9. "Secrets and Lies" - Season 8, Episode 173, Airdate: March 7, 2002
After Carter, Lewis, Kovač (Goran Visnjic), Abby (Maura Tierney), and Gallant (Sharif Atkins) are busted going through a sex worker's bag of tricks, they're all forced to attend a sexual harassment course on the weekend. When their instructor is held up, the five are essentially forced to spend a Saturday in all day detention, with the four doctors and one nurse (Abby) becoming County General's Breakfast Club. I loved how easily the Breakfast Club motif worked with these characters and this show, allowing us to see different aspects of each's personality and the different tensions at play in the various relationships in the room.
This was a transition period for the show, as Anthony Edwards was preparing to leave. I've always seen this episode as a way for the show to officially transfer the focus from the older members of the cast personified by Edwards to its younger cast personified by these five actors (with Noah Wyle serving as a fulcrum, as he was an original cast member, but generationally fit in with this group of performers). I also appreciate this episode because the sense of fun it managed amongst all the angsty relationship stuff (with Carter and Lewis' burgeoning relationship falling apart just as it was beginning), mostly because it came just as the show started its long, slow, painful death march that was Edwards' final episodes of ER.
10. "Kisangani" - Season 9, Episode 201, Airdate: May 15, 2003
I decided I had to have at least one post-Dr. Greene episode on this list, as I did continue to enjoy the show for at least a couple more seasons after his departure. Of those, the most memorable were the first couple Doctors Without Borders episodes in Africa. They were highly cinematic, with some of the strengths of earlier outside the ER spotlight episodes. I went with the first Africa episode "Kisangani", the ninth season finale, over season ten's "The Lost", because I felt it the stronger of the two (although "The Lost" was memorable on its own, with viewers unsure whether or not Carter was returning to Africa to collect Kovač's corpse). What I liked about "Kisangani" is that it finally put to end the rivalry between Carter and Kovač, which had been fun for awhile (notably in the episode above), but had mostly become tiresome at this point.
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Article comments
1 - Clare
I will miss ER so much.
Thanks for the article, Andy. You really captured the great episodes.
2 - James
Good choices. I just finished watching the last season on dvd, and before watching the very last episode I watched the series pilot. Yes - it's very noticeable how much less 'fancy medicine', as you put it,is in the earlier seasons, and how relatively slow- moving it is compared to the camera-batics on season 15 (but then slower can be better....see The Wire, The Killing, et al). The medical equipment looks positively medieval! But it's a more rounded show, encompassing politics, with several references to insurance and other financial issues, and Benton's surgical disdain for the "pill pushers" of the ER; not to mention the various interesting relationships of the first seasons (compared to which the Ray-Neela relationship of later seasons was a damp squib - I honestly didn't get any romantic spark at all, or much of any spark really). And young Carter! A masterpiece of goofy, loveable comedy, fresh-faced and fresh-minded, before the tragedies that were to befall him. I was glad you included the stabbing episode - I too find it difficult to think about, because Lucy was such a wonderful character, so well played by Kellie Martin, and her flirtacious back-and-forth with the the still young and loveable Carter was one of the highlights of the entire series for me. I vividly recall Romano overturning the table in anger when she died, and feeling upset for the rest of the day (which never normally happens with fictional TV, I hasten to add!) The story arc which followed over the next couple of seasons, with Carter becoming addicted to drugs and Benton ultimately helping him through it, was one of the most moving I have ever experienced. When that fizzled out, and Greene and Benton left, and Carter became hardened (great performance by Noah Wyle to show the change) is when I stopped watching. I've recently watched the later shows on dvd and, while there are slapstick moments and lots of fancy procedures, they lack the heart and the magic of the early years.
Wow, didn't expect to write that much! I just enjoyed the show, and I guess that whole period of my youth, so much. Thanks ER :)