12.12 Split Decisions (UK E4 spoilers)

I watched on the mildly cut 2nd chance screening, due to work commitments.

Was that a Abby "previously on..."?

Clemente is MIA. Kerry is seeing therapists about her hip. Dubenko agrees to cover as attending, suggesting we'll get a classic ER/surgery fight.

Kerry: Hey, Burnett. What the hell are you doing here?
Ray: Er, I'm working.
Kerry: You quit.
Ray: No I didn't.
I cannot believe his chutzpah at bluffing Kerry like that. Dubenko is clearly in on the bluff.

Neela's got the surgical elective. Hurrah. She and Mikey are looking for a place of their own. OK. She corrected Ray when he called Gallant that, but I like the idea that Ray is deliberately doing it to wind her up, so I'm going to do it too.

Zoe's back. Excellent use of the elbow from Neela to make Ray acknowledge he might know a Zoe Butler. She's been beaten up. By her father. Is it me, or shouldn't her eye be more puffy?

Morris has an internet date.

Who is this Penny?

Zoe's sister ran away years ago, to San Francisco. She doesn't want to go to the police. With nowhere else to go, she asks if she can move in with Ray. Er, hello? Like her dad won't find her at Ray's and beat the hell out of the both of them.

Morris is getting arsey because Dubenko is so slow at dealing with patients. Who is this Penny? Did they just insert a character without warning? Am I hallucinating her? Pratt is also getting arsey with Dubenko.

Hello! Sam has Brokeback hair!

Aw, Abby and Luka. Isn't he just adorable? Abby wants to keep the baby secret. Their banter is just lovely.
"I want something to eat."
"Again?"
She's eating for two, doofus.

Who is this Penny?

Dubenko calls social on Zoe, over Ray's head. Ray is determined not to let social take her.

Not only has Neela got the surgical elective but she's got Mikey a placement as an R2. Mikey wants to go and visit a vet in the Vet's Hospital. He pretty clearly doesn't want to take Neela to meet his buddies, but she isn't listening and wants to go with him. And when they get there, you can see why. He wants to talk about blowing up sex dolls and releasing them into the Iraqi air. Which is a pretty dumb thing to do in an Arabic country but I suppose moronic soldiers will be mornic soldiers.

KJ's dad has been arrested on suspicion of DUI. And naturally Pratt is dumb enough to fake the blood test. Is he crazy?

The Dubenko subplot just doesn't interest me. When he was this maverick surgeon wandering down to make inappropriate suggestions to Abby he was much more entertaining. I don't remember him being this hesitant. In fact, I sort of suspect they had to rewrite Clemente's part for this week as Dubenko.

Zoe: I bet you wish you'd never met me now.
Ray: No....Though it would have been easier if I'd met you four or five years from now.

Abby is unwilling to settle in one or other apartment. Luka winds her up, claiming that identical twins run in his family. Wow, was Goran ever having a bad hair day when they did the Chicago location shooting for this block.

The Morris, Pratt and Ray thing with the extra nips is just hysterical.
Morris: What? We don't knock?
Ray: On a curtain?
As profound shallowness has pointed out, the three of them are finally becoming clear characters.

The whole Abby and Luka shopping thing is just funny and sweet. Interesting that Luka says that it is their first when Abby is clearly struggling to decide whether or not to say "first for me". Lovely. Also the bit where Abby makes them hide.
Luka: I don't even know who she is!
Abby: Well, she knows who you are!
Luka: I don't think so.
Abby: Oh Luka, every woman who works in the hospital knows who you are, trust me.

Ray arranges everything to get Zoe out, sending her off to her sister and slapping down her dad when he tries to stop her. Ooh, darker Ray. Yum.

Mikey wants to go back to Iraq. Is he insane? Oh wait...he's got to go because he's a total spare part to the programme. Still, you can't blame Neela for letting her natural grumpiness out at him. She didn't think she was marrying a soldier.


It's a curious blend this one. There are soem great comic moments, but the drama seems a bit forced and a whole substory does nothing for me.

01.18 Love's Labor's Lost (sic)

Pedantic aside: as an Englishperson with a grounding in Shakespeare, I have a nigh overpowering urge to put a 'u' into that title.

GSW drop off, whose driver nearly runs down Doug in the process (trauma 1).

Benton's mum is in trauma 2, making this an unusual straight continuation from the previous episode. She is distraught, and Carter has to tell Benton to leave. Mrs Benton doesn't want to be undressed in front of her son. She has a broken hip, and is sent up to OR.

The everyday small cases are a tatttoed guy who tried to remove a name from his arm using an industrial sander, an old guy and an expecting couple.

Benton is waiting for news from the OR. He's pacing the waiting room etc (no viewing room like there is these days) and then scrubs up and enters the OR. The surgeon orders him straight back out.

Pregnant lady bounces back (trauma 1). She's fitting, and Mark realises he signed out someone with eclampsia. The baby is going to have to be induced. They call OB and page Doctor Coburn (who reappears in season 12 as Abby's OB). No-one from OB comes, nor does Coburn. Mark decides to go ahead and induce the baby. Things go wrong and he ends up performing an emergency c-section. Except Mark has never done one before.

The baby is saved. Coburn arrives just as the kid is showing signs of being OK. The mother is bleeding out though. Coburn tears a strip off Mark, and Susan has to assure him it'll be OK. The mother dies. Mark does that thing of continuing CPR even though the patient is clearly dead. Again, it falls to Susan to tell him to stop, this time just though her eyes.

Walking back to the El, Susan is worried about Mark. She asks if Jen is home, and it's suddenly apparent that Mark hasn't told anyone that she's left him. He gets on the El alone and rides off. Out of sight of Susan, he breaks down.

I said things would get a lot worse for Mark. He made a small error of judgement which led to a chain of bad decisions about delivering the baby.

There's very little to say about this episode. It's the first time we get a big focus on one patient and it's pretty much all about Green's confidence collapsing.

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total of doom...
trauma 1: 4 5
trauma 2: 3

01.17 Sleepless in Chicago

Benton is in a foul mood: all those swapped shifts means he's been on for 48 hours straight. Hicks slaps him down again, effectively sending him to a room to sleep.

Carol is trying to adopt Tatiana. It has reached the stage when she is able to tell Tatiana that she will be coming to live with her.

Mark is expecting to be attending, after Morgenstern offered it to him in 01.14. He's more concerned about Jen's announcement. He throws a wad of paper into a bin, telling Doug that if he makes it then his marriage will survive.

An experimental drug patient comes in. Drug trials have just hit the news over here, but the details of the real life side-effects are probably too terrifying to ever be in ER. This guy just acts like a stoner.

