OK - so I am watching ER last night and all of a sudden sleep takes over. I saw the first 1/2 hour of the show and basically passed out when the second doctor entered the pressurized tank. Can anyone tell me what I missed?
When Neela went to leave, she had lung, uh, issues, I guess, and she had to stay in for another hour. She was NOT PLEASED but survived. No real big drama.
Lewis introduced her dad to Chuck. Dad says ‘the boyfriend?’ They nod. 'Oh," Lewis adds, ‘I’m pregnant and he’s the father.’ Dad says to Chuck ‘you gonna marry her?’ Chuck says ‘if she’ll have me.’ Dad makes some sort of sigh and that’s how it ends.
Sam sits down with Alex (after telling Luka that you know, we’re just casual dating) and asks him if this is ok. Alex really doesn’t seem to care (presumably he is just looking for the next person he can cut open.)
Corday and Weaver, apparently now best friends, are talking about Corday’s love life and she says that she is dating a teacher. But then that new British surgeon asks out Corday in front of Weaver; Corday says yes and Weaver says, ‘I thought you were dating the teacher?’ ‘I am,’ says naughty Corday.
The CO2 baby–and actually the whole family–are fine.
Chen is back and brings her dad with her b/c he has some sort of PE or something. He is nearly unconscious. She catches up with Carter and then in walks Pratt. Wisely, Dr. John leaves and Pratt tries to talk to Chen. She is sort of not really interested and says that her mom died in the middle of the night, all alone, and she wants to be there for her dad.
Kerry’s son gets brought to the ER by Sandy’s mom. He’s got a cold. It’s no biggie, but we’re introduced to little Henry’s grandma.
In a surprising move of compassion, Frank hooks up a webcam and John can see Kem. She actually looks pregnant now.
I think that’s everything. Someone can fill in the details of what I’ve missed. televisionwithoutpity.com can help, too.
Jerry hooked up the web cam.
Can I just say I’m insanely jealous of Sam’s gorgeous curly locks?
Thanks so much for filling me in. I was so mad when I woke up around 1am and realized I had no clue what happened for the last 1/2 hour.
A few other items:
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Neela ran out of the pressure chamber, through the hospital in a near panic, until she reached an outside door.
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Kovac yelled at the father who had to leave his little girl in the ER while he went to work. It increased the tension between Sam and Luka.
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Chen’s dad is badly brain damaged (?) and won’t be getting any better. She is currently taking care of him 24/7 and Pratt asks if she can handle that much for so long. That’s when she talks about her mom dying along in China after the car crash.
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The last line by Susan’s dad is “It’s about time.” She looks pretty happy at his response.
The teacher Corday is dating is the other guy we saw last week, right? The father of Ella’s friend?
Also, Sam sort of blew off Luka with regard to their relationship. She said something about taking a break, since they’re not serious. I think Luka thought they were in a “relationship,” but she was just wanting a little nookie. She definitey didn’t like that Alex caught them together.
Okay, does anyone else here hate Kim? I’m so happy she’s gone, and I hope she doesn’t come back. I can just see what this is all leading up to. She’s going to die, and Carter’s going to be heartbroken, blah, blah, blah. She’s going to be one of those delicate woman flower characters who dies in childbirth, I can just feel it. Honestly, at this point I don’t care how she dies, I just want her gone.
Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to see if anyone else felt the same way.
A few questions, as I haven’t been watching ER really closely this year (meaning that it’s been on in the background while I do other things)…
Car crash? What car crash? I vaguely remember Chen going to China with her parents… what’s happened since?
Also, where was Neela, and why was she there? I know it had something to do with pressurized something. And is she just claustrophobic?
Neela when into the hyperbaric chamber (the same thing divers with the bends need) with a baby born in the ER of a mom who was exposed to carbonmonoxide. Her entire family was unconscious when she awakened in labor the infant got a higher concentration than anyone else. (smaller)
In the chamber, the baby blew a lung and had to get a chest tube to reinflate its lung. Then Leela had trouble breathing. She leaked air into the tissue around her neck. They wrote it as no big deal. Probably what caused it was her panic in concert with being decompressed faster than normal.
The car crash, I think was when Luka was angry, and driving too fast. I don’t remember exactly what happened.
Chen when to China because her parents were in a car accident.
Chen got a phone call several episodes ago that her parents had been injured in a car crash (in China) and she went there to be with them. Her mother died there, and she’s now brought her father back to the US. This was the first we’ve seen her in several week’s worth of shows. I think several months are supposed to have passed in TV-time.
The baby absorbed the CO2 from the mom’s bloodstream in utero, which was why she was the only one who didn’t pass out. They had him in a hyberbaric chamber to (I think) force the CO2 out of his bloodstream. Neela had to be in there with him in case something went wrong. Apparently, she’s wildly claustrophobic. She was wigging out the minute they closed the door. WHen they let her out finally, as Telemark mentioned, she ran all through the halls till she could get outside and take big gulps of fresh air.
Claustrophobic Neela was annoying. I couldn’t figure out why she even had to be in the chamber with the baby since she wasn’t doing anything but pacing back and forth and asking what time it was.
The storyline with Carter is boring.
I don’t even know why they bother having Gallant in the show anymore. He doesn’t have any lines. Nor does he impact the other characters.
