All Episodes Talk: What's Up Doc?

[walnutqueen]

56 minutes ago, Automne said:

Which one? 

  Reveal hidden contents

The one that took his arm or the one that killed him?

The former, if memory serves (the latter's a little obvious, no?).   ;-)

[cpcathy]

What is up with Rebecca DeMornay's character? Her acting is horrible, I thought she was supposed to be insane (missed a few episodes). Does she just have some sort of breast cancer? In a scene yesterday with Carter, Noah Wylie was good but she was awful!

[doodlebug]

1 hour ago, cpcathy said:

What is up with Rebecca DeMornay's character? Her acting is horrible, I thought she was supposed to be insane (missed a few episodes). Does she just have some sort of breast cancer? In a scene yesterday with Carter, Noah Wylie was good but she was awful!

The entire storyline was weird.  She was terrible, seemed to be drugged or something.  She played a woman who was the ex-wife of one of Carter's cousins and, when she came to the ER after a fender bender, she and Carter had a fling.  In the midst of that, she turned out to have breast cancer and  Corday did a mastectomy.  Carter violated her privacy all over the place when he happened to see her going to see Elizabeth for a preop visit, which was very creepy.  Then, despite the fact that it was merely a fling, Carter stalked her postop and came to her apartment without invitation to make out with her, which somehow led to her feeling better about losing her breast.  She then went to Europe and wasn't seen again.  It was a really creepy storyline, IMO.

[cpcathy]

OK, thanks! I honest to God thought she has mentally ill, poor job on DeMornay's part! There was absolutely no context in any of the scenes I saw them in together.

[RedbirdNelly]

I was not a fan of that storyline either. Weird and seemed to have no point.

[chitowngirl]

Wasn't she Chase's ex-wife? The drug addict?

[doodlebug]

1 minute ago, chitowngirl said:

Wasn't she Chase's ex-wife? The drug addict?

No. she was the ex of the never-seen Douglas.  She and her ex were significantly older than Carter as he said he was in high school when he attended the wedding.  At least part of the problem with the storyline was that it seemed to imply that a woman who has a mastectomy will automatically feel better if a guy wants to have sex with her.  It seemed really patronizing to me.

[voiceover]

On 7/31/2017 at 4:18 PM, desertflower said:

 

Cullum plays a similarly emotionally closed off dad on The Middle, but he doesn't appear as much as I'd like. 

Grandpa Big Mike!  Love both sets of grandparents on that show.

[jjj]

What I liked about the Holling character was that the writers did not give him a personality transplant when he moved to Chicago or keep him totally crotchety, but cracked him open gradually.  Just saw the first Thanksgiving with Elizabeth and the Greenes, and loved her snarkiness yet kindness Elizabeth displayed with both Holling and Rachel.  "Actually, that *is* one word, it's hyphenated" to Rachel trying to correct Elizabeth's grammar, and "I know who Montgomery is" in the Thanksgiving D-Day re-enactment with the crockery.  

Only wished she had pointed out to Rachel that the Pilgrims also were British -- just a different segment of the British population.  (When Rachel tried to get snarky about Elizabeth trying to celebrate Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims had escaped "British" persecution and Elizabeth zinged back by noting incursions on Native Americans.)

[RedbirdNelly]

14 hours ago, jjj said:

What I liked about the Holling character was that the writers did not give him a personality transplant when he moved to Chicago or keep him totally crotchety, but cracked him open gradually.  Just saw the first Thanksgiving with Elizabeth and the Greenes, and loved her snarkiness yet kindness Elizabeth displayed with both Holling and Rachel.  "Actually, that *is* one word, it's hyphenated" to Rachel trying to correct Elizabeth's grammar, and "I know who Montgomery is" in the Thanksgiving D-Day re-enactment with the crockery.  

Only wished she had pointed out to Rachel that the Pilgrims also were British -- just a different segment of the British population.  (When Rachel tried to get snarky about Elizabeth trying to celebrate Thanksgiving when the Pilgrims had escaped "British" persecution and Elizabeth zinged back by noting incursions on Native Americans.)