A guy with no voice box and terminal cancer comes in with a heart attack (trauma 2). After they save him, they get his file. He was DNR. He'd been trying to tell them that in trauma 2 but they were so focussed on their job - saving lives - that they have gone against his express wishes. I think I'd like to be DNR: I can't imagine how hateful it would be to be so helpless, so reliant on machines. Based on this, I feel like I should maybe have it on a necklace or wristband, in the same way that my ex-partner has a necklace detailing their diabetes so that if they collapse and cannot communicate, their condition is known.

A scrounger and con man comes in, managing to nick petty cash off Jerry, and Mark's wallet. An MIT guy also appears, researchng how the ER works.

A mother brings in her daughter, who has a star-shaped burn on her palm. It turns out the mother is punishing the daughter for "touching herself, down there", just as she was punished as a child. Carol and Doug stage an intervention, taking the child away. The mother attacks Doug, scratching his neck. Carol treats the scratches and Doug tells her that he approves of her trying to adopt Tatiana. Very sweet moment between them: "you would be a great mother".

Mark suggests Doug askes out Diane, but Doug says Diane will turn him down so he's not going to bother.

A shot kid (trauma 2) and a cop (trauma 1) are brought in. Mark calls for Benton, who is asleep over a suture on an equally asleep drunk.

Doug, prompted by Mark, asks out Diane. She turns him down.

Morgenstern is leaving to be at Harvard. In passing, he tells Green that the attending position is nearly Mark's. So all that bust up with Jen is based on a maybe. Oops. (I should maybe point out I've been watching ahead and typing up from notes when I have time, so I know this is the first tiny crack in Mark's world and that things are going to get much, much worse.)

Diane finds Doug and agrees to go on a date after all.

Carter reads Whitman to the DNR as he dies. Later, Benton questions why Carter is putting in for surgery.
Benton: You don't think like a surgeon.
Carter: Why? Because I don't think like you?

Carol is told she can't have Tatiana because of her suicide attempt back in the pilot. Carol, upset, goes not to Tag but to Doug i.e. the guy who caused her to overdose. She wakes him at his apartment in tears and he comforts her, assuring her that it is not her fault that Tatiana will stay in the home (no, it's Doug's, for making her that desparate). She wants to stay the night, leaning in to kiss him, but he turns her down.

The MIT doctor is a FAKE! He's a pyschotic patient who pretends to be doctors. Susan is the most annoyed as she liked his theories about a non-confrontational, feminine system of working.

Getting home, Mark finds Jen there. He outlines the idea of them both commuting from a midpoint (Kenosha) but Jen tells him that things are working. She's leaving him because his only focus in life is his career. Told you things were about to get worse for Doctor Green. Aw. Anthony Edwards does a great job of showing his optimism over saving his marriage die.

Peter has been left to care for his mother whilst his sister's family have a break ice-fishing. He's told to be awake at 6am, as she'll need her medicine. He falls asleep on the couch, waking only when his mother - trying to find him or her medicine - falls down the stairs. He takes her in (trauma 2) and has to stand back as Susan and Carter work on her.

The whole Benton storyline is pulling together nicely, after me at first thinking they just had him as the stereotypical hard-hearted surgeon. He's been so driven by his career that he's guilty over not being home for his mother enough, so his attempts to make it to her party (01.16) cause his exhaustion here, an exhaustion which has far more severe consequences than him falling asleep over an unconscious drunk.

The Mark storyline? Well, it's going to get a whole lot worse...

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total of doom...
trauma 1: 4
trauma 2: 2 3

01.16 The Birthday Party

Doug has a one night stand and does the classic calling the other person by the wrong name. He comes in early and finds Carol is still in, looking after Tatiana, so he offers to cover for her for a bit so she can sleep before her shift.

Peter is sleeping on the couch because he's exhausted. It's the 16th, and Mrs Benton's birthday (and Rachel's). Peter promises to be at the birthday party, since he's one of the few people Mrs Benton really recognises. He spends much of the episode trying to swap shifts, until Hicks slaps him down.

Carter and Benton deal with a guy threatening to set fire to himself. Doug gets a kid with his head stuck in the mouth of a stuffed and mounted tiger head.

Renee, a regular overdoser, is brought in. Mark and Susan are used to her. She goes in trauma 1. She's been brought in by her father, but the creep boyfriend eventually arrives.

Tatiana is taken to the sunshine home for kids with AIDS.

Benton gets a guy who has sliced off his finger gutting fish (trauma 2). His collegues have brought the crate of gutted fish so they can find the finger. Chen and Carter get the job of looking through the fish. Carter is starting to think about an ER elective. I'm starting to really notice the dynamic similarities between Chen & Carter and Neela & Ray. One is all ambition, the other is great with empathising with the patients.

A kid with a GSW to the spine (trauma 1). He's been shot by his brother, after they got into their cop father's guns.

An end stage lung cancer guy is brought in: Mark and Susan play paper-scissors-stone to see who gets to sort him out.

Carter mishears and thinks it is Benton's birthday. So he and Lydia organise a surprise party, complete with two belly dancers.

A little girl comes in, having fallen out of window (trauma 1).

Pasta name guy - oh, alright, Tag - and Carol are looking at churches for the wedding. She suggests they adopt Tatiana, but Tag is not keen on the idea.

Diane Leeds - the lady from the upper floors with son Jake - is looking for Doug. She arrives in time to see him punching out the father of the little girl who fell out the window, having found a massive boot print on her back. Doug isn't the least bit sorry, even though Morgenstern is going to make him undergo therapy etc. Again, I'm wondering how come Eve gets summarily fired for punching out Santa in 12.10.

Jean Boulet is coming to the party. Benton is clearly pleased.

A white supremist is brought in with a knife in his heart (trauma 2). He's got 'die nigger die' tattoed on one arm, but Benton tells the team - all black or asian - to be professional. He ends up taking the guy into OR and saving his life, but missing his mother's birthday party.

Carol visits Tatiana in the home.

It's Rachel's birthday party, which Mark has also missed, but Jen got "Craig, the other clerk" to help her. Hmm. Mark produces a pressie for Rachel, which Jen is pleased with until Mark reveals it's from Susan. Then Jen reveals that she's going to do another year in Milwalkee. So, if Mark hadn't been late, or if the pressie had been from Mark, would Jen have made that decision?

Renee bounces back (trauma 2) and Susan starts the stomach pump.
"We haven't lost anyone today, we are not starting with you."

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total of doom...
Except they didn't lose any...
trauma 1: 4
trauma 2: 2

Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing

Gods help me....I'm downloading spoiler clips of ER.

