Recap / ERS 1 E 15 Feb 595

Season 1, Episode 15:

Feb. 5, '95

We're in the women's restroom!

Carter is jostled around as an ambulance swerves through traffic, while Mark nonchalantly scarfs down a sandwich. He explains to Carter that they're heading to the site of a crash involving a small twin-engine plane that crashed into a vehicle on the freeway, and a victim has been trapped inside the vehicle for an hour. As they arrive, they get to work intubating the patient so that she can be extricated from the wreckage and placed onto a gurney. Both men work together to intubate the patient, and afterwards, Mark asks if he's picked out a specialty field to pursue yet. Carter tells him that while his parents are interested in him pursuing cardiology, he admits that he's having a lot of fun in his current role working in the ER. The patient is wheeled into a helicopter, and due to space, Mark rides back on the copter while Carter takes the ambulance back to County.

Back at County, Carter arrives to find Benton in a surly mood and Deb asking him if he's finished a presentation they're supposed to be working on for their internship. When Benton overhears this, he tells Deb she can switch to a different field, like dermatology, if the pace of the ER is too much for her, and "punishes" her by telling her to insert a catheter into a patient. Meanwhile, a patient named Jonathan is wheeled in complaining of a numb arm after he collapsed while playing basketball, and Susan and Mark treat him. While Mark thinks Jonathan may be having a pulmonary embolism, he gets into friction with Susan over a course of treatment, but agrees to go along with her plan to run additional tests on him before they commit to a course of treatment. Soon after, Mark's concerns are proven correct regarding the embolism, and Jonathan is whisked to surgery, where Mark removes the embolism with Morgenstern's guidance (and Carter and Deb staying behind to watch). Afterwards, Morgenstern congratulates Mark and tells him he's so impressed by his work that he could be the Attending Physician at County in the near future.

Carol visits a "Mr. Conally", who has been brought in to the hospital complaining about bad headaches — and has an unnatural fixation with claiming that he's dead and that no one can see him, hiding under the sheets. Soon after, she and Doug diagnose a teenager named Harold who was bitten by a viper he owned. Harold then reveals that he not only brought the snake with him to the hospital, but it's now gone missing from the bag it was in. Doug calls for Animal Control and the staff begins a search for the missing viper, while Carol unveils a surprise to Carter and the nurses — new "crash carts" she ordered for the ER, which have all the supplies needed in an emergency situation. She also mentions offhandedly that the cardiology unit wanted them before she's distracted when Benton gets two other patients that need his attention...

As Mark treats an elderly woman named Grace, suffering from cancer of the lymph nodes, who asks Mark to let her die, the overworked and distracted Benton is pestered by Carter and Deb about their respective presentations. Benton also makes the mistake of antagonizing Haleh, via criticizing the notes she took for a patient. The next time Benton sees her, she tells him that she's "no longer comfortable" with taking notes, and forces him to do it himself. When Grace's condition gets worse and she asks to have a fatal dose of morphine, Mark goes to Susan to ask how she would proceed with treatment, but runs into friction due to their prior argument — and how he stonewalled her during the Vennerbeck case.

A 12 year-old patient named "Yummy Jackson" is wheeled in with gunshot wounds, and it quickly becomes apparent to Benton, Lydia and Carter that the boy was involved in a gangland shooting — given that he was Dual Wielding weapons when the paramedics found him. Despite their efforts, Yummy succumbs to his wounds as they try to work on him. At the same time, another child involved in the gunfight walks into the E.R., and when stopped and questioned by Bob as he tries to go into the trauma rooms, he pulls a gun on her. Disquieted, the staff only watch as the child walks through the ward, gun drawn, until he arrives at the trauma room, where a shocked Benton tells him Yummy is already dead. After a few tense moments pointing the gun at Benton, the child turns around and runs out of the hospital, leaving the shocked doctors in his wake.

