Ten Memorable Episodes of ER - Page 6

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.

Article Author: Andy Sayers

Andy Sayers is a technical writer from Canada, which automatically makes him funnier than people from other countries. When not writing about pop culture, he is consuming it alongside his loving wife.

Visit Andy Sayers's author page — Andy Sayers's Blog