I mean, without going into anything spoiler specific, things are going in a direction I would have speculated based on the scant spoilers I had for the rest of this season, but I shouldn't be this impatient. There's four weeks to go 'till Out on a Limb, which is the first episode I downloaded clips from, and five weeks till the one that aired in the US this week. But, as always at this time of year, the UK airings start to catch up rapidly.

Looky, this is how it'll run:

No. & Title	US	UK (E4)
12.12 Split Decisions	12 Jan 06	23 Mar 06
12.13 Body & Soul	2 Feb 06*	30 Mar 06
12.14 Quintessance of Dust	9 Feb 06	6 Apr 06
12.15 Darfur	2 Mar 06*	13 Apr 06
12.16 Out on a Limb	16 Mar 06	20 Apr 06
12.17 Lost in America	23 Mar 06	27 Apr 06
12.18 Strange Bedfellows	30 Mar 06	4 May 06
12.19 No Place to Hide	27 Apr 06*	11 May 06
12.20 The spoilery title	4 May 06	18 May 06
12.21 The untitled one	11 May 06	25 May 06
12.22 Twenty One Guns	18 May 06	1 Jun 06
* indicates a big break

So those huge gaps in the US running order mean that by the finale, the UK is just two weeks behind. I know one year Sky's airings of Buffy actually caught up with the US airing, so we got it less than 24 hours later.

I find the broken up method of scheduling a show rather odd. It seems to go against the idea of building an audience week on week, especially when the show is essentially a classy soap about medical staff. Here I am struggling to wait a month for a particular episode but I've got new episodes arriving every week. I can't imagine waiting a month because the show is on a break, with nothing but DVDs and the oddly scheduled More4 repeats.

As I have TV-on-demand via the teleport system, and BBCi are trialing streaming programmes after they air for global access to the BBC's output, I suspect the more scattered American network system is one even those of us who don't currently download whole episodes will end up adjusting to, but I do wonder if I'll stick with my digital broadcast from E4 so that the habit isn't disturbed.

In the meantime, I may bake cookies and watch my clips again.

(I was doing some e-commuting last month, thus catching season 6 (pregnant Carol) during my afternoon tea break. I've been travelling for work this week, hence missing last night's episode. And I'm travelling next week as well. Argh.)

memey goodness

a meme gakked from profound shallowness, and including ER in the answers, is over on careful! the ink's still wet!

01.15 Make Two Hearts

Valentine's Day.

There's a Russian kid, adopted and allegedly healthy. The adopted mum leaves her before the credits even start.

Mark is semi-grouchy due to having slept on the couch. It is very cute. Susan thinks so too.

Carter is getting a ton of cards.

The cop who fancies Lydia shows up. He's hit a dog (trauma 1). In relief when the others save him, he kisses Lydia. Carter, having given it mouth to mouth is not likely to end up kissing anyones.

Carol's mother's is Russian.

Cheerleaders on acid. Some jock thought it would be funny to spike some chocolates with LSD. They become fascinated with a heart monitor and the jock goes to sleep. Chen, unaware the chocolates are spiked, steals a couple.

Peter appears to have gained a sense of humour. Is he a pod person?

A guy who lost a dare with a train comes in (trauma 2). He crushes the little nurse's hand, then dies in OR.

Oh, grouchy Mark can growl. At Haleh. So cute.

Kayson gives Susans flowers for Valentine's Day. Awww. He's now a deeply alarming guy, grinning madly and trying to chat Susan up. This is disturbing.

Chen has started staring at the wall. And she has to put the cast on Wendy. Her state is not improved by a string of small children dressed as hearts, dancing.

Carol is now irritated due to the problem of the abandoned Russian girl. Mark distracts her with a double trauma involving meatpackers. The guy with a meathoot in his arm goes into trauma 2. His son, who he got in a fight with, goes into trauma 1. Dies.

Carol: All those times mom yelled at me to learn Russian.
Doug: All those times your mom yelled at me in Russian.
Carol: Well, you deserved it.

Jake, the brat of the woman from upstairs, arrives with a painful belly. Allegedly. He quizzes Carol on Doug's marital status. The woman from upstairs tells Doug that Jake will fake illnesses etc. in order to try to find a husband for her.

A guy comes in with two hookers, having collapsed mid-act. Trauma 2, lives.

Mark finds out Kayson asked her out. Susan admits she used Mark as an excuse not to go out with Kayson.
Susan: He's married.
Mark: So am I.
There's a great look on Susan's face just after he says that, as if the circumstances have made her suddenly think of Mark romantically instead of just platonically.

A senile woman wanders into trauma 1 whilst it is empty. Should I count that?

The Russian girl, Tatiana, has AIDS. Carol is deeply upset that by tomorrow they will have shunted the girl off into care.

A woman in anapalactic shock comes in (trauma 2). She lives.

Mark and Susan go ice-skating fr their 'date'. He tells her Morgenstern has offered him the attending job. She's delighted. Aw, again.

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total of doom...
trauma 1: 3 4
trauma 2: 1 2

OT - other fic

Since I started archivng my ER and Firefly fic on aurelius, I've decided to reduce my online personae a little and claim my M*A*S*H fic as my own. Note this is the only medium in which I write slash. I don't know why. So the following stories are now up on aurelius:

Cold Comfort
SLASH. season 1 or 2.
Strangers When We Meet
SLASH, post-series. Heavily influenced by More Than Heaven.
Wedding Jitters
het, during Margaret's Wedding

Under My Skin & Too Darn Hot, set sometime between Margaret's Engagement and Margaret's Wedding.

There's another one, a 3-part story, but I'll do that another time.

01.14 Feb 5 1995

Opens with Carter and Mark in the back of an ambulance. Is it our first ride-along? Ah. No. They’re going to a RTA. Although it does involve a plane missing the runway and hitting a car. We have a hint of Carter’s familial richness when he reveals the camelhair coat getting a soaking in aviation fuel was a Christmas present.

Carter’s family want him to go into cardiology as a speciality, but he’s thinking the ER is pretty exciting. Mark tries pointing out the negative points ("the stress, the sleepless nights, the pay") but it’s pretty obvious that he loves it as well.

Haleh is beating Benton to his commands, which he doesn’t like, not to mention guiding Chen through a procedure. He gets snotty so she starts following strict procedure. You know, given her record, I’m surprised she was even there for Eve to fire in season 12. Later, when Benton complains about her to Carol, Carol points out that Haleh has been in emergency medicine for 20 years. So by season 12, Haleh has been in this speciality for 32 years - no wonder the attendings get her assessment of the interns.

