User Reviews

One of my best-remembered shows as a kid. What set this show apart from its predecessors was in drawing respect from the audience for the firefighters it portrays; for the first time the paramedics, doctors and firefighters didn't arrive to wave a magic wand putting the fire out and saving the patient. The range of (at the time) operating medical and CB radio procedures and terminology, the open identification with real-time Los Angeles and the range of rescue situations faced by Station 51 and their paramedics showed how thorough Jack Webb's research and commitment to authenticity was, pushing the benefits of the paramedic program in the face of a skeptical California state government; as a concerned West Coast citizen with an eye on the Big One he probably knew this was an important step forward in public health that would save many, many lives when that day inevitably arrived. Rescue 911, ER, Law & Order, Third Watch, Cops; the entire medical and police reality television genre can trace their origins to Emergency! and once a compatible DVD box set for Australian players arrives I'll have it to reminisce with too.

I remember watching this great show on Saturday nights back when I was in high school. In those days, the networks put the good TV shows on Saturdays. Today, Saturday night is a graveyard for the pseudo-cancelled. It's hard to believe that almost 40 years ago the concept of the paramedic was a novel one, and this is a great show about the problems and personal lives of those involved in those early days of the program.

Emergency kept the pace fast and interesting with a combination of strange, dramatic, and even humorous cases. More unusual cases I remember from the series include the rescue of a boy trapped inside his own homemade rocket, a man who has difficulty breathing because he has swallowed his partial dental plate, an amateur magician trapped in a safe, a bank robbery hostage has symptoms of a heart attack and the paramedics have to treat him at gunpoint, a patient with an earache caused by mothballs, and an artist trapped inside his own sculpture.

The personal side of Emergency is interesting too. The chemistry between paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto is great and their various misadventures are frequently humorous. They're good friends but quite different people. Roy is a family man through and through, and John is a carefree single guy. I remember one particularly funny conversation in which John is actually thinking about marriage but is not sure he and the girl have known each other long enough. He asks Roy how long he knew his wife before they got married and Roy says 12 years. When John says that is a ridiculous period of time to wait, Roy mentions that he and his wife met in the fourth grade. That's a pretty typical conversation for the two. I highly recommend this series. If you've never seen it, even though medicine has changed drastically, it is still good entertainment. Highly recommended.

In a way, Jack Webb cloned his Adam-12 success with this series in 1972. The setting & cast are different, I mean how can anyone with a colorful name like Randolph Mantooth fail? The regulars on this series provided some spark for sure as like the Adam-12 team they provided some of the spark for this show too.

Another similar thing is the action. Being set in a fire house & on the streets often on calls, Emergency has it's fair share of action sequences. Most of them are very well done too. One difference between this & Adam-12 is that it is set in a 60 minute format so the stories could be bigger & more extensive.

This had to be an easy sell to NBC execs, as you have the experienced Jack Webb production team who seems to endlessly come up with good action stories & endlessly keeps finding cast members that play off each other well. This show was a very good show.

Once again, rerun heaven for it might be established once it is released on DVD, as it might pick up some fans.

"Emergency" was a show that had it all....gripping medical drama combine with high adventure and cliffhanging excitement. As a child growing up,it was a Saturday night staple during its run on NBC that lasted six seasons and 122 episodes airing from January 15,1972 until May 28, 1977 with six made for television movies based on the series airing from January 7,1978 until July 3, 1979. The series was produced under Jack Webb's production company Mark VII Limited Productions and Universal Television and was the creation of producer Jack Webb along with Robert A. Cinader and Harold Jack Bloom who served as executive producers. "Emergency!" premiered as the mid-season replacement for two NBC situation comedies that were abruptly canceled..."The Don Adams Show",and "The Good Life" on its Saturday night schedule in January of 1972.

Basically,it was a show about paramedics but a whole lot more. The show not only follow the lives of two paramedics DeSoto(played by Kevin Tighe),and Gage(played by Randolph Mantooth)at Station 51 of the Los Angeles County Fire Department who risk their lives saving people in daring but sometimes dangerous situations,but it also follows the staff and doctors at Mayfair Rampart General Hospital,particularly the details in the lives of Dr. Brackett(played by Robert Fuller),and Dr. Early(played by Bobby Troup),and the head nurse McCall(played by 50's recording artist Julie London). Its premiere episode from January 15,1972(which was also the pilot episode of the series)was the most gripping ever,which in turn begins the partnership of Gage and Desoto and the situations they encounter(which in a riveting and powerful episode Nurse McCall is injured when she tries to save a woman from a burning car hanging inches over a steep cliff,and its up to Gage and Desoto in a race against time to save them both). This also featured in the pilot episode Martin Milner and Kent McCord from "Adam-12"(also another successful Jack Webb produced series for NBC).

