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'ER'! |
Does the Marquis de Sade head
the writing staff for 'ER'?
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
In a recent episode of NBC's "ER," the television equivalent
to a dog-doodoo tornado hit the emergency room doctors with full
force. Here's a sample of the stuff that hit them that night:
Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) learned he has a brain tumor.
He learned about that just a few hours before his fiance, Dr. Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston), told him she's pregnant. This was not long after she found out her career is seriously in the toilet because she did a simple back operation on a guy who's now paralyzed and all the lawyers in Chicago are lining up to sue her ass.
Meanwhile, Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle), who's been a recovering drug addict for the past season or so, had to help rescue Nurse Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) after an explosion in the ER blew her across the room. (It was caused by a smoking patient.) It was already a bad enough day for Abby because her psycho mom, Maggie (Sally Field), showed up at the hospital again, creating a world-class scene worth an Emmy nomination in the guest star category.
Actually, Maggie was just one of two trauma-inducing moms that night. Dr. Deb Chen (Ming-Na) also was visited by her mom (Nancy Kwan), who was stunned to discover Dr. Chen is swollen with child. This was catastrophic news because Dr. Chen's folks don't approve of unmarried daughters getting knocked up. Dr. Chen didn't help matters when she also confessed the father of her baby is an African-American doctor she has no plans to marry.
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Speaking of African-American doctors, we mustn't forget Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle), who certainly knows all about bigotry. Not long ago, he suffered the indignity of having an elderly black patient ask if she could be treated by a white doctor instead of him, which means he now has been insulted by all the ethnic groups on Earth, including his own. He was in a really bad mood in our specimen episode for a variety of reasons. For one thing, his pay is being docked because he had the bad taste to punch out a colleague, Dr. Malucci (Erik Palladino), the week before. He also is feeling low because he couldn't save the life of his nephew, who was gunned down by some gangbangers and bled out on the operating table. Benton's natural mood is sullen, but he was hyper-sullen that night. In fact, he managed to tick off Dr. Cleo Finch (Michael Michelle), the only decent woman who can still stand to be around him, and she walked out on him, apparently ending their rocky romance.
Benton has nothing on Dr. Luca Kovac (Goran Visnjk), who's still in a deep depression because he beat a mugger to death a few weeks ago. He has been walking around the ER like a zombie in a George Romero movie. This is not helping his chances to become the show's new male sex object, replacing Dr. Doug Ross (George Clooney), who left in disgrace two seasons ago.
Then there was Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), who's the boss lady around the ER. She's usually the cause of human suffering, but she may be due for her share soon. In our specimen episode, she went out for a nice dinner with a nice-looking lesbian doctor from another department and was shocked to discover her dinner partner thought Kerry was trying to launch a girl-girl relationship. As their scene ended, Dr. Weaver got that look on her face that seemed to say, "Oh, no, don't tell me THAT's what the writers are going to make me do next!"
And, by the way, this rather event-filled episode was taking place on Thanksgiving Day. And you thought your Thanksgiving wasn't up to snuff?
It was a typically emotion-choked episode of "ER," which is now in its seventh season on NBC. The show is still a ratings juggernaut despite a certain amount of slippage in recent seasons. It seems the more the writers torment the doctors and nurses, the more the public laps it up.
I'll have to admit I never find "ER" boring. In fact, I've never missed an episode and don't intend to start now, even though I'm no longer paid to watch television like I was in my newspaper days.
However, I will volunteer this opinion: Those writers really seem to have it in for the "ER" family of characters. Outside of the soaps, I've never seen so much undeserved human suffering. These are good people! They are healers who really care for each other. The only real losers are the callow Dr. Malucci, who probably should be punched out by a different physician each week, and the intolerable Dr. Romano (Paul McCrane), the boss of all bosses--a human weasel who probably dresses like a Nazi whenever he's off duty.
Unless they're saving a special corner of hell for Dr. Romano, the writers really don't do him like he needs to be done. To the contrary, while everybody else in the department was suffering on Thanksgiving Day, Romano left the ER early, smiling, with his arm around some bimbo. I kept waiting to hear skidding tires and a loud thump once he left the ER. No such luck.
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I don't have any particular sympathy for the actors because the ones whose characters are treated the worst--Edwards, Wyle and LaSalle--are the seven-year veterans who earn the fattest salaries. They can laugh all their way to the bank.
But I continue to suffer along with their characters, week after week, hoping that the writers aren't trying to tell us the good die young and should experience lots of pain in the process.
Edwards' Dr. Greene, a very kindly and decent man, is a prime example. His ambitious wife dumped him and he rarely sees their daughter anymore because they moved away. Then Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), the nice doctor who seemed most likely to make him happy, decided to leave Chicago just when their romance seemed about to happen. He has been sued. He has been beaten up by thugs. He has been screwed over on promotions. Now he has a brain tumor, which he learned about just a week after surviving the forced landing of a medivac helicopter. As if that wasn't bad enough, the poor guy is prematurely bald.
But, for the record, Dr. Greene is getting off easy. He could have really felt the writers' sting, the way medical assistant Jeanie Boulet and medical intern Lucy Knight did in recent seasons. They gave an HIV infection to Jeanie (Gloria Reuben), then wrote her out of the show. Poor Lucy (Kellie Martin) got murdered by an insane slasher.
If really fine people like Mark Greene, Jeanie Boulet and Lucy Knight can't find true happiness in TV's top-ranked drama series, what's the message "ER" is sending? I'd say, whatever it is, it's a downer.
But I'm an optimist. I keep hoping the writers have a series finale episode tucked away in their filing cabinet that makes all the suffering worthwhile: Like maybe the doctors all take a cruise together, get shipwrecked, wash up on a desert island and have to resort to cannibalism before they're rescued. I'm sure that bunch could come up with a rational cover story to explain why no trace of Dr. Romano can be found anywhere on the island.
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The cartoons are from IMSI's Master/Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. East, San Rafael, CA 94901-5506.
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