Susan and Carter are dealing with a possible MI. He’s taken to trauma 2. He lives.

Carol with the ‘dead’ guy is so cute. It’s one those great fragments of story which doesn’t directly connect with anything else and thus seems utterly random. She also gets new crash carts for the ER. Cardiology wanted them, but she managed to win out. Thus leading to a scene straight out of M*A*S*H in which the carts are swiped by cardiology and then swiped back. You don’t generally see slapstick on ER any more. It also reminds you that Doug is still technically a student rather than a fuly qualified type: he's still pretty young.

Doug gets Harold, a kid bitten by his pet viper, which he’s brought with him. Except it’s escaped.

Mark has to treat Grace, a terminally ill cancer patient, who begs to die.

There’s another insane moment as Malik walks past pushing a Valkyrie in a wheelchair. "Don’t even ask", he warns Mark. Is it me, or have these sort of unassociated wierdness cases pretty much vanished these days in favour of every case connecting to the soap element about the staff?

Morgenstern offers Mark a job as an attending after he graduates. He accepts without consulting Jen, who gets annoyed.

A 12 year old gangbanger is brought in to Trauma 2. He dies. 'Gangbanger' is an alien term to me since it's only associated in the UK with sex rather than violetn street gangs. So you can imagine the confusion child gangbangers cause my brain.

Dr. Bob! Where has Dr. Bob been?

Carter and Chen have to do presentations. Carter is short and basic. Chen has CGI 3D models and slide transistions.

I’m not sure where this thing with Doug and the lady with the basketball brat from the fourth floor is going.

Mark takes the problem of his end stage cancer patient to Susan. Susan is still blanking him, as much as she can.
Mark: it’s professional, not personal.
Susan: We’re not married: professional is personal.
Mark: I miss you.

Chen is surprised Carter is thinking of becoming a surgeon. It turns out her mother is chief of surgery at one of the other hospitals – does this even vaguely tally with later Chen history? She admits that her mother didn’t want her to go into surgery and that she hides the relationship.

Carter finds the snake. Wait. Is the snake symbolic? It goes missing when Doug and Carol are in the room, then reappears with Carter and Chen.

Carol, after watching Doug distract someone during the cart raid, fesses that she slept with him on their first date. "He rang the doorbell, next thing I knew we were on the kitchen floor."

Mark goes decidedly funny when the cancer lady dies. Susan finds him alone in the patient’s room, talking crazy stuff. It looks remarkably like he increased the morphine to induce resps failure but we don’t actually know for sure if he did or not.

I really rate this episode for the blending of the slapstick with Mark's actions over Grace. By leaving it up to the audience to decide if he upped the morphine, we have to actually think about the circumstances rather than judge him based on his actions.

Which trauma room is unlucky? A running total...
trauma 1: 3
trauma 2: 1

01.13 Long Day's Journey

I am no longer watching these old episodes in a hotel room.

This one opens with a classic beaten up mother, with a history of injuries i.e. presenting all the symptoms of a beaten wife except in a twist, it's the teenage daughter. (She was in trauma 1 - yellow - just in case that turns out to make a difference) She dies.

Carter is trying to adjust to Deb(Chen) being ultra efficient and overly smart. And she has a photographic memory.

Susan has to take her charts to Mark to be signed off. She says, still in her funk from last episode, that no other resident has to do this. Clearly things have changed since then, since R2s having charts signed off by attendings seems pretty normal now.

Mark has to deal with a Chinese couple who are trying to induce their child's birth so that the kid is born in the year of the dog.

A suicide is brought in (trauma 1). Dies.

Doug is trying to avoid pasta name guy, unsurprisingly after that punch up, but pasta name guy chides him on it. They have to deal with a kid with possible cancer which seems to be an excuse - along with the suicide's orphaned baby - to show how wonderful Doug is with kids. He also has to deal with a 15 year old street rent boy who has AIDS. "Paeds is OK when all the kids are healthy". He's definitely getting depressed with failing to find a long term partner and the sort of work he has to deal with.

Jean Bolay is introduced as Benton employs her to care for his elderly mother.

A guy is brought in who entered a burning building for a couple of minutes to rescue a little girl (like Neela in 12.08) but goes into trauma 1 (unlike Neela). It turns out the chap has cystic fibrocis and has essentially given his life for the girl's. Trauma 1 is looking like increasingly bad news.

Chen: Your uncle Ed is dead.
Aunt: I thought he was quiet.

Susan and the Doctor from the third circle of Hell (Kayson) face an review into her patient's death from 01.11. As they crucified Kayson, Doug thinks Susan should give Mark a break. A drunk coronory comes in: it's Kayson. He goes into trauma 2, where Susan has to treat him. She overrides a surgeon in order to get Kayson the right treatment.

Pasta name guy leaves his bag of sex accessories under the desk in admit. It's called admissions, but we all know it's admit.

So trauma 1 (yellow) has 3 deaths and trauma 2 (green) none. This is contrary to Alan's theory that green is very bad. I think this is a stat I can track with some reliability.

With some of these episodes there's just very little to actually say in summary.

12.11 If Not Now (spoilers UK E4)

Hey, a Ray "previously on...".

It's two weeks on from Christmas. Abby has to make a decision about the baby. Luka is leaving it up to her, but clearly does want it. Abby is the kind of person not to take the tree down by Twelth Night - no wonder she's always had bad luck.

Kerry slipped on the ice in the ambulance bay and gets to be a patient for the day.
Neela: I'm just trying to be professional.
Kerry: It's annoying.

Ray asks for a few weeks off. His band has got a chance at a record deal. He's so wonderfully delighted at the mere idea.
Ray: Kerry...
Kerry: Back off, Elvis.
Gods, I love it when they write Kerry as a humourous bitch. She's so wonderfully sharp.

Jodie and Clemente are being all East coast Latino at each other, which is enjoyable, if rather unusual for ER. Suddenly there are two cops who seems to have walked out of a bad film noir, all gravelly voiced and low-browed, giving him a hard time about parking violations. Presumably by parking his "big soldier" from last week in the Newark cop's wife.

The baby decision thing means this episode is laden with cases which cause Abby to have flashbacks: a mother whose son is permenantly disabled; a runaway boy; a guy with an inherited diesease ("screwed by genetics"). I notice they are all male, suggesting the baby will be a boy.

Meanwhile Neela and Luka deal with a teenage pregnancy, the result of a date rape. The girl is Catholic, and guilting about the idea of an abortion. IT's pretty clear that Luka's arguing with Neela is coming from a personal place, but it's not from the religion point of view but because he thinks Abby is off getting an abortion, and he goes ahead and treats the girl regardless of his personal opinion.

