As a professional TV viewer, it's something I've always been reluctant to admit, whenever talk turns to NBC's second-longest-running drama series.
I still watch "ER."
Not in a professional, see-who's-on-this-year kind of way. I watch every week because -- after the departure of original stars such as George Clooney and Anthony Edwards, outlandish stunts like a missile tearing through the emergency room and a doctor squashed by a falling helicopter, and a steady thrashing by upstarts such as "Private Practice" and "Without a Trace" -- I'm still a fan.
It's tough to remember 15 years ago, when "ER's" two-hour debut set a new standard for TV drama. Based on scribblings that novelist Michael Crichton set down in 1974 when he was in medical school, NBC's hospital drama crashed into prime time with swooshing, MTV-inspired camera shots and a breathless narrative pace.
I remember angering former star Alex Kingston (Dr. Elizabeth Corday) during a 2002 on-set interview after my fourth question on whether that was the year "ER" would lose a ratings battle to the competition.
But, the truth is, eventually, the rest of TV caught up. Everyone from "CSI" to "The West Wing" copped the rushing walk-and-talk scenes that seemed so fresh and energetic back then. Look at the pilot now, and you'll see a too-long episode that feels way slower than it did then.
With "Lost" bopping back and forth through time and "30 Rock" drafting everyone but Michael Jackson for cameo appearances, suddenly "ER's" creative storytelling arcs (new co-star Angela Bassett's character had a flashback this season, allowing Edwards' dead character, Mark Greene, to reappear) and star turns don't feel so special.
Still, I'm one of the hardy few who are going to miss old County General when the Emmy-winning series concludes its run Thursday. A series retrospective is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. EDT, with the two-hour series finale slated to begin at 9 p.m. Here are a few reasons why "ER" remains one of TV's most compelling shows for me:
-- The characters. OK, the cast does include John Stamos these days. But Parminder Nagra's Neela Rasgotra has grown before our eyes -- from uncertain student to grieving widow and assured surgeon. The list of standout characters and singular performances stretches way beyond Clooney and Edwards: Laura Innes' repressed gay administrator, Kerry Weaver; Maura Tierney's tough, damaged nurse-turned-doctor, Abby Lockhart; Mekhi Phifer's brusque, streetwise Greg Pratt (watching Pratt die slowly of injuries from an explosion last season was enough to wring moist eyes from any cynic). And there are few shows that did a better job showing how people of color live in America, at different times reflecting, sidestepping or ignoring their culture.
-- The guest stars. If the mainline cast isn't enough, remember the guest stars. They included Sally Field as Lockhart's bipolar mother; Alan Alda's Alzheimer's-stricken doctor, Gabriel Lawrence; Danny Glover as Pratt's long-unknown father; a pre-"Law & Order" Mariska Hargitay as Greene's ditzy post-divorce girlfriend; a pre-"CSI" Jorja Fox as gay doctor Maggie Doyle; and Clooney's aunt, singer Rosemary Clooney, as a singing, unknown Alzheimer's patient. Even if the regular cast irritates, there's always a cool guest waiting in the wings.
-- The storytelling. Four years before "24" would turn a real-time drama into ratings gold, "ER" did it first with a 1997 live episode filmed from the perspective of a PBS crew taping at the hospital. There were the social issues: heterosexual AIDS transmission, the crisis in Darfur, the way the poor depend on emergency rooms for health care and the maddening bureaucracy of the modern health-care system. And for a time, "ER" was one of the grittiest, most realistic dramas on TV, with patients who didn't always live and storylines that didn't always resolve neatly.
(Eric Deggans is the TV/media critic of the St. Petersburg Times and can be reached at edeggans(at)sptimes.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service www.scrippsnews.com)
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