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