Albright is back, calling Morris "red" and calling Clemente on being on "the cusp of sexual harassment". Dr Cruella, indeed.

Ray tries sweetening Kerry with good food. When she says he is a good doctor (yay! sweet smile of satisfaction!) he threatens to resign if he can't get the time off. Kerry calls him on it. Oops.

Sam: Ray's on his way out.
Morris: He quit.
Neela: I don't think he meant to.

Jodie taught Neela to tie a knot in a cherry stem using only her tongue. I'm just going to leave that mental image there. Maybe there could be cocktails with cherries and knot-tying in a fic...

Brett has a good line in understatement: "You've been pretty busy with this doctor thing." This is lining up to be the Ray equivilent of Neela's Jumbomart time, isn't it?

Oh god. The bad modern pop ballad is back. I have no idea who it is but it's the usual twee piano crap which owes too much to Coldplay and their ilk. It might even by Coldplay. Ack.

On first view, I wasn't madly keen on this episode as it seemed rather big on the babies theme and nothing aggravates me more than an episode which tries too hard. However, on a repeat view, this episode works rather well as the non-baby stuff is written with a sharp wit. There's not of fast-talking etc. Also, more Ray than we've had for ages.

01.12 Luck of the Draw

I've slowed, not because my interest has waned but because I have been travelling for work, and have people down this weekend which means doing some of those household chores I hate. Yes, mopping the kitchen floor is only the work of minutes but there are so many more interesting ways to spend my life...and then it's been months and there are people on the way and...so anyway. I wrote this on the road and have only corrected it in terms of spelling, grammar and looking up a link or two.
--
In which Susan gets her arse kicked and Cater gets a sub-student, Deb. Deb who later becomes Chen. Another one of those surname only characters.

I should maybe point out I am writing this in a hotel room, having just had a bizarre conversaion about bisexuality with my boss. This being the boss who regards me as "ploughing my own furrow", whatever that means.

So, it’s Doug’s turn to be hit on by a patient. She looks very like some one from Buffy [note now sober - I was confused: Kristen Davis was Charlotte in Sex and the City aka the one no-one wanted to be]. Doug turns her down within earshot of Mark, who does a wonderful double-take.

Carol gets a needlestick whilst talking about how hard it is to get a handle on the commitment to infinity involved with marriage.

Green is dealing with a drug mule.
"Where’d you learn Spanish?"
"Here."
Carter dumps the rectal on the mule to Chen. He gets Chen to glove up and dig in. She doesn’t use lubricant. This is where reading loads of slash fiction causes a fan to wince.

Susan faces disciplinary charges re the heart guy from 01.11. Morgenstern tries to make Susan "an agggresive advocate for her patients".

There's a great patient with a colour-coded medical binder, who is obsessed with colours and meaning. He says he can’t go into trauma 2 because it’s green, and green is bad. I vaguely recall someone saying that you can tell which patient is doomed based on which trauma room they end up in, so I have an urge to track this. Is trauma 2 the bad one?

Mark fesses up to telling Morgenstern that Susan backs down when faced with strong willed types. She is furious.

Doug’s son is 8 but he doesn’t know his name and has never seen him. Backstory ahoy!

The father of a son sets up a DNR.

Guys comes in who is a sociologist who asks two questions before then setting about provoking a violent reaction. Carol gets wound up by him asking questions about her marriage. She wins, 21 seconds PAI (Provocation to assult index). She goes on to put an angry boxer into the same room as the question-guy and thus causing the boxer to punch out the scientist. Given that Eve was sacked for letting her feelings injure a patient in 12.10, shouldn't Carol have her wrist slapped?

Benton’s mother goes missing.

Chen misuses the cart and shocks Carter.

I love the business with Alan, the colours guy. When Susan and Carol realise he has cancer and try to confront him about it, the camera spins so that trauma 2 – the green, evil, trauma room - is visible behind him.

Susan is freaked by Holland Manners watching her work.

Doc Magoo’s established. Susan wears the mushroom hat of doom. Carol sets a May wedding.

12.10 All About Christmas Eve

Santa Kovac. You can slip one under the tree for me. Isn't he just a wonderfully handsome Santa?

The Ray/Neela thing is about two milliseconds long, and relies on you being keen to read it into the scene. You can read as much a case for Ray/Morris, or even Ray/Kovac, based on how little Ray/Neela there is. Still, cute.

Abby and Luka are so adoreable. So much so that both Neela and Ray are metaphorically raising eyebrows.

Albright is the usual bolshy surgeon type, so I expect her to ride roughshod over everyone and not apologise.

Now, I know Eve was unprofessional, and she was clearly bringing a lot of personal issues to work today, but I cheered when she punched out Santa. It was just such a wondeful comedy punch and the drunk/annoying Santa is a staple of ER so it's rather satisfying to see one punched out. Unsurprising that she was fired for it, though she didn't seem like a character who was meant to stay around for a whole season. Unlike Clemente, whose New Jersey squeeze finally shows up. Now he's stopped pushing for promotion and the mysterious Jodie has shown up, I suspect he's going to become more rounded as a character.

The audition scene is quite entertaining because it's clearly leading to the 'Ray can't sing' bit. 'Silent Night' isn't exactly the best song for singing unaccompanied so I'm going to let Ray off, on the grounds that he is more used to screaming into a mike than singing singing.

This vigil for Danielle...now this bothers me, mostly on the grounds that having it in the ambulance bay seems rather impractical. Surely it makes more sense to hold it at the front of the building?

The Chrismas song is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, which is the same as back in 01.10. Maybe it's the same every year but I've never noticed before?

OK, so it's 3 weeks since Abby and Luka started having sex again, and she's already pregnant? So, despite both being career doctors etc neither of them thought to use protection? It's an interesting twist on their relationship though: the fun fling suddenly becoming very serious in a totally new way.

01.11 Happy New Year

So it's 1995. I was unemployed in 1995. Just saying.

Carter finds a gangbanger victim in the street and gets him borught in. Mark lets Carter incubate the patient and does the report to Benton but still Benton doesn't let him into the OR. You can really tell Carter is going to end up in the ER rather than becoming a surgeon. He even raises his problems with Benton to Mark. Isn't it strange how some characters are naturally refered to by their family names and others by their given names?

Lydia is giving up smoking as a "New Year's Revolution", according to Dr Bob.

Susan is having lots of grief with the Surgeon from Hell (aka Kayson aka the guy who played Holland Manners in Angel). He's being extra slow in dealing with any cases she presents to him. One of her patients that Kayson OK'd for release bounces back and dies so Kayson blames her.

