"ER" And in the End... (2009)

Director:

Rod Holcomb

Writers:

Michael Crichton (creator)
John Wells (written by)

TV Series:

"ER" (1994)

Original Air Date:

2 April 2009 (Season 15, Episode 22)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

As Carter prepares to open a new hospital, some old friends/colleagues gather. Rachel Greene, Mark Greene's daughter, applies for an internship at County. |

Plot Keywords:

Series Finale | Medical | Emergency Room | Doctor | Hospital

Cast

Noah Wyle	...	Dr. John Carter
Laura Innes	...	Dr. Kerry Weaver
Sherry Stringfield	...	Dr. Susan Lewis
David Lyons	...	Dr. Simon Brenner
Alex Kingston	...	Dr. Elizabeth Corday
Parminder Nagra	...	Dr. Neela Rasgotra
John Stamos	...	Dr. Tony Gates
Linda Cardellini	...	Nurse Samantha Taggart
Scott Grimes	...	Dr. Archie Morris
Eriq La Salle	...	Dr. Peter Benton
Angela Bassett	...	Dr. Cate Banfield
Alexis Bledel	...	Dr. Julia Wise
Ernest Borgnine	...	Paul Manning
Sam Jones III	...	Chaz Pratt
Thandie Newton	...	Makemba 'Kem' Likasu

Runtime:

120 min (including commercials)

Language:

English | American Sign Language | Spanish

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Company:

Constant c Productions

Trivia:

In one of the early scenes we see Scott Grimes being woken up by a nurse (Ellen Crawford) in a similar way Anthony Edwards was woken up in the pilot.

Goofs:

Continuity: Archie opens a fresh box of Meat Lover's pizza and takes out a slice while also flipping another one of the slices over. Two shots later, he's still standing there with the slice in his hand and the pizza is miraculously full again.

Quotes:

Dr. John Carter: Ill begotten gains of my Carter forefathers put to good use.
Dr. Kerry Weaver: Redemption?
Dr. John Carter: Maybe so.
Dr. Susan Lewis: Your grandma would be so proud.
Dr. John Carter: Grandfather's rolling over in his grave. He thought the Carter fortune would last longer than the pyramids.
Dr. Susan Lewis: You spent it all?
Dr. John Carter: No. But most of it.
Dr. Kerry Weaver: You've done a great thing here, John. Truly great.

Movie Connections:

References "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" (1992)

Great Ending

This is a medical drama that seems to have captured the imagination so much more than any other before it. You really identify with the characters, and yet every time it risks degenerating into soap opera, you get a face full of standalone medical drama to bring you back to "real life".

I thought the last episode excelled in the way in which it brought everything to a close and yet left a positive note for the future. The programme is gone, but the hospital carries on and we still identify with it and wish it well. They even resolved all the subplots, something totally unheard of in an ER season finale.

A nice, albeit predictable, touch that the old stagers were brought back in one by one over the course of the last series - and probably right that for most of the time, they were just there for our benefit and did not interfere with the "real" story of the hospital itself. Particularly nice touch that they used the same actors for the two children who returned (Rachel Greene and Reese Benton).

The episode wallowed a little in sentimentality, because the expectation was that the audience would welcome that, but again, the usual side stories were juxtaposed with hard hitting, fast moving, medical action - something that was always a strong point of the series.

A final nice touch for me was the return to the old theme music. A tacit acknowledgement perhaps of how much everyone hated its replacement?