TV: ER

ER bosses hope for Clooney return. His spokespeople are denying it though.

Frankly, I'm amazed that ER is still going. I watched religously from season 5 to 8, then went back and watched the earlier seasons as they were repeated. I lost track of it after seaosn 8, catching bits and pieces... until recently I noticed they were showing the latest seaosn on E4. Season 13. Thirteen! Or was it fourteen? A silly number, anyway. I went a bit mad and bought all of it on DVD and watched it all in an embarrasing short amount of time.

But I love ER. I love it in many different ways. I love the characters and stories of seasons 1-4, the quiet moments playing in wheelchairs interupted by awful tragedies, the complicated politics of medicine and the nurses and the paramedics and the desk clerks and the silly decorations and the patients who came back episode after episode, season after season. I like the characters and much of the plotlines of seasons 5-8, the increasingly audience grabbing stories, Kerry being gay, Abby being great, Carter growing up. I love the madness of seasons 8 onwards, in all it's drama, soap-opera-esque style. I even love the endless characters I don't understand who come and go like... things that come and go quickly. I love that Neela was just depressed from about the minute she arrived until... well, as far as I have seen. (I think I have missed a season out.) She wants to be a doctor. No she doesn't. She wants to do something else. She ends up being going back to being a doctor because she can't do anything else. She's in the wrong speciality. She's tired and alone and tired and alone.

I got a bit obsessed with Neela.

I don't know how the returning characters will work. By my estimation (and my ER watching has been spot and out of order for the last few seasons) only Abby and the nurses will recognise Carter. Oh, probably Pratt. Is he a person? Dr. Greene is dead. And also boring. Why do we have to have a flashback? A flashback that won't be filled with the characters I loved. If Doug Ross returns... only the nurses will know him. Will he bring Carol and/or the twins with him? It could be fun.

Despite the fact that it has become a sort of parody of itself, it's sad to think of it ending. But also a bit exciting. How will they end it? I hope close down the ER, after the eight million storylines they did about it over the years. I'd like that.

I'm creating an ER label in case I feel the need to comment on the last series. You never know.