Who the heck is this? Benton has a girlfriend? Oh, wait...it's his sister. That wasn't made immediately clear, and seeing Benton even touching anyone else, never mind hugging them, is bound to lead a person to the wrong conclusion.

Chloe is moving to Texas, and will be having the baby, despite Susan's misgivings. Then Susan has to attend a drug-user having a baby, as well as various other pregnant woman.

Carter is finally invited into the OR. He manages about 30 seconds before he's sent back out for being useless. Eventually he's allowed to hold a clamp. Aw.

This feels like a bit of filler episode. Nothing awful, nothing fabulous. There no fallout at work about Doug's declaration to Carol, although an elderly couple are brought in who have been happily married for 40+ years and Doug is all medatative about why he hasn't found someone to share his life with in the same way. This episode progresses the storylines but doesn't feel particularly significant.

01.10 The Gift

Ah, now Christmas episodes I can understand.

Yes, it's Christmas at the ER. Mark is trying to skive, with Susan covering for him, but can never get away for an hours. First it's a kid who fell through the ice. Then Regina, the witchy nutter. Meanwhile Benton has to deal with a brain dead patient and his wife, foolishly calling the transplant crews before getting the family's permission. Which seems a little similar to Ray's balls-up in 11.05.

OMG! Carter's bowtie! Haleh was his secret santa and got him that? She is evil.

Susan gets a guy who hacked into the mains power box in order to get more power for his lights show. The houses round my way are starting to do these, bigger each year, but I suspect that in another twenty years the idea of using all that energy will seem insane. Or possibly be illegal. Also, Div has buggered off. I'm not sure why Susan is upset. The guy was all grey and insane. When Carter makes a move, Susan turns him down. Then again, her flakey sister is pregnant so maybe she's wise not to start getting into more complications.

Clooney. Tux. The Clooney Coma is taking hold...
/wave smelling salt under nose/
It's Carol engagement party but Doug is off to join the social whirlwind which revolves around Linda the drug sales lady. Except he's realised he has to tell Carol how he feels. Naturally, the best way of doing this is to go to her engagement party and have a row with her in the street, yelling "I love you!" before provoking pasta name guy to punch him then moping about the streets of Chicago.

As Christmas episodes go, this works. Carter kills Santa and gets knocked back by Susan, Susan and Doug both have really bad times of it, etc. It balances with the end song (Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas), undercutting the potential schmaltz with the bittersweet rather well.

01.09 Blizzard

A blizzard means there are no patients. Well, you just know that isn't going to last.

Jen left early, so Mark has decided to come in and get Susan to help him plaster up Carter's leg whilst he's asleep. Susan admits Carter is "kinda cute" what with the "nice eyes and a full head of hair", which Mark takes as a low blow.

Our first temp clerk. The first of many bad temps. "If you had an alien baby, would it show up on the pregnancy test?"

Pasta name guy has sprung not for a box of bagels but for a big fat rock of a ring. A $12,000 ring, according to drug sales lady.

Ah. Massive pile up on the freeway meaning the diaster plan goes into operation. Knew the quietness was doomed. This is one of those bits when the difference between old and new ER stand out. As a regular viewer, we're used to the big set piece diasters. Ray triaging fifty people in ten minutes, Neela running into burning buildings after a plane crash. So the build up to the arrival of the victims seems odd. It's giving us things which we take for granted now. We've got missing digits, limbs, head traumas, the works. Naturally, we also have a baby being born. I think there must be some kind of ratio of babies per body count.

Drug sales lady takes over from the crappy temp, revealng she is a decent lady. She also orders loads of pizzas for the ER, and tells Carol that Doug believes in One True Love. The problem being that he thinks Carol is the one for him. Drug sales lady is really growing on me.

Haleh sings, which ties it rather nicely to 12.10 (which was on last week but which I've yet to write up). Help! There's a nun! Also, a new attending: Hicks, played by CCH Pounder who I always think of as the agent who tore Mulder off a strip in Duane Barry but has been in all kinds of things.

'Bob', the clerk from Poland (but not the temp one) operates on a patient to save his life and it is revealed she was a vascular surgeon in Poland.

This is an unusually strong episode. It's not afraid to take its time before the diaster element kicks in, and the staff aren't superhuman after the pile up. Much is made of Doug's mistake in triage which results in a death (which contrasts strongly with Ray's enlightenment in 11.22 The Show Must Go On). It seems like it is confident in itself now.

01.08 ER Confidential

Div is going totally nuts, dictating his misanthropic nilhistic rambles into a dictaphone before playing in the traffic. These days he'd have a blog abut how hard it is to be the pysch consult in a busy American hospital but this is the pre-interweb world. Although an annoying drunk mentions "all this talk of an infomation superhighway". That's so retro.

Ah, the first Thanksgiving episode. Doug is giving thanks for being a kept man. Drug sales lady buys his shirts, his dinners, his holidays, his pie for the pot dinner.

Lydia: Dr Ross, we got a patient.
Doug: I'm not a grown up doctor.
Lydia: We all know that.

A transgender woman arrives, making Carter very uncomfortable. He makes her so uncomfortable that she jumps off the roof.

Two teens who have managed to decapitate a pedestrian by jumping a red light are brought in. Doug reveals he used to race in someone's dad's TR7, Carol used to climb to the top of transmission dishes and Jerry used to play chicken with dynamite. Carol is so bugged by one of the guys lying about who was driving that she decides to tell pasta name bagel franchise guy that a) she slept with Doug whilst she's been dating him, just before her suicide attempt, and b) she let Doug kiss him the other day. Yeah, real sensible.

The joke involving a doctor taking the temperature of an aggravating patient using a flower is stolen wholesale from Carry on Nurse (1959).

Despite decades of exposure to American culture, Thanksgiving episodes of shows always feel like they require a decoder ring. So...it's a winter holiday involving family bickering, watching loads of tv and eating a big roasted bird? So it's like Christmas but a month earlier and just for Americans? Admittedly, my most thorough understanding of it comes from Buffy's yam sham episode. So whilst I understand the symbols in an abstract sense, the finer meaning of Thanskgiving is lost on me. As such, this makes this into 'just another episode' of ER rather than anything particularly meaningful.

Fic: Drabble: Paper Wraps Stone

I just did a quick drabble for neela_ray, based on last nights new episode (UK E4): Paper Wraps Stone. I'll write up thoughts etc on Sunday.

