ER Ends Softly

There is more than one good way to end a television series. One of my favorites is the camera pulls back, our characters recede, and we take our leave of them, along with the irresistible impression that they are continuing their lives and business as usual, lives and work which we have been privileged to see. The last scene of Star Trek: The Next Generation did a great job of that, with the camera pulling away from Picard and his top officers playing cards around a table. ER did that last night with John Carter and newer characters responding to an all-out out emergency...

ER started much the same way in 1994, except John Carter was just a med student back then. The series was immediately appealing, with its multiple stories and criss-crossing, fast-moving camera trajectories. This was a new mode of story telling on television, and, actually, still is.

The intense linear story lines of the Sopranos, the Wire and 24, the incredible, compelling complexities of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, the idiosyncratic brilliance of House and Bones - what I've been calling the new golden age of television drama - blew by ER, and left it spinning like a top...

Except, ER was already spinning, with a pace and style all of its own, from the very beginning. The doctors and students all jockeying for position, but all devoted to saving lives ... drinking in and pumping out adrenalin ... and you never knew exactly when the door would swing open with another life-and-death emergency, except you knew that it surely would.

I wrote here several weeks ago how good it was to see Doug Ross (George Clooney) and Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), John Carter (Noah Wylie), and lots of the original nursing staff back for an episode. Benton and Carter were back again last night, as well as Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), and Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston). It was also heartwarming to see Mark Greene's daughter Rachel (Hallee Hirsh), now in her 20s, seeking to join the ER team, picking up for her late father, and poised to pick up the John Carter role as medical student. The eternal cycle continues. John Wells, executive producer - show runner - of the series since its beginning, wrote both episodes.

The two-hour finale will air again on NBC this Saturday - well worth seeing if you've ever been a fan of the show. A last chance to see the life-savers outside of Chicago County General, as the ambulances swoop in, and the scene moves one last time from the pace on the screen to the soft recesses of our memories.

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George Clooney and Eriq La Salle Back on ER

Here's a rarity in Infinite Regress - a review of an episode of ER!

The long-running NBC series - which began in 1994 - is coming to an end this year, with a sequence of superb, heart-warming episodes that bring back some of the original, long-gone characters. My wife and I watched the show religiously until about five years ago, when 24, Lost, The Sopranos, and what I call the new golden age of television pulled us away. (Hey, I watch an enormous amount of television - but I have to leave a least a little time for writing....) 1994 was a long long time ago for popular culture - not only was there no blogging, the Web was about a year away from becoming a phenomenon.

This week, ER had a perfectly written, wonderfully acted show that brought back two of its all-time major characters - Dr. Doug Ross (played by George Clooney) and Dr. Peter Benton (played by Eriq La Salle).

Ross was Clooney's break-out role in the 1990s, and remains one of the best doctors ever on television. He was pediatrician who cared more about his patients than the hospital rules, and in that sense was a precursor of House. But Ross was the complete antithesis of House in the charm and way with people Ross easily had, and in the commitment Ross had to his patients (House is more committed to solving the medical puzzle).

Often when stars return to their television roles in special appearances, they smile or scowl and say a few words, and that's it. Ross actually had a wordless reappearance about nine years ago. But Ross had a major role in Thursday's episode, which required all of his empathy (it was also great to see Clooney acting with Susan Sarandon).

Peter Benton was a very different kind of doctor - a tough, brilliant surgeon in the Ben Casey tradition. As a black man who fought hard for everything he attained, Benton had little in common with John Carter (played by Noah Wylie), rich, white, and his fourth-year medical student. Benton drove Carter mercilessly, all ostensibly in the name of giving Carter a good education.

Benton was back this week to help with Carter's kidney transplant (that is, the kidney that Carter needed as a patient). Eriq La Salle has aged a little, and he invested Benton with that mellowness which worked just right for the character. Benton is still tough, but his humanity, and his concern for Carter, are finally, after all of these years, out up front. It was gratifying to see.

There are a few more episodes of ER coming up, with more old friends returning. This week's episode convinced me completely that, after the series goes off the air, Ross and Benton and all of those great doctors and nurses will continue their daily struggle to save lives. If only there was someway I could get through the television screen, and thank them personally...

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