ER – Sam is distraught, Neela is shunned, and Banfield throws up

by Richard Keller

(Season 15, Episode 9 – ‘Let It Snow’)

There’s good news and bad news for ER. The bad news (for some, the good news) is the series finale has been slated for March 12th. After that, the void that will be left by this show will be filled by Kings. When that show fails shortly afterward, something else will fill that slot until NBC eventually puts a reality show on at that time.

The good news? Look for uninterrupted airings of new episodes until the series finale. Taking a look at this month ER will be airing all the way up to December 18th. That’s pretty rare for this show. Previously, the show would take its holiday break once the Christmas episode aired. Not this time, it seems.

Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, let’s turn our attention to this week’s episode.

What Sam did not want to see in her ER: That would be Alex, who ended up in one of the trauma rooms after a car accident. Man, things had finally settled down for both of them after all of the craziness of their first few years at County General. Now this has to happen, and we don’t know how Alex will fare. Especially since we left him fighting for his life after an aortic rupture.

You know, it seems like that albatross that was always hanging around Abby now hangs around Sam’s neck. Every time there is any sort of uptick in her life something happens to totally bring her down once again. In this case I’m rooting for Alex to survive, if only to have some happiness for one of characters in the ER.

Archie Morris — Secret Keeper: When did Archie become the person that everyone dumps their secrets on? A few weeks ago it was Banfield who revealed the first secret. Then, Simon let Archie know about his molestation at the age of ten. This week, Banfield opened up to Morris once again to reveal a miscarriage she had before giving birth to her son. Next thing you know, Frank is going to reveal his latent homosexuality to Archie and Tony is going to tell him about his ‘other’ life as a music club owner in San Francisco.

I suppose that this is due to the growth of Archie’s character. An extremely immature doctor when we first met him, Morris has become one of the concrete columns of the ER and remains one on the last “second generation” doctors still on staff. It could also be his natural curiosity about others that leads them to spill their guts to him. Or, it could be mind control and he’s just gathering all this information to eventually, dare I say it, rule the world.

A looser, drunker Banfield: God bless alcohol! After so many episodes where she walked with a pole up her rear end, we got to see a looser, happier version of Dr. Banfield. A good thing too, because Morris was really stinking up the place before she went crazy. It was getting so embarrassing for him, he was heading into Michael Scott territory. Banfield saved the day with her drunken antics.

Everybody Hates Neela: The Neela see-saw is getting a bit tiring. Everyone likes her one season, then everyone hates her in the next. This season we have the haters, except for Simon. Being that this is a teaching hospital I would think that, as a Surgical Attending, you would have to be a bit of a hard-ass to get the interns into line. I guess that the doctors we’re producing now are a bunch of wimps. That doesn’t bode well for the medical profession.

Cute child number 15,000: Cute child with a speech impediment, mind you. Plus, he was alone, to boot. Feel your tear ducts welling up yet? While there was certainly some sadness to this storyline, it just didn’t have the impact of the 14,999 cute child moments that ER has presented to us previously. Chalk it up to diminishing returns, I guess. Maybe there will be one more CCN toward the end of the series that will get us bawling.

Next week is the last ER Christmas episode. When 10:00 rolls around, look for Alex struggling to live, a miracle baby, and a return of a favorite ER character who is not Noah Wyle. See you then.