The producer and creator of this show was Jack Webb(the man who was Joe Friday from Dragnet)who made "Emergency!" one of the best action- adventure series ever to come out of the 1970's which during that time he was producing shows like "Adam-12","The District Attorney aka "The D.A.",and "O'Hara-US Treasury")and it was so successful on its prime time Saturday night line-up against strong competition with "The Mary Tyler Moore Show",and "All In The Family". The series was such a colossal hit that NBC also green lighted under the supervision of Jack Webb its own Saturday Morning cartoon show under the title "Emergency Plus-4" that aired on NBC's Saturday Morning schedule on September 8,1973 featuring the voices of Randolph Mantooth and Kevin Tighe.

You have to consider a show great if it can convincingly combine both medical drama and nail-biting action rescues. The writers, creators, special effects artists and stuntmen on this show went to great ends to think up convincing accidents and then depict them for entertainment purposes. Throw in two likeable guys in the form of Keving Tighe and Randy Mantooth along with a station of cut-ups and you have a hit series on your hands. A lot of tongue in cheek humor made this series for me as Gage was always trying to get rich quick or fireman Chet Kelly letting loose with the practical jokes, but yet it was all played straight to save others as we the viewers learned at least superficially the ins and outs of the paramedic business. Kudos to a well remembered and well liked show !

The beginning of the show, in the Wedsworth-Townsend Act, everything is quiet, your seeing the fire trucks, then you go up the pole, see all of the fireman and then, breaking the silence, the big loud fire alarm blasts waking not only you but also the fireman up. The fire trucks race to the scene and you can sense what the show is like from there. Johnny and Roy are one of the most memorable characters from the jokes to the rescues and then to serious matters, you can always know that they are ready for anything. The hospital always packs all kinds of scenarios from a lady getting stuck to a toilet seat to a doctor in Rampart Emergency dieing of a heart attack, the hospital always has something either unusual or something serious to show you. When squad 51 goes out on a rescue Johnny and Roy immediately start to provide the best medical care, they flip open the biophone, they get the information and they administer the drugs. After watching a couple of episodes of Emergency, you will never want to stop watching it. Buying Emergency! on DVD would be one of the greatest investments you ever made.

This show was as much an education as it was entertaining.

It introduced the country to emergency medical services. Before we had life saving abilities of the remarkable people in EMS, if you you had a severe car accident or a heart attack or burned in a fire- you had a better chance of dying than living.

Even as the show was in primetime- the technology changes. From how you treat burns with sterile dressing/sheets to antishock pants. But many of the techniques are still in your and have been enhanced by technology

A lot of people became EMS AND EMT's because of this show- if you doubt it- look up Bobby Sherman the actor. And those people intern saved a lot of lives.

So maybe all of you negative reviewers will show a little more frackin respect if you are dying of a heart attack and a paramedic is pounding on your chest trying your frackin life.

One word for Universal- maybe you could spend a little more money and remaster this classic you cheap ba$%#£ds.

I remember watching this as a kid and boy did I have a crush on Ms. London. The series was pretty stiff, but was a groundbreaking show that set the stage for so many shows to come. From the standpoint of accuracy, it was pretty accurate and they took a lot of steps to try and make sure it was. For the most part, medical errors were fairly minor to medium, but for me this was a great series as it directed me on a career path of sorts encouraging me to enlist in the Navy to become a corpsman. Well worth the time to watch.

John Gage and Roy DeSoto are Los Angeles paramedics, operating out of LA Fire Department Station 51. Together they get called out to many and diverse emergency situations - fires, shootings, domestic incidents, to name but a few. Between these we see their lives at the station and their private side.

A series that enthralled me as a kid. Between all the cop shows with shoot outs, robberies and murder there was Emergency! Where the aim was saving lives. Made a great counterpoint to the usual stuff on TV.

It wasn't all about the emergencies though. The behind-the-scenes looks and interactions at the Fire Station are interesting too.

I absolutely loved this series. Glad that is is being replayed on a local station that is showing old television series. They don't make them like this anymore. Can't watch a tv show now days without the political garbage worked in.

My husband and I love this show. It takes us back to our teen years in the 1970s. But when Season 7 came along everything changed. The music sucked big time and the guest actors were subpar. Very disappointing. Johnny, Roy, Dixie, Joe, and Kel were like family to us. Season 7 has them going to different states to observe, spotlighting other stations/squads around LAS County that have nothing to do with the main storyline and actors. We always got a kick our their musical motifs--the traveling to an accident scene motif, the basic guys hanging around the station, the catastrophe motif -- all that is gone and replaced with screaming trumpets and violins. WTH?

