A Late Arrival to the ER

I was young, and in my youthful arrogance thought that I knew everything. But there is only one direction to go from the top of the mountain, and in the ensuing years I have steadily and faithfully regressed to the point where I hardly know anything at all. 

It is in this state of intellectual inadequacy and general feebleness that I issue this post. In a very specific sense, this is about a TV show. But in a more general one, it applies to so much more.

As an all-knowing snot I dismissed much. My three favorite things (movies, books and music), received the brunt of my critical attention. My tastes were unassailable. I was a genius. For confirmation, all you needed to do was ask.

This included television, of which I was frequently critical. And when ER took off in the late-nineties, I wrinkled my nose and said no thanks. Any prime-time hospital drama fueled by a male heartthrob just had to be defective.

I reasoned that if I were going to waste an hour of my life watching ER, why not listen to N-Sync, too? Why not read Ann Coulter? Eat deep-fried candy bars at state fairs? Consume red meat with abandon, drink too much and chain-smoke?

What difference did it make if I were going to sink to the depths of a celebrity-driven hospital drama like ER?

OK. Deep breath.

Thanks to my reduced circumstances and being firmly entrenched in my dotage, I have finally come 'round to ER.

And you know what? It's pretty damn good.

Yes, there are the standard plot conventions and requisite romantic entanglements (although I confess to hoping a friendship between Drs. Carter and del Amico would bloom into a romance), but the series regularly confronts the issues facing healthcare and a public city hospital and the grueling ordeal of emergency room work with a steadfast and unblinking eye.

It doesn't offer easy answers, and the casting and acting are uniformly high. As is the all-important writing. 

At the heart of creating a great story is drawing characters the viewer connects with. Pulls for. And identifies with. And ER has them in spades.

Who can't root for Mark Greene, an earnest and committed ER physician who somewhere down the line marries his job and is divorced by his wife? Or Doug Ross, a pediatrician torn between an urgent desire to practice 'pure ' medicine and an intricate web of protocols that seems to stifle that as often as it promotes it?

Or nurse manager Carol Hathaway, the series' heart and emotional center? An old soul, she can be counted on to hit the right note just as it seems the entire ER is about to careen off the rails even as her personal life is frequently a one-step-forward, two-steps-back struggle.

I would love to work with her. You would, too.

Episodes are stuffed with dozens of others, good, bad and in-between. They remind me of the inscription to a novel I once read: No one is as good—or as bad—as they first appear. Whatever their make-up, they're never boring. And if that doesn't make for great drama, what does?

ER also possesses a highly unique visual style, which is no small thing in television. And this is its signature move.

When a script transitions from one sub-plot to another, it usually happens in a bustling corridor with a backtracking camera framing one set of characters as they sign-off of the segment by briskly departing down a side hallway (lab coats flying) while a second group enters the just-vacated space from another hallway, introducing another sub-plot with lab coats again trailing in their wake.

(If nothing else, the cast of ER certainly got a nice little cardio workout in during filming.)

It is intense and dynamic and as perfectly choreographed as anything Welles or Huston or Hitchcock ever did, and just as effective. It is the visual manifestation of the urgency that surrounds their work.

Last but not least, the series was filmed in my hometown. And thankfully, it gets beyond the skyline-from-the-lake or skyline-from-the-Lincoln-Park-lagoon shots to reveal a city and its neighborhoods. It's been said that a locale is often another character, and on ER that certainly holds true.

I should add that like another favorite program of mine, ER possessed a sublime sense of humor. Its humor sneaks up, taps you on the shoulder and is gone almost before you know what's happening.

Given the often weighty nature of the scripts, it is a welcome relief.   

So there it is. A television series overflowing with memorable characters. Bursting with compelling scripts. And convincingly shot in a gritty, real-life locale that underscores its storylines. And when you least expect it, it provokes a laugh.

It has made me grateful that I no longer know everything. To think what I would have missed.