I’m going on five years writing for That’s Normal, and somehow I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that long before Marvel, even before Harry Potter, one of the things I loved most on this earth was the TV show ER. I didn’t start watching the show when it premiered because it was 1994 and I was six years old, so I had to catch up on the earlier seasons when I got into it later. And while I’m certain I watched the series finale in 2009, my viewing definitely dropped off the last few years of the show. Most of the main cast had left and there were a whole bunch of new generation characters that I didn’t really care about. I also felt like some of the story lines became a bit overwrought. (Remember when Dr. Romano lost his arm in a medical chopper accident and then a season later was killed off the show when yet another medical chopper literally crashed on top of him? I guess they were going for some kind of dramatic poignancy, but really, how many improbable and tragic helicopter related incidents can realistically befall one person?) But for a while, that show was my jam.
I’ve seen a few bits of episodes here and there on cable, but other than that I haven’t really watched ER since it ended almost a decade ago. Hulu recently started streaming all 331 episodes in January if I were so inclined to binge. I may have to, because I’ve been thinking about recently due to a pair of articles posted by Entertainment Weekly a few weeks ago. Revisiting some of pop culture’s biggest moments, one article centered on the making of one of the most consequential and dramatic hours in the entire run of the series. (I’m halfheartedly putting a spoiler alert here because I know people get touchy, but I don’t really think I need one for an episode of television that’s almost 20 years old.) At the end of Season 6, Episode 13, while a Valentine’s Day party rages on in the ER, a schizophrenic patient stabs Dr. John Carter and medical student Lucy Knight. Carter walks into an exam room, the man comes up behind him and stabs him, and when Carter collapses he looks over and sees Lucy in a puddle of blood on the floor. They both pass out, end of episode. The next episode follows the hospital staff as they try to save their friends. Carter sustains some damage, but pulls through. Lucy, who was stabbed more times and in more critical areas, succumbs to her injuries and dies. This was before the era when television shows were killing characters off left and right for shock value (looking at you Lost), so getting rid of a main character in such a violent way was relatively unprecedented. I was so upset at the time, and I watched the episode again after reading the Entertainment Weekly retrospective to see if it was really as brutal as I remembered. It is, and I’m still not over it. Like, at all.
There are shows that go off the air and begin to age poorly almost immediately, so for an episode of television that aired in 2000 to hold up so well is quite an accomplishment. The other Entertainment Weekly piece was thankfully much more lighthearted and talked about shipping. Even though a lot of people wanted Lucy and Carter to get together, actor Noah Wyle put the kibosh on it because he had such a problem with the idea of Carter sleeping with a student. Looking at it objectively, that’s a good call. Emotionally, that kind of forbidden romantic tension is what great ships are made of and fans would have overlooked that ethical grey area. Not that it matters now, because Lucy died and Carter’s life was rife with some sort of suffering from pretty much that point on. The episode of ER where Lucy and Carter are stabbed is on my “I Will Never Be Over It” list, something I think most media junkies have. That thing that still upsets you just as much every time you think about it as it did when you first experienced it. I’m a grudge holder, so my list is quite extensive, but here are just a few more.
The cancellation of Pushing Daisies
This show was an unfortunate casualty of the 2007 Writer’s Guild Strike. Only a few episodes had completed scripts by the time the strike began, and as a result of that truncated first season Pushing Daisies was never really able to grab audiences. There are only 22 episodes of this wonderfully whimsical show, and I will be forever bitter that ABC has aired what feels like 800 seasons of The Bachelor but couldn’t stick with this unique show for a little while longer.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
I know that I complain about this a lot, but it’s only because it’s that high up on my list. I was iffy about the idea of a stage show for Harry Potter from the beginning, but I was willing to give it a chance. When spoilers for it started leaking, I was sure it was a joke, because the things I was reading could not be true. It turns out J.K. Rowling doesn’t care about what I want (rude) because it was all true. If I had a million guesses, I would have never imagined that “Bellatrix and Voldemort have a secret love child” would ever be an official part of Harry Potter canon.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. being sequel-less
I won’t wax poetic yet again about how much I love this movie, and will simply say that it’s fun, beautifully shot, and unique mix of several different movie genres. The screenwriter said he’d write another one, but that’s absolutely no guarantee that it will ever happen. The fact that Daddy’s Home 2 was made, but The Man from U.N.C.L.E. remains a standalone makes my eye twitch.
Will Turner becoming Captain of the Flying Dutchman in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
Remember the beautiful couple that you’ve been rooting for since the first movie? They just got married! Then five minutes later Will got stabbed in the chest and died while Elizabeth watched and became tied to a ghost ship for all eternity. (This one was actually rectified by the events of the fifth Pirates film, Dead Men Tell No Tales, but it still rankles.)
And it should go without saying that if Loki dies when Avengers: Infinity War is released in a few weeks, that will be rocketing to the top of the list.
