I was aware the series existed but I was never a regular viewer. But something today reminded me of the series and I was checking the Wikipedia article. I hadn’t been aware how long the series was on the air and how complete the cast turnover had been.
The other thing I noticed was that several of the original cast members returned as guest stars in the final season. And I’m curious how they worked it out. Did they intersperse their appearances throughout the final season? Was there one episode where they gathered together all the old characters? Were the characters appearing in the current setting or did they appear in flashback scenes to the earlier setting of the show?
Many attended a grand opening of the Carter Foundation in the last episode. New staff crossed paths with Ross and Hathaway in a one episode storyline involving a transplant, and Greene was featured in an episode that wasn’t really a flashback episode, but it gave some background on a current castmember’s feelings about County General.
Did Jeanie (the PA[? I think she was a PA…] that got HIV from her husband) return in the last season or one or two before that? I remember she came back, but the entire main cast from when she’d been on had pretty much left, so only the nurses recognized her or something.
And that was a wonderful scene. Clooney later joked that he was going to come back and escort all of the long-time characters off into their “aftershow”, including Mark Green, as an angel in the light
