I Like to Watch

It's time for a malpractice complaint against "ER." Plus: Trista and Ryan's big pink fiasco.

By Heather Havrilesky

Dec. 11, 2003 | Death of a surgeon
A few weeks ago I mentioned the heavily promoted helicopter crash on "ER," but never followed up with details of that episode once it aired. As it turned out, the whole episode was incredibly strange, and seems even stranger in retrospect.

First of all, the crash. A medical helicopter is taking off from the roof of the hospital. A med student, Neela (Parminder Nagra, the lead from "Bend It Like Beckham"), and a nurse are just stepping back into the elevator after delivering a patient to the copter, so they don't notice the helicopter tipping from side to side behind them. Next thing you know, the nurse is leveled by shrapnel from the broken helicopter blades. But the whole scene remains eerily quiet except for the sounds of mechanical failure and metal scraping metal. There aren't even any shots of the pilot struggling to get control, an unusually minimal treatment that calls to mind (and perhaps purposefully mimics) the heavy breathing and the hiss of bullets hitting the water in that heart-stopping first scene of "Saving Private Ryan."

Cut to eeevil surgeon Romano (Paul McCrane), who steps outside for a breath of fresh air after making a delivery to the rooftop helicopter, but narrowly misses the mayhem. If you'll recall, Romano lost his hand and arm to a helicopter blade last season, so close contact with copters makes him nervous. And if you lost interest in "ER" post-Clooney, Romano is the resident asshole, the doctor who lets un-p.c. slurs fly; the character we're supposed to love to hate. The next time we see Romano, he's in front of the hospital yelling at a med student he catches smoking weed, oblivious to the terror unfolding several stories above his head. He then steps into the street at the exact moment the helicopter comes tumbling off the roof. Romano has just enough time to drop to the pavement and scream straight at the camera as we see the flaming copter plummeting down on top of him.

Thus, eeevil Romano dies a gruesome death, but no one knows it yet. In fact, we wait as the "ER" staff is forced to reckon with the rolling parade of hideously burned, moaning, bleeding humans from the wreck, but the news never comes, and the full impact of the horrible incident never seems to sink in. In fact, in one of the last scenes, Neela is alarmingly nonchalant about the whole experience, even though she narrowly escaped death and witnessed the deaths of several people, one of them inches away from her.

Fine. Maybe the real brunt of the tragedy and of Romano's death will hit during the next episode, right? Wrong. We never see the moment when the staff hears about his death. Instead, at the beginning of the next episode, there's a shot of a makeshift memorial with Romano's picture at the center. Dr. Corday (Alex Kingston) tries to convince the staff to attend a memorial for Romano, but no one shows up, and Dr. Weaver (Laura Innes) tries to snake out of speaking at the memorial by convincing Dr. Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) to take her place.

Casting aside the beyond-campy Helicopter Karma that crashed down on Romano, how far-fetched and crass is it for a drama that takes itself as seriously as "ER" does to throw such a major character to the dogs without any fanfare? Maybe the writers were aiming for an absurd, unheralded demise for the show's least likable character, but dallying so whimsically with doom is ill-suited for "ER" -- hell, it barely worked on "Seinfeld." It makes you wonder if the writers had a personal grudge against the character (or actor), and simply wanted to snuff him out dramatically without cleaning up the ugly emotional mess that always follows.

What they got, though, was an absurdly unrealistic episode. People feel bad when someone dies, whether they're evil or not, because people feel bad about death in general. People also feel guilty about not caring for or honoring even the most evil people when they die. The only character who demonstrated any guilt or confusion was Dr. Corday. Even the behavior of characters who are fixated on ethics, like Dr. Weaver, ranged from disrespectful to flatly unsympathetic. Oh, and conveniently, Romano was one of those imaginary TV people who have no family to speak of. Not even a great aunt in Wisconsin? Give me a break.

People also feel bad when longtime characters die, whether they're evil or not. If Romano had become a cartoon of the overbearing authority figure, that's really the writers' fault, isn't it? Why add insult to injury by churning out a flashy, tongue-in-cheek episode that severely limits your audience's ability to invest in a world that's usually infused with self-righteousness, melodrama and weight?

But then, maybe I'm nitpicking about a show that's always been custom-made for those who are fixated on tragedy. You know the types. Depressed people who frequently bring up some sadness that they "never got over." Moms who clip articles about terrible car wrecks or about the college kid who climbed up a tree to get his Frisbee only to fall to his death. Reformed Catholics. Neurotics. Doomsayers. Chronic worriers.

Just to be clear, I fall into more than one of these categories, but when that hysterical, bloody procession comes rolling down the "ER" hallway for the umpteenth time, or the likable dad shouts something to his cute kid about ordering a pizza once he's done with this little clogged artery test, and you know immediately that he's about to die, you really have to step back and ask yourself, "Why the hell am I watching this?"

California, here we come!
I never ask myself that question when I'm watching "The OC." Granted, it's all blue skies and shiny hair, as opposed to dark corridors and shouting and hemorrhaging. But that's not the only reason it's my favorite new show of the fall season. You've heard me say it before, but don't judge this light summer viewing by its sunshiny cover: The characters are well-written and sharp and lovable, and the situations are fluffy and sweet and full of high-school intrigue, yet oddly satisfying. It's like watching a new hour of "Sixteen Candles" every week.

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