I grew up knowing the American style, but my parents, who are from Jamaica (which used to be a British colony) recognized them immediately. I had heard them myself the few Christmases I spent in Jamaica, but it had been a long time.
I LOVE the Christmas Special. It's strange how a compilation of raunchy comedy bits is not only one of my must-do holiday traditions, it's what finally gets me in the spirit.
Every year I look forward to the Sunday before Christmas, when ABC airs it. (12/15 this year). It's amazing how watching a movie that has nothing to do with Christmas has become my favorite holiday tradition.
The resignation on his face is agonizing.
It was years before the TV Tropes website was ever created, but even then I remembered thinking how much I hated the cliché that the hero of course had to lose either his best friend or his woman in the course of the movie.
I remember being so thrilled at the fact that we were going to have a new episode on Thanksgiving night that my mother and I rushed through cleaning up after dinner so that we could be comfortably settled in by the time it started.
I just saw it.
It's excellent.
I've been to a million theatrical performances and I honestly had no idea of the chaos that goes on backstage before and during a show, even while participating in quite a few myself (assuming my childhood dance recitals count).
Terrific casting job at finding people who looked exactly like the actors.
This article showing some of the notes exchanged between John Wells and Michael Crichton during the show's early days;
https://deadline.com/2024/09/er-tv-series-michael-crichton-memos-1236094390/
https://tvline.com/news/er-anniversary-george-clooney-julianna-margulies-doug-carol-1235331966/
I watched sporadically in Season 1 (I was devastated about Clooney's character on "Sisters" being killed off and couldn't bear to see him in anything else). Then I caught the promos for "Hell & High Water", decided to watch and was hooked ever since.