They showed Kerry’s baby for the first time. I’m assuming Sandy is the biological mother, even though I distinctly remember Sandy saying she didn’t want to carry the baby after Kerry aborted.
I’m still waiting for Newbie Doctor (screw-up guy that peeves off Pratt all the time) to kill someone.
Oh yes, me too. I don’t know why I hate her so much now, I liked her fine before Carter came back to the US.
Yes, Sandy is the biological mother. There was show about 2 weeks ago that was mostly Abby and Neela doing a Neonatal ICU rotation and they “just happened” to run into Kerry and Sandy as Sandy was giving birth a few weeks early.
Her name is Kem (Makemba, actually) and no.
When Chen was telling Carter, then Pratt, about her father’s condition, she didn’t mention brain damage, just that he’s been demented since the accident. He’s been combatting his own recovery, not allowing nurses to aid in his home care, not walking though he physically can, and so on. He’s got pneumonia now, and it seemed that he was just sort of waiting to die and Deb (she’ll always be Deb to me!) is waiting too. She has felt that she was a disappointment to her parents, successful immigrants, a father who expected the highest and a mother who has chief of surgery at another hospital. All of her hijinks, when she dropped out the emergency medicine program after nearly killing a patient while inserting a central line, her unplanned pregnancy, her relationship with Pratt, have been just the opposite of what they wanted and expected of her. I know that Ming-Na is taking the parental privilege leave that Laura Innes and Noah Wyle are also enjoying this season but I hope that there is going to be an opportunity for a little bit more depth to this storyline in upcoming episodes.
As to timeline, the episode which followed Neela and Abby’s rotation in the NICU spanned 16 days, and Sandy and Kerry’s son was born about midway through that time. We progressed at least two weeks after that before the next episode, and then Carter said in last night’s show that the last time he’d seen Kem in person was 34 days and some hours and minutes prior. So backtracking and doing some creative ER math, it’s probably been:
- About 5 months since Chopper of Doom ate Rocket Romano
- 5 months or so since Chopper of Doom spared the life of Chuck, leading to the “I’m glad you’re alive” sex which lead to preggers Susan
- 3 months since Chen’s parents’ accident
- 2 months since baby Henry was born
- 1 month or so that Elizabeth has been dating the teacher.
The magic of TV!
nipicking time…
The family was poisoned by CO - carbon monoxide - from a bad heater. CO[sub]2[/sub] is carbon dioxide - the stuff that bubbles in soft drinks are made of.
Hyperbaric therapy in this case is used to forcibly push the CO out of the patient’s blood. At normal atmospheric pressure, CO stays put and doesn’t exchange through the lungs like normal air / oxygen does.
/nitpick
Neela’s quite claustrophobic. A few episodes, she panicked when she had the NICU rotation.
A nitpick on the webcam. Jerry’s a sweet teddybear for setting it up, but for crying out loud… John Carter, with all his millions from the Carter Foundation doesn’t have a computer? He couldn’t pop over to CompUSA and buy a $40 webcam?
Sure Carter’s got a computer. He and Kem have been e-mailing back and forth, he said. But you have to keep in mind two things: a) Johnny-boy’s not really the most practically inclined person ever, and b) as far as he knew, Kem didn’t have access to a webcam. If it ever occurred to him, which it probably didn’t, he might have felt weird about her being able to see him when he couldn’t see her. He could have sent her a web-cam in one of his care packages, but that would have been far too sensible for Carter.
monstro, they needed a doctor with the baby at all times in case something went wrong. There are so many things that could go wrong (like the baby getting a pneumo) that have to be corrected right then, and it takes so long to get someone down to pressure, that it would be medically negligent to send a patient into a hyperbaric chamber without a doctor. Sure, there was a nurse there, but there are an awful lot of things nurses aren’t trained to do.
Oh, and I have to say, I have never liked Sam’s kid nearly so well as I did this episode. I think they really ought to explore this shutting-up thing with him a bit further.
This is ER, Neela can’t just be claustrophobic. The story line will get more dramatic and we’ll learn that:
a. her parents wanted a boy, so they used to punish her excessively by locking her in a closet
or
b. she was a victim of a major earthquake and was buried alive for several hours/days until a rescue worker could find her
or
c. During her undergrad years she and some friends drank too much, and they drove a car into a lake. She survived by finding an airpocket when her seatbelt jammed. Everyone else drown.
Does anybody else agree that this show needs some serious new blood or better plotlines fast? It’s gotten to where it’s all personal blip-trauma-personal blip-trauma but the personal blips are boring (Weaver’s a lesbian with a kid and Carter discovered a third world hellhole and has a kid and Luka’s boffing a nurse with a kid and Dr. Lewis boffed an EMT and is gonna have a kid… Zzzzzzzzzz…).
The show’s been on a serious slide lately. I blame it on the downsizing of Abby’s role (her mom and brother were a great sideplot), the death of Romano (where’s the tension without the world’s biggest brilliant horse’s ass?) and the lack of new blood to catalyze things. They need to have more “special guest stars” (ala Ed Asner, James Cromwell, Sally Field, Alan Alda, etc.) and more conflict twixt the characters stat, and either get rid of Gallant, Corday,
That should read “and either get rid of Gallant, Corday, Weaver, etc., or give them something to do that’s worth watching.”