NBCSome 16 million people tuned in for the final two hours of ER, which has been a part of our Thursday nights since the Mesozoic era—or at least since Noah Wyle was just a young scamp and not a grand old man of series television.
The finale, titled "And in the End...", made the point that the story of the emergency room will continue and remain much the same as the 332 hours we've already seen, just without the window into that world so graciously provided by John Wells, David Zabel and NBC for lo these 15 years.
If you haven't watched the two-hour ER series finale yet, run along and do so.
If you've already seen it and want to discuss our final day at County General, get in here...
Ingratitude: Dear Kem, Are you out of your ever-loving mind?! You're married to Dr. John freakin' Carter and you're so wrapped up in your own self-pity and narcissistic drama that the man has to grovel to get a lunch date with you?! For that matter, you missed out on his kidney transplant, and ignorance of the transplant is no excuse for ditching it! Horrifying behavior, missy, and don't think we won't be holding it against you for the rest of time. We didn't need a rainbows-and-butterflies happy ending for you and Carter—we'd kinda forgotten you'd even existed in the intervening years—but for cryin' out loud, did you have to be so ostentatiously terrible?
Appreciation: Dear Thandie Newton, thank you so much for coming back to do the ER finale. It was lovely to see more of that part of Carter's life and to see the resolution of the utterly excruciating storyline of Joshua's death from a few years back. Also, you are so pretty! (And on a totally unrelated note, here's a little appreciation for Scott Grimes, who is a low-profile comic genius. You also rock.)
ER: The Next Generation: Really liked the good intentions behind bringing Rachel Greene into the ER to demonstrate that the circle remains unbroken: Mark Greene taught Carter, who now teaches Mark Greene's child, but um, that kid is still pretty annoying. Alexis Bledel was darling, of course, because that's what she does—be darling. And Emily Rose (Jericho, Brothers & Sisters) has never been so appealing. And holy cow, Sam Taggart's (Linda Cardellini) semipsychotic brat, Alex, turned out OK in the end!
Medical Stuff We Learned: Thanks to the ER writers, who provided 15 years of educational television, we all learned an absurd amount of medical health information, including, last night, that a 90-pound person can be killed with just six alcoholic drinks. Don't be alkies, kids. Seriously, though, there is apparently a demonstrable public-health benefit to ER. Former ER writer Neal Baer says, "We know we have made a huge impact, because we've done studies. We did a study that looked at what people learned from the show. We did a pretest and posttest on human papilloma virus and cervical cancer. Nine percent knew before the showed aired that HPV caused cervical cancer, after the show, 30 percent. And we didn't tell them, 'Watch the show to learn that.' "
Adorable Surprise: Benton's kid Reese was absurdly cute, and Benton and Corday still had a little somethin'-somethin' going on.
And in the End...: After the beautiful tableaux of the gang (with all those recurring-character nurses who have been in the ER for 15 years straight while so many regulars have come and gone) waiting to receive the mass-casualty consequences of an industrial explosion, we finally got to see the whole hospital in a wide exterior view, not just the limited perspective from inside that little ambulance bay on the Warner Bros. lot. Thanks to whichever studio exec approved the budget layout for that CGI—and that goes double for whoever allowed the show to air the full ER theme one last time.
Check out the opening credits for yourself below, and then post in the comments. What did you think of the very last episode of ER?