Pilot aka 24 hours aka 00.00

So I already put the DVD in and watched the Pilot. I am impatient. I have 240+ episodes to go until Ray shows up...I'm kidding. Wow, does this seem long and slow-paced compared to modern ER. And George Clooney has totally dark hair. I'm not the only woman in the world to think he got a lot sexier when he became a silver fox, am I?

I'm thinking about noting the body count etc. That could be crazy, right? Anyway, numbers in brackets indicate the running count...

Where are we?
Mark Greene works a 24 shift. Carol Hatherway takes an overdose. Everyone looks really, really young. Except William H Macy, who always looked old, even when he was young. And William H Macy is the Head of ER - how cool is that?

Familiar faces?
They're all new. But still, give it up for Jerry! Go Jerry! Go Jerry!

DOAs? 2 (2)
Died in ER? 2 (2)
resussitated from flatlining? 1 (1)
GSWs? 2, one of whom was played by the guy who played Frank. Or maybe it was Frank. (2)
Knifings? 1 (1)
working on one of their own? 1, Carol. (1)
performing surgery in a maverick way? 1 (1)
Babinski reflexes? 1 (1)
Rapid Infusers - didn't notice. Maybe I should have called this blog A Babinski reflex after all?

pregnant teenager? 1 (1)
babies born? 1, not to teenager (1)
number of brats? 3 (3)
calling of social services? 1 (1)

patients making moves on staff? 2 (2)
staff making moves on staff? 0 (0)
although the whole Doug/Carol and Mark/Susan thing is set up pretty much from the off.
patients attacking staff? 2 (2)
use of restraints? 0 (0)

anyone ride the El? no 0 (0)
TV footage of a crisis? 1 (1)
let it snow? 1 (1)
use of the ambulance bay as escape? 1, Carter (1)

use of the staff room? yes, except it's a doctors' lounge and Benton gets all pissy because the nurses drank all the coffee.
use of the lab? yes! My god, I don't remember them doing their own lab work, but there is Susan getting all Scully on people's asses.

is there any Big Moral Theme Thing going on? Doctors in the ER work really, really hard. This makes them screw up their personal lives. That's pretty much the theme for the next 12 years, too.

A Rapid Infusion of ER

I've been watching ER since it started, off and on. There's the odd year where I lost track of it, but I've recently got very back into it, to the extent that I have the first five seasons on order from my mail order DVD service. In order not to fill my main blog with ER stuff, I'm starting this which will have comments on each episode as and when I watch them. So there will be old episodes, and new ones. I'm in the UK, so I'm a bit behind the US episodes.