I don't understand how or why anyone likes this show. The acting is so deadpan it needs a defibrillator. The predictable plots are a guaranteed yawn inducer. You KNOW the rescue's going to be successful, and nobody ever croaks.Action? Nelson Riddle's score is the most exciting thing on this show, and I often wonder how often he fell asleep while conducting it. Only a laugh track would respond to the heavy handed attempts at humor - and the show doesn't even provide that. In most TV sitcoms there is at least one actor that goes on to greater things - even "The Facts of Life" featured George Clooney in a few final episodes, and Will Smith seems to have done pretty well for himself. But the guys on "Emergency"? Randolph Mantooth is WAY down the line in the cast of an episode of "Ghost Whisperer", and Keven Tighe was in "My Bloody Valentine". This was evidently Julie London's crowning achievement - she never did another thing after this show. So why am I watching it? My wife LOVES this show - and if I expect to get any tonight, I had better show a little interest too.

In a lot of ways Emergency brought about change in the Rescue field that many of us couldn't even imagine.There once was a time when car accident victims couldn't be treated on site,as in the pilot Emergency episode demonstrated,that all changed with the help and exposure of Emergency.The term EMT was never heard of before,nor "Paramedic" by many,but thankfully the service that we take for granted today was helped along big time by Jack Webb and the talented cast of Emergency.I cant imagine anyone forgetting about this program,for it was a big part of every kid's viewing and play acting habits in the 70s (and 80s too with the syndicated "Emergency One" reruns).I cant think of any other program that has done so much good for so many as this program has (excepting Americas Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries).Remember,there would have been no "Rescue 9-1-1" with William Shatner,no St Elsewhere,no ER...had Gage and Desoto not rescued the injured in their trusty red 72 Dodge.Praise them all,and may Jack Webb be forever immortalized. Now the 1st season will be released in August on DVD!!!! Finally! Time for Emergency to live again,and that adorably cute Nurse Sharon Walter (Patricia Mickey)to gain a whole new crowd of male fans.

I loved Emergency and watched it faithfully all the way through. Randy Mantooth was a babe and still is. I became an EMT because of that show, and would have gone on to paramedic training but wound up going back to school and became an M. D. I have the entire series on DVD and enjoy it to this day.

Not able to watch it daily but still find it entertaining. As rough as some of the shows were, the show is credited for pushing Fire Based EMS - Paramedics throughout the United States. Was in Southern California last summer and made the stop to LA County FD Station 127 aka Station 51... the guys said they still get many tour requests. Was disappointed to see TV Land drop the show .... you can currently catch it on Cozi TV at Noon and 1300 hours.

This show was always a favorite. And now I'm collecting the DVDs. I would much rather watch reruns of this show on the DVDs than most of the garbage that is on the tube now! The realism in the show during the rescues really made you feel like you were there, and the combination of drama and comedy was handled really well. It is so interesting to watch the show as it developed over the years. This show was definitely the basis for the better dramas that came later, and I am sure it convinced many people to become paramedics. If I have one complaint about the show, it would be the lack money spent on many of the special effects, but that is understandable considering the budgets for TV shows at the time.

The show is old but still holds up. The show focuses on the responses firefighters make and the people they deal with: no love triangles and no off duty drama which is the nonsense modern shows seem to deal out.

I love this show now as much as I did as a kid. I remember the excitement of watching this as a kid with my family each week. A couple of things that I find "funny": Each time the bell goes off in the firehouse, DeSoto always looks up at it. When the Paramedics are on the "mobile phone" with Rampart, even though they are holding the handset to their ear, the bystanders always seem to hear what Rampart is saying. Sr. Bracket loves to say, "Start an IV" The ambulance drivers dressed in white suits are kind of silly though; they never say a word, move in quickly and disappear as quickly as they show up, kind of like dummies who work in an insane asylum. It would have been nice to have gotten to know them a little better. GREAT show even with all of this "funny" stuff! They don't make shows like this anymore.

I loved this show as a kid; it made me want to become a paramedic (which I did actually). I remember tuning in every Saturday night on NBC to watch it, rerun or not. I wish they'd release it on DVD and/or at least put it back on TV Land. I am kind of surprised that some creative TV guy hasn't tried to revisit this program, with the current hero-interest in firefighters these days; that'd be great.

I don't think I've seen a show that grew and changed as much from first season to last. To see all the equipment, vehicle and medical updates to uniforms, clothing and hairstyles is really a step in the changing past. Season 7 does a huge departure in style and edginess. Yet it all works. I love the show even though I'm watching it for the first time in 2022. The only major change Id desire is real comedy writers for the in between interludes. The comedy writing is so bad even the actors are forced to play it thick But our leads are wonderful to watch in action, the stories are great and it's a really fun and amazing walk through incredible adventures.