Friday, April 3, 2009

Goodbye ER, I'll miss you

Last night marked the end of 15 seasons full of laughter, tears, relationships, deaths and some cheesiness thrown in on the side. The folks of the Chicago County General ER will no longer be guests in my livingroom on Thursday nights and for that I am a little sad.

I started watching ER when it started. Not to date myself, but I was in junior high school when it started. That was the first late night show I was allowed to stay up for, but not on a regular basis.

It was great to start out this final episode weaving new characters into the original ER theme song. I always fast forward through the opening credits these days and forgot how catchy the theme song was. I always love the part when Dr. Benton is doing some sort of Karate in the hallway.

After watching last nights finale, my roommate and I concurred that we were glad they didn't do some super cheesy ending (ie: helicopter falling off the roof and killing everyone). I liked that the show ended with just another day in the ER. I thought it was a bit odd that they would introduce a new character (Alexis Bledel as Julia Wise) in the finale, but found myself wishing that she had been introduced as a regular character earlier.

Looking back at some of the Season 1 synopsis on IMDB there isn't really a lot I remember. In fact I only recognize storylines with regularity during Season 5 when 3rd year med student Lucy (Kellie Martin) joined the show. I'm now looking forward to getting to know my ER friends all over again by starting over from the beginning.

Do you have any fond memories of ER? Did you stick with it until the end or did you tune out at some point? If you tuned out, did you at least watch the series finale?