Later on that morning, Benton oversees a group of presentations prepared by the medical interns. Carter delivers a (mercifully) brief presentation about a hand fracture, while Chen pulls out all the steps for her presentation, showcasing a multimedia presentation that includes a 3D-rendered skull as she discusses a skull fracture. Carter (and Benton) are shocked when they see how much effort she's put in. Elsewhere, Carol and Lydia work to resuscitate a hockey referee who suffered a heart problem and collapsed on the ice. When Carol goes to get the crash carts, however, she discovers that the "old" ones have gone missing, just an hour after she last saw them.

Upstairs in the hospital's Risk Management Division, Doug visits Diane and chats about Jake, finding out from her that she has an ex-husband who pays him child support. Despite his charming demeanor, she makes it clear that she doesn't particularly like him, but agrees to let him play basketball with Jake from time to time...

In the ER, Deb and Carter are having an argument about each of them trying to impress Carter when the subject turns to Carter's quest for a surgical internship at County. Deb blurts out that "her mother's residents'" (her mother being Chief of Surgery at a neighboring hospital) are known to her, and that Carter doesn't seem like the type of guy who would go for surgery. Carter realizes that Deb already has the connections to get a residency at another hospital, and asks why she's even bothering going through the internship process. However, his attention is diverted when he locates Harold's missing viper.

While Mark continues to watch over Grace's fading condition, Carol, Doug, Bob, Carter, Connie and Lydia enact an Escort Mission to retrieve the missing crash carts from the hospital's Cardiology Ward. Carol asks Connie and Bob to stay with the "new" carts, which they've brought up, while the rest of the group retrieve the old ones. On their way to a storage room where the original carts are located, the group is forced to hide in the ladies' washroom, barely avoiding being detected by a woman using the restroom due to stuffing into a stall and holding on to the sides to pretend only one person is inside. Afterwards, Bob and Connie bring the new carts and make the switch — but on the way out, they are impeded by a clerk manning the front counter. While still hidden, Doug distracts the clerk's attention by wooing her, while the rest of the group makes it to the elevator with the original carts, and Carol commenting on Doug's Instant Seduction skills.

Later that evening, Susan happens upon Mark staring out the window at snow, and he remarks that Grace died a couple minutes earlier from respiratory failure — all while the hockey team who came in along with the coach (who is recovering from his heart condition) played outside, blissfully unaware. Despite a stilted moment between them, Mark tells her he has to go back home because Jennifer and Rachel are back in town. As Benton is leaving for the evening, he also tries to convince Carol to reschedule Haleh's shifts because he doesn't want to work alongside her, but she refuses, noting that nurses, not doctors, make the ER run smoothly — and that he, a second-year resident, has no room to talk. Benton is left momentarily stunned as Carol leaves for the night...

Mark arrives home to find Jen cooking dinner for him, but when he reveals that Morgenstern offered him the Attending position, she becomes indignant, saying she's sacrificed too much over the years, including her new clerk job, to sacrifice even more time because Mark wants to stay in Chicago. Mark is left unsure of how to respond as she storms back into the kitchen.

On the other side of the city, Benton arrives at his mother's home to find Jeanie, who complains about the long shift and his lateness. Despite that, she displays a strong understanding of his mother's needs, prompting him to ask if she can help her. Jeanie affirms that she can probably help Mae's mobility, and then admits that his mother never stops talking about him, before she leaves for the night. The episode ends with Benton sighing and starting to wash dishes in his sink.

Tropes:

• Action Prologue: The episode begins with Mark and Carter rushing to the scene of a crash and rescuing a woman from the crumpled vehicle as gas leaks on them.
• Affectionate Nickname: "Petey", Mae's nickname for Benton, as discussed by him and Jeanie.
• Aside Glance: After Mark pulls a Bait-and-Switch with one of the medics who can't hear him onboard the helicopter in the opening ("I want to have sex with your wife!"), the female medic has this reaction.
• As You Know: In the opening sequence, Mark explains the situation and the steps they'll have to take to stabilize the patient, for Carter's (and the audience's) benefit.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Benton makes the mistake of harassing Haleh regarding her method of note-taking, which leads to it biting him in the back when she summarily refuses to listen to him and tells him to take his own notes. When Benton complains to Carol about it, she tells him he shouldn't have questioned Haleh to begin with, as the nurses are the "true" lifeblood that keep operations functioning normally when doctors aren't always present.
• Bookends: The first scene after the opening credits, and the second-last scene of the episode, show Carol visiting Mr. Conally, who keeps telling her that he's dead.
• Break the Haughty: After an episode of being treated as the Butt-Monkey by Haleh, Benton is forced to begrudgingly accept that nurses, not doctors, have the run of the ER, particularly after Carol makes it clear that both she and Haleh have much more seniority over him (a second-year resident) and that she will not reassign a woman who has been involved in emergency medicine for 20 years and has four kids to feed.
• Brick Joke:
  • The missing viper shows up several scenes after it was said to have gone missing, with Carter running across it in one of the exam rooms and losing his train of thought.
  • After the missing crash carts are recovered, another scene passes before Bob is shown spray-painting a "Property of ER" sign on their sides.
• Call-Back: Mark runs into tension with Susan, not only over a disagreement between a course of treatment during the opening sequence, but also because Susan hasn't completely forgiven him for how he micromanaged her due to the Vennerbeck case two episodes prior.
• The Cameo: Bobcat Goldthwait as "Mr. Conally", who (unusually) is credited as having appeared in the episode, but he never shows his face on-camera — he is only seen during the Bookends under a sheet, speaking to Carol at the beginning and end of her day.
• The Casanova: A rare instance of being plot-relevant, as Doug is forced to woo a member of the Cardiology Unit so that the rest of the Escort Mission group can escape with the original crash carts.
  Carol: Dunphy's there!
  Doug: Sherry Dunphy? (Beat) Not a problem.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Mr. Conally, a patient who's been wheeled in suffering from constant headaches — and has an unnatural fixation with claiming that he's dead.
• Dangerous Workplace: The episode clearly dates itself to a time before hospitals had any sort of security measures, as a child is allowed to waltz in and out of the ER unimpeded with the intent of killing a child patient, complete with pulling a gun on the doctors and threatening them.
• A Death in the Limelight: Grace, whose condition is so severe (terminal cancer) that she begs Mark to help her die via morphine overdose. It's implied that Mark does this while she's sleeping in order to spare her any further pain, but it's never confirmed either way.
• Death of a Child: A named child gang member (Yummy) is wheeled into the ER with serious injuries, and dies moments later after he bleeds out. When a rival child gang member arrives to finish the job, Benton tells him he's too late — "Yummy" is already dead.
• Death Seeker: Grace all-but-instructs Mark to let her die, given that her cancer is ravaging her body and traditional treatment (morphine) isn't helping.
• Drives Like Crazy: The ambulance ride Carter and Mark take to the crash site on the freeway has them bouncing around as the car swerves to avoid obstacles. While Carter can barely hold on, Mark enjoys the ride and eats breakfast:
  Carter: They (the ambulance drivers) ever hit anybody?
  Mark: All the time.
• Escort Mission: Carol, Doug, Lydia, Carter, Connie and Bob enact one to rescue the original crash carts from the cardiology staff, who took them for their own use.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Like the pilot episode, Carter is shown wearing an expensive tailored piece of clothing (his coat), and when it gets stained by gasoline (possibly ruining it) in the opening sequence, he nonchalantly brushes off Mark's comments — another hint to the fact that he may not be too concerned with money...
  • Deb tells Carter that she doesn't think he's cut out for surgery, a plot point which will become extremely relevant during the third season.
  • Jen tells Mark that she was delayed in traffic while driving back from Milwaukee, which will prove to be a decisive move just a few episodes from now...
• Go-Getter Girl: Deb is shown to have completely overprepared for the fracture presentation, befitting her status as The Rival, creating reference materials, slides and even a multimedia presentation — whereas the other students have only prepared slides and brief remarks.
• Headbutting Heroes: Susan and Mark run into a brief bout of friction over the latter not taking the former's concerns seriously regarding Jonathan's treatment.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: It is implied (but not directly stated) that Mark gave Grace a fatal dose of morphine after she requested her own death, knowing that traditional treatments were no longer an option.