This new ship seems to be inspiring drabbles in a way that no previous ship has. I've always written them, as I think they are a great writing exercise. Trying to pack as much as possible into the strict word count makes you think about what you are trying to express, and how to most effectively do that. Every word needs to add to the meaning: there's no room for slack. So drabbles are great, but Neela and Ray is the first time in years that I've just been dashing them off whenever I have a spare half hour. Strange, n'est pas?

01.07 9 1/2 Hours

Doug is covering for Mark, who is allegedly off sick with flue. Looks more like daytime nookie with his wife.Which involves more naked Mark. I find this discomforting. Jennifer, Mark's wife, cheerfully remarks during bath sex that Mark might have the seven year itch and that Susan is the most obvious recipient of his wandering eye.

Div is being rude at Jerry. Again, remember who'll still be in the series in season 12? In fact, he's being an unprofessional arse, and admitting people under pysch for being drunk. And Susan decides to over-ride him.

Haleh has got a kid she's known all his life in as a volunteer so as to defer his time for some crime. Very like DJ or whatever his name is in season 12.

Carol has to deal with a girl who has been gang raped.

Carter reveals he has a nice shiny gold card and pays to fix Susan's car. Also, some of his folks owned Tennassee. Benton's mother appears in the ER with a sprained ankle. She thinks Carter's folked owned her folks. Carter is getting increasingly narked about Benton never taking him to the OR.

This is a real filler of an episode. In theory it should hang together, but the various plots don't really work. You've got Mark and Jennifer's 9 1/2 hours mingled in with Susan arguing with Div, Doug looking fraught and Benton being crotchety because he didn't get the scholarship he went for. And messed in with that is the gang rape victim. It just adds up to a conflicting mess of half-baked story elements.

01.06 Another Perfect Day

Or the one where Peter goes for a scholarship, it's Susan's birthday, Carol and Doug get kissy-kissy and Carter starts looking for a flat.

This is the third or fourth time Benton has done some crazy surgical procedure in the trauma room, thus demonstrating his commitedness to slicing and dicing, and how driven he is etc etc. We're not getting a lot else from Benton at the moment, compared to the backstory etc for the others. Even Carter is getting more variety in his elements.

Carter has a dad? Carter lives at home with his folks?

"Sometimes I think I should be going out with the patients not the doctors."
Never a truer word said in ER.

Doug is all snarled up because pasta name guy has brought in loads of bagels for Carol. Who gives a gal a load of bagels? I mean, she can't eat all of them before they go stale. Plus, no fillings. Who wants bagels without fillings? And now he's pressuring Carol into moving in with him. Like his grocery skills in purchasing bagels will make her think "this is the guy to live with".

Ooh, now Div is being a divvy, being all rude and confrontational at Malik. Yeah? Well, let's see who's still in the cast twelve years later, huh?

It has to be said the first Doug/Carol smoochie doesn't seem that smooth. There's something a bit forced about it, but it may be dodgy direction. Carol's response to kissing Doug is to be all giggly and flirty with pasta name man. Doug's response to her response is to be all snuggly with the drug sales rep. Carol's response is to move in with pasta name man and his caterer's supply packs of bagels.

"Lately I've found myself attracted to sullen and withdrawn and confused."
"Yeah? You ought to go out with me."
I bet there is Mark/Doug slash.

This is one of those episodes where there is a massive disjoint between the familar and the old. Mark comes out of the ER and crosses to a diner. But the entrance isn't the ambulance bay, and the diner isn't the diner they use in later seasons. And the roof isn't the roof. It has chairs and plants and ashtrays.

The episode does end with Susan and Carter on the roof and you realise it is the start of a beautiful friendship.

Also, the end of DVD No. 1.

01.05 Chicago Heat

Still no 'Previously, on ER...'. This is freaking me out more than the fact Mark Greene is wearing a vest which shows his chest hair. He has more hair on his chest than on his head. This is a heatwave episode, which suggests that next week it'll snow.

It's Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and Rachel's first question is about the dead guy in the corridor. Smart kid, that. There's also a kid with a failing heart, so you just know the brats are going to be all big eyed and adoreable at each other.

There's Arthur again. And Ivan. Only this time Ivan was the one doing the shooting. I'm trying to work out if you shave off his moustache and stop him talking in a cod-Russian accent, is it Locke from Lost? I'm going to have to raid tv tome again. Oops, no. I'm wrong.

Ah, Susan's freaky flakey sister Chloe. The one who just screams 'junkie'. Oh, and the five year old girlie overdosed on cocaine. Place your bets on the kid's sister being the one to have left her stash around. Ah, and Chloe nicked Susan's credit card. And Susan's annoying pyschologist boyfriend (what is it with these ER girls and tall skinny greying doctors from upstairs?) doesn't want to help by talking to Chloe. Oh, sure, he'll show up after the flakey sister leaves the cat out in the street, leaves the fridge open, nearly burns down the flat and nicks the tv and offer to help then but earlier? Nope.

Isn't Clooney short? Susan covers for Mark, so he can dodge the drugs sales rep. Pasta name guy asks Carol to move back in with him. And Carol succumbs to her urge to punch Doug when drugs sales rep lady approaches him. And it's a proper punch on the arm, too, the type that leaves a bruise.

Ooh, some symbolism! The rain, i.e. relief from the intense heat, starts after Carol punches Doug and when Benton hears Ivan's victim is dead.

Wait a minute...Doug has a son? Doug has a son?? I don't remember that! Is this one of those backstory things - like Carol's fiancé - which just falls through the cracks as the series develops?

01.04 Into The Good Night

Oh, god, it's a Dramatic but Naturaly Dying Patient Who Makes the Staff Consider Their Lives episode. Oh, combined with a Poor Family Who Can't Afford Their Meds story. Ah, also, the Drunk Students plot.

Mark's wife gets a job in Milwalkee, thus bringing about one of the conditions Doug had suggested Mark would need before he would make a move on Susan. Susan "can't imagine that [Mark] would be happy there" but Mark, in a fit after Considering His Life Due to Dying Patient, agrees to move.

We get the first hint that Susan's family are a pain.

Carter has a STD off his doctor-groupie girl.

Hey, Ivan the liquor man is back. I'm trying to think of some recurrent patients in more recent seasons. You have recurrent characters, like Zoe, but I'm trying to recall anyone like Ivan the liquor store guy or Arthur the drunk.

Hang on...Dr Kayson is Holland Manners, the head of Wolfram & Hart, the evil law firm in Angel. This explains why Kayson is always given Susan a hard time: she's one of those driven moral Good types and he's a Faustian devil.

01.03 Hit and Run

I have an assignment to finish for work, hence working through a bunch of these.

