Is it wrong to guess that more people will have watched last night's ER -- which featured the return of three of the show's most treasured characters -- than will eventually watch the series' April 2 finale? Well, we say: whatever. Better to be remembered for this brisk, artful, relatively unsentimental installment than whatever soapy mess they've cooked up as a final goodbye.
Do we need to go into how maudlin, overwrought, repetitive, or dra-ma-TIC! this show has become in the last few years? Probably not, but a reminder: We're guessing no matter how much you liked Parminder Nagra in Bend It Like Beckham, no matter how much you ever crushed on Uncle Jesse or Lisa Miller, you still couldn't get into any of their storylines on ER because, well, you'd basically seen it all before: the insecure foreigner, the dark scrapper with a chip on his shoulder, the brunette who can't admit how deeply she feels things. Compacting the problem, as median age of the cast dropped to well below 30, the gravity of the enterprise sort of disappeared. Whereas 15 years ago, Dr. Greene was in denial over an impending divorce and Dr. Benton was grappling with a deaf, unintended child, any dedicated ER viewer taking special note of the personal dramas in 2008-9's County General would have been treated largely to a series of whiny, scab-picking arguments in messy post-collegiate apartments. For all its past successes -- the chaotic, confounding forms of its pilot, the ratings bonanza that let it reiterate those forms almost into the new century -- it's lately seemed that the time and place for a show with such a young, TV-ready cast was an hour earlier, on a different network.
How wonderful, then, to see George Clooney, Julianna Marguiles, and Eriq La Salle -- along with Noah Wyle, who's return to the show has lasted for a few weeks now -- drop easily back into their roles, giving the show a chance to explore rhythms it hadn't seriously played with in years. So many elements from last night rang true to the show's former glory that they bear repeating: the way Peter Benton held up John Carter's bag of urine as a sign of Carter's transplant success, a secret claim to his own victory for saving the operation, and a loving, scatological taunt to an old friend; the subtle way that Doug Ross seduced (!) a bereaved grandmother (Susan
Sarandon, excellent and weirdly beside the point) into donating her
grandson's organs to transplant patients; and above all how the two plotlines crossed without one explicitly acknowledging the other, neither Doug and Carol, nor Sam and Neela ever grasping the personal significance of the Seattle/Chicago exchange.
Good stuff; if we somehow miss the series signoff, we'll be OK with that. What did you guys think?
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Who Would You Rather: George Clooney Vs. Jon Hamm?
"Gilmore Girl" Alexis Bledel Joins The "ER" Finale
"ER": Dr. Ross And Nurse Hathaway To Get It On Again March 12 [SPOILERS]
Susan Sarandon Will Join George Clooney On "ER"
