The title of this post sounds like some kind of medical country-western song, or veterinary C & W, but it instead refers to the hysterical narcissism which overcomes me when thinking about the end of the line for the hit TV-med/drama “ER.”
Slate, the online magazine, has been conducting an ongoing dialogue all this TV season among some of its writers about the critically acclaimed “Friday Night Lights” and thus apparently got the journalistic guilts for not gushing over the run-up to the end of “ER” as we know it. FNL rocks. Everyone knows that so I don’t know what is the big deal.
Nonetheless, Slate asks its readers why they still watch “ER.” While that might be thought-provoking to some, it is a very easy question for me to reply.
I don’t.
I don’t watch “ER.” I never have watched the show more than a couple of episodes. I think what I most dislike about it is its innate smugness. That combined with the fact that if most people acted in reality in the nation’s emergency rooms like some of the self-important schmoes “ER” has featured over time, there probably would be many more instances of assaults in hospitals. At least “Grey’s Anatomy,” just as overbearing but with a smidgen of redeeming value, has an overwhelming theme of sex running through every aspect of its dramatic episodes so that one gets distracted from Meredith’s non-stop pondering of every little nuance in the universe. Just shut the hell up sometimes, Grey! Oh my God, I just now hit the wrong button on my computer and heard perky music voiced over with the even perkier (and whinier Meredith Grey — Oh the humanity!)
So those who pine for the days of George Clooney, Anthony Edwards, Eriq La Salle and whomever, sorry but I just don’t care. Besides, you surely will see “ER” in perpetuity as reruns. And if you love the show all that much now, you’ll likely love it 30 years down the road, not that I would want to imagine the thought.