The other place you have seen Eion Bailey was chowing down on Principal Flutie in the hyenas episode of Buffy S1.

I think early ER was strong because it had a stated policy of undercuting "drama" in favor of humor, connection, or other surprising moments. The best parts of the Bradley Whitford episode are parts like Carter manually pinching arteries in Mom's belly, while everyone else is trying to save the kid, and the obstetrician bustles in (too late to help) and asks Carter what the hell he is doing. It's notable that in that episode, the big emotional "Hey, we accidentally killed your wife" moment is something we see silently, through a glass door, and the episode ends as the moment is only getting started.

Late ER is melodrama. It hasn't moved me in a long time.

Flourescents are doubly dangerous because they implode when they break. Putting pressure like that on one = yikes!

Dr. Cox: "Well, either this guy's colon had a very bright idea, or he's got a lightbulb up his ass."

That was a great ep. My college roommate is an M4 now, and she swears that Scrubs is the most realistic medical show on television.

The main stories I heard of note from friends who worked in ERs was objects lodged in places they had no business being.

"It was a million to one shot, doc! Million to one!"

Abby moves me. Pratt and Chen move me. Neela moves me, when she's working with Chen.

If only they'd give Luka something interesting to do, I bet he'd move me too.

Old school ER made Benton move me. Made the moving parts not so dependent on affection for the characters. The writing was more complex.

I give Homicide: Life on the Street major points towards realism.

The funnest part of that show is that they took stuff from real life. But, like, not "Ripped from the Headlines!" type of stuff; but stupid kids dropping a bowling ball off an overpass and killing a driver below, and the kids never getting caught.

Even Homicide had to go with the fulminating stunt now and then, but somehow they tended to persuade me to forgive them each time they did it.

I need to say that there is no "fun part" to a limb being torn off.

Doesn't that depend on if you're the tear-er or the tear-ee?

So, if we take GWB to an ER, they could get his head out of his ass?

My mom was a pediatric nurse when she first got out of nursing school, but her worst shift was when she was called in to help out in the ER the night a couple and their ten kids were in a car crash. The parents both died, as did a few of the children, and the other eight kids were in pretty bad shape. (This was in the late 1960s, so no seat belts or airbags were in the van.) Even worse was the fact that, Joliet being a relatively small town despite its official population, Mom knew the family, as did others on the hospital staff. When she talks about that night, she mostly remembers handling the surviving kids and trying to help them even though the kids just knew that their mom and dad were dead.

But there was long term consequences to Kellie Martin's character's death -- the whole John Carter becomes a drug addict arc was founded on that incident.

Because Carter was attacked too though.