Review of ER

When people talk about the best show of the 90's they always mention Seinfeld. But people tend to forget that in the 90's ER was actually more popular then Seinfeld. It was the #1 prime time show on television for 3 of it's first seasons and became a major impact on NBC's Must See Thursday line-up. The cast of relatively new-comers were Anthony Edwards (Mark Greene), George Clooney (Doug Ross), Julianna Marguiles (Carol Hathaway), Eriq La Salle (Peter Benton), Sherry Stringfield (Susan Lewis) and Noah Wyle (John Carter) and soon they all became household names. The show focused on the lives of Doctors and One Nurse (Hathaway) working at County General Hospital in Chicago in an Emergency Room. The show was very unique and unlike anything on television at the time because of the rapid fast paced action that it showed as Doctors dealt with medical trauma's. Along with those fast paced trauma situations, the show also dealt with issues such as rape, pregnancy, death and drugs. The show became even more entertaining when Laura Innes (Kerry Weaver) was added to the cast in the Second Season. Even though Sherry Stringfield finally left the show in the Third Season the show was still just as good as ever. However the show finally outlasted it's prime in the 5th season when George Clooney (The Superstar of the Cast) left to a career in movies. Even despite Clooney's loss the show still rebounded with strong additions from Goran Visnjic (Luka Kovac) and Maura Tierney (Abby Lockhart) and a bigger role for Paul McCrane (Rocket "Robert Romano). By the end of the 6th season Julianna Marguiles finally left the show. However despite her loss, the show still carried on successfully onto the 8th season. By the end of the 8th season ER lost two of it's prime time players "Eriq La Salle" and "Anthony Edwards", however the loss of Edwards was a major blow to the series since he was the main character and main billing of the series for the first 8 seasons. After Edwards left, Noah Wyle tried to pick up the billing as lead but still the show wasn't the same and by the 11th season the show lost its indigenous spark. Now ER is pretty much a shallow grave of what it used to be with new cast additions trying to establish themselves. Though I won't take those last few seasons in account... The First 10 Years of ER are still a spectacle of amazing television and perhaps the best 10 seasons of any show in the history of television.