• Innocuously Important Episode: For what is otherwise a lighthearted episode that deals with a handful of small-scale situations, the episode both introduces Paramedic Joseph Pardo (who will become a recurring character through the show's entire 15-year run), but also sets up a key bit of Foreshadowing that will influence Carter's decision in the third-season finale, "One More for the Road."
• Instant Seduction: Discussed by Carol, who mentions to the crew that Doug's nature as The Casanova led to both of them ending up sleeping together within minutes of getting back to his place on their first date.
  Carol: He rang the doorbell. Next thing I knew, we were on the kitchen floor.
• It's All About Me: Jennifer Greene holds this attitude, turning the conversation about Mark's potential job offer as Attending into complaining about her own needs. That being said, she does point out that she's the only one who kept both her and Mark afloat as he went through medical school, via the income she earned as a paralegal.
  Jennifer: Now, I want it to be about me for a change, not you.
• Jerkass Has a Point: While she makes their conversation about her (as stated above), Jen also tells Mark that she helped keep both of them afloat through his time in medical school via her work as a paralegal, and points out that he's now trying to pursue his own career without thinking of her needs.
• Karma Houdini: The child gang member who shows up to the ER wielding a gun is allowed to escape and is never apprehended, despite a police presence being a particular constant in episodes both before and after this, and no one on the staff is ever shown filing a report over the matter.
• Married to the Job: Discussed, yet again, by Mark and Jen, when the latter tells him he can't see things from her side after he tells her that Morgenstern wants to make him an Attending physician.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Discussed. Deb blabs to Carter that her mother is the Chief of Surgery at another hospital — making her pursuit of an internship at County, and particularly her status as The Rival, meaningless, as she already has the connections to get a placement at at the other site.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: It's implied that Mark gave Grace a fatal shot of morphine to help die peacefully, after her worsening condition began to cause him concern.
• Searching the Stalls: Briefly, when a member of the Cardiology Unit searches them after the Escort Mission group runs into it to hide. After the staffer leaves, the door opens, revealing Carter, Doug and Lydia all holding onto the sides of the stall/sitting on Carol's lap to make it look like only one person was inside.
• Shipper on Deck: It is suggested that Jeanie is interested in Peter, as she brings up how much his mother talks about him (and their Commonality Connection) when they meet at the end of her first shift. As noted in the following episode, Peter uses this information in an attempt to romance her.
• Ship Tease: Despite making it clear that their relationship is "professional, not personal," Mark and Susan share a stilted moment between each other in the wake of Grace's death where she asks if he wants to get something to eat — and he refuses, noting that his wife and daughter are back in town.
• Special Guest: Bobcat Goldthwait as Mr. Conally, the patient who isn't sure if he's alive or dead.
• Spotting the Thread: Deb points out that, based on her own observations of the surgical residents at the hospital where her mother works (as Chief of Surgery), Carter doesn't seem like the type of person who would do well in the field. Two-and-a-half seasons on, Carter will come to a similar conclusion.
• Tempting Fate: Benton makes the mistake of trying to browbeat Haleh, essentially the Big Good of the nurses, and gets punished for it when she refuses to take notes for him when he asks her later in the episode.
• Title by Year: This is the only episode of the series to identify the exact date and year (February 5, 1995) the plot is taking place on.
• Toilet Humor: Jeanie tells Benton that he "should have warned her" about Mae's incontinence, leading him to act sheepish regarding the subject and saying it's just a "sometimes thing". In response, she says, "(Tonight), it wasn't."
• Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: This episode presents one of the biggest cases in the series to date, as the doctors are left stunned and unable to do anything when a child wielding a handgun strolls into the ER, points it in their direction and goes hunting for the victim (Yummy) who was just wheeled in with wounds, fully intent on executing him.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Morgenstern congratulates Mark on Jonathan's successful surgery to remove the embolism, and tells him that if he continues, he will make the Attending position in the near future...
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The status of the other patients is affirmed by the end of the episode... except the woman rescued from the crashed car in the Action Prologue, who simply disappears once Mark travels with her via copter back to County.
• You Do Not Want To Know: Malik is shown wheeling a woman dressed in an comical Viking costume, stuck in a wheelchair and looking dazed, past the front desk. When Mark looks at her, Malik comments, "Don't even ask."

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