I love that episode too. Holling was so awesome, including when Rachael gets her period.

[walnutqueen]

Wow - I'd forgotten the delightful moments in "Be Still My Heart" - Romano & Greta's surgery, Holling's & Mama Corday's karaoke - because I knew what was coming at the end of the episode with Lucy & Carter ...

[twinkietwin94]

1 hour ago, walnutqueen said:

Wow - I'd forgotten the delightful moments in "Be Still My Heart" - Romano & Greta's surgery, Holling's & Mama Corday's karaoke - because I knew what was coming at the end of the episode with Lucy & Carter ...

I love the karaoke and Abby with the old lady, Lucy and Carter I can't help but watch but it's so awful every time. Romano & Greta though I skip, change the channel or at least mute it. That "poodle surgeon" like pisses me right off every damn time. Hubby is a vet and worked damn hard to get that degree and dumb as it is bc it's a tv show it still pisses me off and there are just so many reasons why that whole situation is completely unacceptable.

 

BTW I hate that this set of shows has now been split up twice. I hate having to wait to see it tomorrow. These two epis are definitely in my ER top 10, along with Mark's end.

[cpcathy]

Lordy, what an episode Be Still My Heart is! I had the wind knocked out of me with the little boy wanting to see his dead parents, and to be played by Anton Yelchin to boot. ER really killed it at this type of thing.

[twinkietwin94]

24 minutes ago, cpcathy said:

Lordy, what an episode Be Still My Heart is! I had the wind knocked out of me with the little boy wanting to see his dead parents, and to be played by Anton Yelchin to boot. ER really killed it at this type of thing.

Yeah that scene with Anton now is a killer for me, it was bad before but now it's just awful

[slasherboy]

On 8/3/2017 at 9:29 AM, RedbirdNelly said:

I love that episode too. Holling was so awesome, including when Rachael gets her period.

The whole ordeal with Holling trying to buy sanitary napkins and getting hurt provided some of the funniest moments of the entire series, IMO.

[voiceover]

Throwing this out to our medically trained staff here:

Today's ep has Corday overriding Luka to give a patient with cocaine in his system, a new kidney.

Scrubs had an sl a few years later where Turk refuses to perform a kidney transplant because the patient confesses to having taken "a sip of champagne" recently.

Is it hard & fast or discretionary?

eta: I missed what, if anything, happened to Abby's patient whose husband found out she was having an abortion?

Edited August 7, 2017 by voiceover

[doodlebug]

2 hours ago, voiceover said:

Throwing this out to our medically trained staff here:

Today's ep has Corday overriding Luka to give a patient with cocaine in his system, a new kidney.

Scrubs had an sl a few years later where Turk refuses to perform a kidney transplant because the patient confesses to having taken "a sip of champagne" recently.

Is it hard & fast or discretionary?

I think it was probably a liver transplant that was canceled due to alcohol although alcohol can also damage kidneys. Obviously, alcohol destroys liver tissue and many of those needing liver transplants got there by abusing alcohol.  After a liver transplant, the recipient is not supposed to drink alcohol, at all, ever, due to the risk of damaging the liver.  Therefore, when consideration is given to giving a liver to someone whose liver disease is due to alcoholism; there are often strict guidelines.  Many transplant centers require 6 months of abstinence from alcohol as well as participation in an alcohol treatment program ( more than just going to AA meetings).  If the center has rules like this, any surgeon who would go ahead and transplant a patient who is actively using alcohol at the time of their transplant, risks losing his/her transplant privileges and potentially could be in trouble with their license.  UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing) which provides organs throughout the US, could potentially refuse to provide future organs to a transplant center that violates their own policies.

