f57
Subj : Canon City
To   : alt.tv.er
From : npardue
Date : Thu Sep 22 2005 22:50:11

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.er

So. It's a new season. And ER definitely has a different feel. That was
the main thing that struck me about the eppy -- it didn't 'feel' like
any previous season; neither like the generally crappy stuff we've been
fed the past two seasons, nor did it feel like 'classic ER.'  The
question is, do I like this new style of ER, and I can't answer that
yet, because I haven't decided. In each storyline there were things I
liked a lot, and things I didn't like at all.

I found the Sam/Luka storyline very watchable (or, maybe it was just
that Luka was exceptionally watchable...), though it did peter out at
the end. And, of course, they never explained a few rather important
points ... like how Alex made it all the way to Colorado without anyone
wondering who this kid was. Sam did the franctic mom thing well. Rather
scuzzy of her to dump Luka like that at the end though. "Thank you for
running me halfway across the country and letting me trash your car ...
but now I'm leaving you because we don't want the same things in life."

Seems to me that if, as we know, Sam and Luka are splitting, there is
no real reason to need to have Alex in the story any more. So why was
it necessary to recast him for one episode.  Did Alex #1 (forget the
actor's name ... Oliver something?) not know that he planned to leave
the show BEFORE they shot the final eppy of the last season?  This
episode was also filmed back in May, was it not? So they couldn't get
him to stick around for one more episode? I noted that, in the
'previously on ER', they reshot the 'Alex hitchhiking' scene with the
new kid.

And the scenes in the ER.  I liked the fact that they finally
remembered that County is supposed to be a teaching hospital. I very
much disliked the way they shoved down our throat, in every single
scene, that "COUNTY IS  A TEACHING HOSPITAL."  They could have been a
BIT more subtle about it all. There were, as near as I could tell, no
attendings on duty.  Susan was around for a bit, but seemed more
interesting in eating apples than in supervising, or even seeing the
occassional patient herself.
And the scene of "Dr. Lockhart -- God's gift to medicine" grated on me
... and I usually LIKE Abby.

A few other minor glitches/questions.
How probable was it for the kid in the Davenport hospital to have been
Alex.  Could he really have ended up in a diabetic coma THAT fast? He
left the previous evening; it's now early the next morning.

We're told that the story started early on a Tuesday morning, which was
also the first day of work for the new residents. Residents start July
1st, right? The 1st was a Friday.

Along with recasting Alex, they also aged him a bit. IIRC, he was 9
when he joined the show early S10 (October 2003). It's now just under 2
years later and he's 12.

While I liked Luka's little anecdote about Marko, (and I noted that the
closed captioning could spell neither Marko nor Danijela correctly!),
the age of the kid has me puzzled.  While it was never entirely clear
how old he was when he died, he was in a crib, so was probably under 3.
 THe story had to have happened the summer before the war began -- like
summer 1990 -- by summer 1991 they were already in Vukovar. So he would
have been under 2.  Which seems a bit young to have done all the stuff
Luka describes him doing. (Being left alone on the beach, wandering off
that quickly, telling the police his name and giving them enough
personal information that they could track down Danijella. (Kovac is a
VERY common name -- just telling the police that he was Marko Kovac
wouldn't have gotten them very far!)

But I loved Sam's line about "There are beaches in Croatia?"

I think the new season has promise, but the jury is definitely still
out.

Naomi

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