad, I doubt very much that it would have made any difference to him since he worships the old man. Annoying turns to Stupid as Hell when he takes off to hitch-hike, and without his insulin to boot.
*I remember a horrific news story and footage on a balcony at a party that collapsed beneath the weight of all the people on it, just as was depicted in this ep. It was shocking to watch nonetheless.
As soon as they showed the porch with all the people on it, I knew where they were going with the ‘dramatic accident of the week.’ However I was wrong in assuming (and hoping) the annoying red-headed guy was going to be on it when it fell.
I gotta admit, the ER special effects folks are pretty good at depicting these shockingly horrific accidents, e.g. Romano and the heliocopters, the porch falling et al.
The porch going down was pretty shocking to see, but it lost a lot of shock value because I knew it was coming. So it’s still got nothing on the episode where Romano gets his arm severed. That scene is the only time in my 30 years of watching TV and movies that I actually jumped up and yelled “Holy Shit!” No warning, no foreshadowing. Just Whammo! They set this porch-collapsing scenario up with the camera shot of the all the people on it when the two docs first arrived at the party.
In regard to Pratt’s dad: I thought Dany Glover was supposed to be on a few episodes this season. Did something happen where he only ended up on the finale?
I also expected the porch collapse immediately upon seeing the building, although I didn’t expect it to pancake like that. (I imagined it would pull away from the building.) And I was also hoping that Dr. Morris (the incompetent senior resident) was going to die in the accident. Instead, all he did was to show that he couldn’t handle being a leader in a crisis. He definitely shouldn’t have gotten the promotion, and probably shouldn’t even be an ER doc.
Morris actually saved RnR Doc by calling him back in just as he was about to go on the porch. Nothing on purpose, obviously, but if he hadn’t have asked for the asprin or whatever the other doc would have dropped as well.
And I think there might have be two people in the viewing audience that didn’t know the porch was going to collapse. I was busy thinking to myself “Pregnant lady, check. Love interest, check. Old friends, check. Cue the porch collapse!”
It was nice showing all the now R2s compentent, in contrast to last week. This is what the whole year has been about, they ran many traumas correctly and went by the book and succeeded.
I loved Carter talking to Morris as he was leaving, repeating the line about being in charge and Morris missing in because he was about to throw up. The important part of Green saying it to Carter wasn’t the line, it was the person he said it to. Clearly not the case with Morris, who I still think can be a great character.
Drop the story line with Sam’s kid; it’s annoying and pointless.
I seriously did not expect the porch collapse. I thought that the girl Shane West hooked up with might fall over the side. Turns out I was right about that, but not in the way I imagined.
I was only paying intermittent attention while playing Unreal Tournament 2004, so I didn’t see the balcony collapse coming, either.
As for Alex, though, if the next season opens with the cops finding his violated mutilated body, I’ll give a mild cheer. The kid has no useful role on the show whatsoever and when he ran away without any of his diabetic supplies and climbed into a stranger’s truck, I thought immediately of the screamapillar (an insect that screams constantly, dies from low self-esteem and is sexually attracted to fire); “Are you sure God doesn’t want it dead?”
Oh, by the way, I was thinking that Pratt was the OTHER black doc, the one that got hot with Neela a few weeks ago while he was in town. Hence my confusion.
You’re not missing much, as far as I can tell they were setting up a why’d you run out on us, I made it anyway so piss off missing father type storyline.