In a similar vein, cocaine abuse can  cause kidney failure and if a patient needs a kidney because he/she was a cocaine abuser; it's not a good idea to give him/her a new kidney while they are actively using the drug.  If County's transplant guidelines included rules about cocaine use in patients with organ damage due to the drug; then Elizabeth would potentially be in the same sort of trouble as noted above.  ER plays fast and loose with the rules a lot; but, in real life, the rules are usually followed pretty strictly.  The only exception might be in the very uncommon case where an organ is soon going to be past its expiration (they're good for only a certain number of hours after removal) and there is absolutely no one else who can be available to receive the organ before the deadline.

I don't do organ transplants myself, anyone with experience, please chime in.

[voiceover]

@doodlebug: Thanks -- and you're right about liver v kidney; my mistake.

[Ceindreadh]

8 hours ago, voiceover said:

@doodlebug: Thanks -- and you're right about liver v kidney; my mistake.

IIIRC, wasn't the kidney one that they'd already lost a few potential recipients for and Elizabeth didn't want it to go to waste?

[doodlebug]

3 hours ago, Ceindreadh said:

IIIRC, wasn't the kidney one that they'd already lost a few potential recipients for and Elizabeth didn't want it to go to waste?

Yes, time was running out. Two other candidates had also been disqualified for medical reasons and the window for transplantation was closing which is why Elizabeth took him to the OR. Luka wanted to waste the kidney rather than give it to the drug user.

This was another instance where the ER docs jumped to conclusions for the sake of the drama and not in a realistic way. If the guy was on a transplant list, he'd already been extensively evaluated including multiple drug screens. If he had an ongoing substance abuse issue, he wouldn't be on the list in the first place.  No way Luka, after spending maybe 10 minutes with the guy, knew more.

Another even more appalling use of this was in the episode where Chen and Mark decide a guy has Huntington's disease based on his symptoms and then try to browbeat him into telling his daughter right there in the ER.  First, his daughter's impression that he was depressed was completely dismissed even though it was far more likely.  The guy's father had committed suicide and depression is often familial. No one should ever diagnose a genetic disease on exam alone.   It requires extensive testing which takes weeks and trained counselors need to be involved.  To blithely tell a guy he has a debilitating fatal disease which he might've passed on to his child and then just ship him out is malpractice.  

Edited August 8, 2017 by doodlebug

[Bastet]

They did the "you don't deserve a transplanted organ" story at least one other time in the early years, too, because it was Jeannie talking to a patient about it.  I think he was on the list for a liver transplant, and came in for something that revealed he'd been drinking, and she was going to have him taken off the list.  (I don't remember the details, but it was something like that.)

[slasherboy]

The series starts over again tomorrow.  Isn't this cutting out some of the previous episodes previously aired?  It doesn't look like we're getting Carter's addiction storyline this time around.  I wish they would run it a while longer before they start over, but I realize I'm preaching to the choir on this.

Am watching Mark bathe Holling shortly before he dies (before Holling dies, not Mark).  Did Holling say, "You're a good daughter" or "You're a good doctor"?

[cpcathy]

So Carol's final episode equals the final episode in Pop's eyes? Does that also mean that when Diane leaves that Cheers is over?

[doodlebug]

48 minutes ago, slasherboy said:

The series starts over again tomorrow.  Isn't this cutting out some of the previous episodes previously aired?  It doesn't look like we're getting Carter's addiction storyline this time around.  I wish they would run it a while longer before they start over, but I realize I'm preaching to the choir on this.

Am watching Mark bathe Holling shortly before he dies (before Holling dies, not Mark).  Did Holling say, "You're a good daughter" or "You're a good doctor"?

No, they are showing May Day this afternoon. It's the last episode of Season 6 and the one where Benton takes Carter to rehab.  They have gone back to the start after showing Season 6 each time. They've got the rights to all the other seasons, so we can only hope they put them into rotation soon.

According to the closed captioning, it was 'You're a good doctor'.

[voiceover]

This return to the beginning is getting frustrating -- even for those of us who stopped watching around now, in real time.  Oh well.  