Carter drools and snores when he sleeps.

Doug knows that Mark fancies Susan, or at least likes teasing him about it.

Holy crap! There's a guy using a mobile in a hospital! And it's the size of a brick! It's wierd to remember that in '94 mobiles were rare and the automatic thing of switching them off when you get in a cinema, a plane or a hospital had yet to become habit. I, er, used my mobile in a hospital last year. I felt guilty.

I've seen this guy in something else. I've got it! He's Principle Flutie. The headmaster of Sunnydale High who was eaten by some students who had become were-hyenas. Everyone loved Principle Flutie.

Kook of the Week: a mother who hears her dead mother and the Princess of Wales. Also, the mother's kid was in something as well. Wait! He's the Annointed One! The creepy kid who the Master annoints as his disciple in Buffy season 1 and whom Spike fries when he gets to Sunnydale ("from now on we'll have a little less ritual and a lot more fun around here!"). No wonder the kid ended up as the right hand of the head of the Order of Aurelius when he sees his mother dragged away by the staff of Cook County Hospital whilst screaming about Princess Diana.

Also, Jerry's idea of child-minding is showing the soon-to-be-evil-brat pictures of diseased gall bladders. I seem to remember him doing the same with Alex when he shows up with Sam.

Having watched episode 12.09 the other night, I've noticed that the trauma rooms are essentially unchanged, whilst the rest of the entire hospital seems different.

Susan is still getting pissy at surgery, this time because they won't slice and dice when she thinks they should. Benton's arguing with his family about how he is more commited to his career than his folks is very similar to a lot of the Pratt stuff.

There's a front of the building? I can't even imagine Cook County as having a posh front, but there's Carter doing the life-affirming 'delivering a baby' thing on the steps. Maybe they banned any patients drawing up there ater all the blood he leaves on the floor?

This is, I think, the episode where the series finally finds its feet and its style. Carter goes through the horror of a patient dying, then delivers a baby and realises he can be a doctor. The star-crossed ex-lovers bicker, with Carol and Doug fighting it out on a El platform. The potential lovers don't even realise they are flirting. The driven doctor does his brooding thing. The boss appears and is waspish at people (it's still William H Macy!). It's the balance of all these elements, along with the various patients of the week, which the show needs in order to work. It's when it goes too far off the combination in favour of one or another thread that I suspect I drift away from following it.

01.02 Going Home

Or, the one where Carol comes back, and blows out Doug for a guy whose name sounds like a type of pasta. And Rosemary Clooney guests as a batty old dear singing show tunes.

This contains plenty of flashbacks to the pilot so that people know why Carol is freaked and why Doug is being all protective. You know the thing that freaks me out most about early ER? It's not the young Clooney, or young Jerry, or baby Carter. It's the lack of any 'Previously, on ER...'. Is this just because it's on DVD, or did the series just not have them at this stage?

And speaking of young Carter, it's pretty obvious he's not going to end up in surgery, as he's shown as being much better dealing with patients than Benton, who just can't wait to scrub up and get slicin'.

Susan gets roasted by the teaching group, and gets narked with Mark for not supporting her during it.

Ooh, someone talking to someone else as they receive a patient is a standard cliché and this has the first, with Doug trying to talk to Carol. Also, I've noticed that "wanna get some coffee?" is rapidly becoming a subtextual "I fancy you" sign. Mark asks Susan, Doug asks Carol.

I hope the syrupy incidental music ends soon. I know we get some James bloody Blunt in season 12 but bluegh. Especially with the slo-mo and flashback during the welcome back party. Given this is only the third episode, you can't help but think the audience isn't likely to be attached to Carol yet so isn't likely to overlook the schmaltz. When Susan leaves? When Carter leaves? That's the time for the hokey music and slo-mo...

12.09 I Do (spoilers)

This is the one in which Neela and Michael get married on the spur of the moment (or in a state of post-coital "whew! I'm not dead!" relief, given he's just back from Iraq and she's nearly died in a burning building).

Someone over on neela_ray suggested that Neela and Michael are being held up as the opposite of Abby and Luka. You've got the contrast between Neela and Michael on the El on the way in, all teasing and loving, and as they head home, sitting side by side like colleagues who just finished their shift. Meanwhile Luka and Abby are acting like newly weds ought to...

You can tell it's going to be rocky ahead when Michael says Neela gives him somewhere peaceful to be. This is our Neela he's talking about, right? The one who is always scowling and snapping at people? Peaceful...? You could get carried away with the symbolism of it all - Neela marries in white (the colour of mourning) and when they get the El home, they sit facing backwards (i.e. not facing the direction they are travelling in, not looking towards the future but instead the past...). Plus their wedding is displaced by a funeral and Michael suggests having lillies for the flowers. Whatever can be coming up with these two crazy kids, huh?

"wankiest!" Yeh! Score one for the English slang!

Abby talks sense. Abby always talks sense. You think all those bad traits are Luka's? She also deals with the whole Kovac/Clemente business pretty damn sharpish, as well. She's starting to become Saint Abby.

Luka is back to looking sexy, after last week's disturbing hints of double-chin, but I'm a sucker for him in the smart suit. The singing is ridiculously cute.

Nice brown t-shirt on Ray. Where does he get all his shirts from? And where did he get a shirt and jacket from?

When did Morris grow some balls? Standing up to Weaver? Whew. Although I notice Weaver gave a job to Ray above Morris, and Ray did the talking reassuringly to the friend, and told Morris he did well. Which suggests they're going to make Ray into a good doctor.

Personally, if my wedding reception only had The Greatest Hits of Barry Manilow, I would be seriously annoyed. Almost as annoyed as I suspect Ray is with the honeymoon being in his apartment. Yes, that's my Neela/Ray shippiness coming out.

01.01 One Day

The whole keeping track of the stats is never going to work. It means I don't watch the episode as thoroughly as I could. This episode takes place 8 weeks later, and contains various mild reboots. Carol's fiance, mentioned in the pilot, has vanished whilst her involvment with Ross has changed from a vague dating past into a 2 year relationship (we find out in 1.03 that he was the one to finish it and his guilt over her suicide suggests that he did it recently enough to think that it may have a reason for her overdose).

Ross's student has also vanished, so there is only Carter. Combined with the fact there are only two residents (Benton and Susan), it seems very understaffed compared to later seasons.

We get our first look at the helicopter pad.

This is essentially another 'Day in the Life' episode, this time starting with Susan being woken from her sleep in one of the rooms. 01.02 starts with Benton waking and 01.04 starts with Carter. These early episodes are very big on how tired the doctors always are.