I know how ER ends!

Anyone else disappointed that Benton and the English woman didn't renew old flames -- or at least just go "do it"......

 

That's the direction I thought it was moving.

I see what they are going for in the ending. Show opens with Dr. Green teaching Dr. Carter, show closes with Dr. Carter teaching Rachel Green. I was expecting something a little more action packed.

 

Very well done, IMO. And mustang came pretty close to nailing the ending.

I'm sad to see this show go. It wasn't as good the last few years, but it was still better than most of the crap that passes for prime time network TV these days. And if you can make a prime time show last 15 years, you must be doing something right.

We'll probably never see something like this on network TV again, not with the expansion of cable TV (which makes money from both advertising and subscriptions) and the costs of putting on a show like this.

 

This show was pretty good through most of the cast changes and that says something about how well-written it was.

 

Liked the show, thought the ending could have been a little more dramatic than what it was.
I'm sad the show's ending. I hadn't watched it in a couple of years because the cast kept changing and the storylines were getting a little crazy. My wife and I have a lot of nostalgia for the show. We started watching it together when we were in college and for many years, it was our show that we marked on the calendar to watch each week.


SPOILER TO THOSE WHO HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET:















Thought Carter asking, "Dr. Greene, are you coming?" to Rachel was a nice touch.

 

The retrospective just started out here - Scott Grimes: "I watched the first episode and I used to hang out with Noah Wyle and I thought, "That douchebag got a show? I thought it was a documentary."

 

I am going to miss ER. I feel like I went into adulthood with that show as I began watching it in college, at the insistence of one of my teammates.

I liked the ending, especially how it came full circle ...





(Spoiler alert)





... with Rachel returning to the ER (which was weird because I was just telling someone this morning, "let's see, Rachel Greene would be 22 or 23 now ...") and with a lot of allusions to the pilot, including the first five minutes of the finale. Even at the end, Dr. Carter said, "I just had a bit of deja vu." Plus, I liked that Drs. Weaver, Lewis, Benton (and Reese, his son), Elizabeth Corday were all woven in.

I was also half-expecting Alexis Bledel's character to be named "Rory."

 

I'll be interested to see what the ratings are for the finale. I know it won't get what the MASH finale got (ER was no MASH and there is way too much competition now). But could this get a 20?

 

With storms raging in the Tennessee Valley, NBC's feed went out near the end when everyone went outside to meet the ambulances. Did I miss anything after that?

 

I thought that at first with Benton and Elizabeth Corday, but there were too many mentions of Cleo (Michael Michele) to consider any kind of hook-up. It was more as if they came to terms with things.

No, I don't think it was disappointing. I actually think it was a very modern ending. Consider current literature - are the loose ends ever really tied up? I think there was just enough answered and intimated and enough finished (the AIDS patient and the elderly couple) and left unfinished (the girl with alcohol poisoning, the woman who gave birth to twins and died) in the finale.

 

I read where one of the producers said something like ... when the show started, we joined some storylines in progress and we'll leave with some still in progress.

 

Allow me a moment to grieve here.

ER debuted when I was in middle school. It was the first show my parents allowed me to stay up and watch. I watched it when I was in high school. I taped it when I was in college. And I've figured out a way to catch almost every episode.

Some of them sucked. Some of them were ridiculous.

But I kept watching through all the warts.

I'll miss the nurses, many of whom made their first appearances on the show in at least five years tonight. I'll miss Archie. And Gates. And Neela. And all the ones that came before: Dr. Greene. Dr. Kovac. Dr. Benton. Dr. Ross. Dr. Cordet.

I was fine with the ending. I would have loved to figure out what happened to the heart transplant patient. But I loved how it came full circle -- with a weary Dr. Carter, fighting through marital trouble, showing a young Dr. Greene the ropes.

I'm not a fan of change. I'm a 20-something still working at newspapers, clinging to my print edition of Sports Illustrated. And I clung to ER through the rotten years. At least the show got a proper sendoff, but, still, it hurts a little that I will never see a new episode again.

Maybe that makes me a corny bastard. But so be it.