I feel some guilt, like POP execs have been reading our thread and think that this will make us happy.

But, you play the hand you're dealt -- or rather, watch the eps you're given.

I would like to take this moment before the reset button kicks in to thank all of you for keeping this thread enjoyable & educational, without feeling the need to post white papers on inter-staff relations ?

[Automne]

I really don't understand why Pop stops with the end of season six. There are another nine seasons of the show. Given that Pop also does mini marathons on Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons, people are going to get fatigued with seasons 1-6.

[Bastet]

7 minutes ago, Automne said:

Given that Pop also does mini marathons on Tuesday nights and Saturday afternoons, people are going to get fatigued with seasons 1-6.

Yeah, 15 episodes per week plus however many more via the mini-marathons, and they're already on their third rotation.  I'm surprised most people aren't tired of it already.  I didn't even watch during this second rotation (although I kept reading commentary here), even though the first time around I'd only paid proper attention to one episode per day and just half-listened to the other two as they played in the background while I worked.  I got the gist of what happened in the first six seasons, and am ready for the rest.  So I'm not tuning back in until they air something new.

[slasherboy]

1 hour ago, doodlebug said:

No, they are showing May Day this afternoon. It's the last episode of Season 6 and the one where Benton takes Carter to rehab.  They have gone back to the start after showing Season 6 each time. They've got the rights to all the other seasons, so we can only hope they put them into rotation soon.

According to the closed captioning, it was 'You're a good doctor'.

Yes Doodlebug, you're right and I was mistaken.  They showed the last episodes of Season 6 and I'm glad, because I love the Benton/Carter scene when they hug and Benton kisses Carter on the head.

And thank you for clearing up the "good doctor" comment.  Mark looked so shocked when he said it that I thought maybe it was some dementia in his final moments.

[cpcathy]

Totally missed Mark's father's death episode (don't care for his dad, personally--sorry!), but made up for it with May Day. Wow, what a scene that intervention was. I've always thought Noah Wylie was perfect for this role, but that scene just put him over the top for me. He was great in that episode.

[RedbirdNelly]

I always love the scene where Benton tells him you can fight if you want, but your ass is getting in that van. I love how when Carter storms out of the intervention, it's Benton who isn't ready to throw in the towel but goes out after him. I love the Benton/Carter dynamic.

[doodlebug]

5 minutes ago, RedbirdNelly said:

I always love the scene where Benton tells him you can fight if you want, but your ass is getting in that van. I love how when Carter storms out of the intervention, it's Benton who isn't ready to throw in the towel but goes out after him. I love the Benton/Carter dynamic.

Theirs was the best and most interesting relationship in the show, including the romantic ones, for my money.  Very few shows have depicted strong male friendship as well.

[twinkietwin94]

1 hour ago, doodlebug said:

Theirs was the best and most interesting relationship in the show, including the romantic ones, for my money.  Very few shows have depicted strong male friendship as well.

Theirs really is the best relationship and it lasts all the way to the end of the series. 

[voiceover]

1 hour ago, doodlebug said:

Theirs was the best and most interesting relationship in the show, including the romantic ones, for my money.  Very few shows have depicted strong male friendship as well.

I agree with all of this (esp the "most interesting" part) except for the last line.  Lots of great TV male friendships -- Hawkeye/Trapper, Hawkeye/BJ, JD/Turk, Chandler/ Ross/Joey...just off the top of my head.  

And to tinker with semantics, I'd actually phrase Benton/Carter as "relationship" -- starts out as teacher/student, morphs to mentor/protege; by the end, it's a friendship due to, as @twinkietwin94 wrote, the fact that it lasts to series' end.

[cpcathy]

So both Noah and Eric were still with the show at the end?

[jjj]

I had not seen the pilot for a long time, and watched the end today -- Benton's character had his voice pitched a couple of notes higher, and he was much more brash!  [entering the operating room:] "Okay, boys and girls, let's go. This isn't a picnic." and a minute later:  "Let's see how long the chief takes to get off of his girl and into work." (I don't even know what that is referring to.) 
 

[twinkietwin94]

43 minutes ago, voiceover said:

I agree with all of this (esp the "most interesting" part) except for the last line.  Lots of great TV male friendships -- Hawkeye/Trapper, Hawkeye/BJ, JD/Turk, Chandler/ Ross/Joey...just off the top of my head.  

And to tinker with semantics, I'd actually phrase Benton/Carter as "relationship" -- starts out as teacher/student, morphs to mentor/protege; by the end, it's a friendship due to, as @twinkietwin94 wrote, the fact that it lasts to series' end.

M*A*S*H one of my all time fave shows, definitely some great male friendships there

23 minutes ago, cpcathy said:

So both Noah and Eric were still with the show at the end?

They both came back and appeared in a few of the season 15 episodes, I won't say more if you haven't seen it don't want to spoil it

[walnutqueen]

I never liked Benton, but his relationship with Carter (and Lizzie, for that matter), humanized him to some degree for me.

Just watched the pilot, and had forgotten how much they packed into those first two hours.  No wonder this show hooked me from Day One.  

[BBHN]

Here is the hyphenate scene. I love Lizzie.

 

And for the Carter/Benton fans, enjoy this:

[doodlebug]

5 hours ago, jjj said:

I had not seen the pilot for a long time, and watched the end today -- Benton's character had his voice pitched a couple of notes higher, and he was much more brash!  [entering the operating room:] "Okay, boys and girls, let's go. This isn't a picnic." and a minute later:  "Let's see how long the chief takes to get off of his girl and into work." (I don't even know what that is referring to.) 
 

In real life, a junior surgical resident who talked like that to the staff in traumas and the OR would've been put in his place in a heartbeat.  Berating nurses for not moving fast enough to suit him would have gotten him a figurative a** kicking in real life.

[jjj]

Yes, the pilot made me really appreciate the silent, broody Benton!  It also made me appreciate how well they fine-tuned the operations and pacing of the ER scenes by the time they started filming the rest of the episodes. 

1 hour ago, doodlebug said:

In real life, a junior surgical resident who talked like that to the staff in traumas and the OR would've been put in his place in a heartbeat.  Berating nurses for not moving fast enough to suit him would have gotten him a figurative a** kicking in real life.

[Danny Franks]

22 hours ago, RedbirdNelly said:

I always love the scene where Benton tells him you can fight if you want, but your ass is getting in that van. I love how when Carter storms out of the intervention, it's Benton who isn't ready to throw in the towel but goes out after him. I love the Benton/Carter dynamic.

That made me cry when I first watched it. From the intervention scene and Carter's cruel, awful reaction to it, to him storming out and Benton saying that it's not over. You didn't get a whole lot of scenes where Benton showed how much he cared about Carter, so when you did, they really hit.

Just like in All in the Family, where Benton is paged down after Carter and Lucy are stabbed, and charges into the E.R. shouting "where is he?" And in the episodes after, where Benton is so patient and careful with Carter, when he's recovering.

I don't know that it was ever really a full friendship, because Carter never let go of that reverence he had for Benton. He never really thought of himself as Benton's equal, and that coloured most of their interactions.

[rcc]

ER was my favorite show when it first aired and this week I've started watching again on POP. Now I am hooked all over again. Love this show.

[cpcathy]

It's easy to get hooked again, huh? My husband comes home and expects there to be ER on the DVR.

[doodlebug]

31 minutes ago, cpcathy said:

It's easy to get hooked again, huh? My husband comes home and expects there to be ER on the DVR.

It was so well written and performed with great stories and characters.  It has really held up over the years.

[cpcathy]

I'm not enjoying the early episodes as much, I kind of can't stand Mark's wife Jennifer.

[jjj]

Yeah, I don't think we are supposed to like Mark's wife Jennifer! 

Doug mentioned in episode 01.07 that he has a son, and I think he said that again in another early episode.  I guess that thread of the plot was dropped along the way? 

[doodlebug]

39 minutes ago, jjj said:

Yeah, I don't think we are supposed to like Mark's wife Jennifer! 

Doug mentioned in episode 01.07 that he has a son, and I think he said that again in another early episode.  I guess that thread of the plot was dropped along the way? 

Yep, he mentioned it twice in the first season and then it was dropped completely.  In the other episode where he spoke of him, he specifically said that he didn't even know the kid's name, leading to speculation that the baby was adopted.  However, that doesn't really explain why he told a patient's father that he had a son in the first place since the conversation was about Doug understanding what it was like to be a parent.  

Of course, we've got Carter talking about his sister at least twice and she also disappeared.  There is also the back and forth on where Carol was living and her status with Tag.  In the pilot, Carol had a room mate (they'd only been living together a few weeks) and she was engaged to Tag.  In one of the first episodes, Tag was also referred to as her fiancé, but she didn't get an engagement ring until around Christmas and everyone was congratulating her as though it was a new thing despite the fact she was supposedly engaged at least since the preceding March.  After the suicide attempt, she lived with her mother and then was seen living in her own place.  Yet, Tag, at one point, asks her to move in with him AGAIN, indicating they've lived together before.  When?  Why would she have just moved in with a room mate in March if she'd been living with her fiancé at some point?

[Bastet]

I thought Carol was engaged to someone other than Tag in the pilot.  An athlete or something?  (We never saw him, and maybe never even heard his name, but it wasn't Tag.)  They dropped that early on, and then she was with Tag.

[doodlebug]

8 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I thought Carol was engaged to someone other than Tag in the pilot.  An athlete or something?  (We never saw him, and maybe never even heard his name, but it wasn't Tag.)  They dropped that early on, and then she was with Tag.

I thought they said he was an orthopedist who was a former Big 10 player.  Also, when she comes back, Carol tells Doug that Tag has always been there for here, both before and after the suicide attempt.  While I don't think his name came up in the pilot, it seemed clear to me that the guy had to be Tag.

And, then, of course, we have the episode in early Season 1 where Tag specifically says he wants Carol to move BACK in with him and later she tells Doug that she has told him she will move BACK in.  She returned to work in episode 4 and was still living with her mother.  She had her own place a couple eppies later when Doug showed up drunk with flowers for her and this was just a couple episodes after that.  There was no other time she could've been living with Tag except prior to the suicide attempt.

Edited August 11, 2017 by doodlebug

[voiceover]

18 minutes ago, Bastet said:

I thought Carol was engaged to someone other than Tag in the pilot.  An athlete or something?  (We never saw him, and maybe never even heard his name, but it wasn't Tag.)

Eh.  Could've been Tag.  Benton introduces Carol to Carter, and after she walks away, says: "She's going with a Dr who was a Big 10 tackle..."

-- as close to verbatim as I can get, but he definitely did say "going with" as opposed to "engaged to", and "Big 10 tackle" -- might have added, "built like King Kong".

Ric Rossovich is certainly built like an ex-jock (the kind that still takes care of himself), plus it's a family thing -- his brother played football.

Lots of threads were dropped after Season 1 in this show, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume they were talking about the same guy.

22 hours ago, rcc said:

ER was my favorite show when it first aired and this week I've started watching again on POP. Now I am hooked all over again. Love this show.

Welcome to the thread!  We welcome newbies, as this is the 3rd? 5th? time 'round on the first six seasons, and we're running low on convo fodder.

Feel free to play "Guest Star Bingo", which is when you spot an actor you recognize making a cameo/ supporting appearance.  This may be someone who went on to stardom (Kirsten Dunst as a runaway), or a WhoDat? actor you've seen in passing (Bill Murray's piano teacher in Groundhog Day -- my personal best).

@doodlebug!  You beat me to the punch!  But, hey -- I *knew* about Rossovich's brother, so, nyah ?

Edited August 11, 2017 by voiceover