 Noah Wyle Saying goodbye to 'ER'After 15 seasons of blood, sweat and tears, NBC's medical drama is sewing it upApril 1, 2009, 08:00 PM ET
It's hardly news these days when a hospital emergency room shutters
its doors. But in the case of NBC's "ER" -- which departs primetime
with a two-hour finale tonight at 9 p.m. -- it's a very big deal.
This is, after all, the series that helped launch George Clooney
into the stratosphere, the hospital drama that proved -- even in
this age of rampant audience fragmentation and network erosion --
that a show can still keep viewers hooked for 15 seasons when the
average life of a show is closer to 15 minutes.
First, there's the story told by the numbers. Fewer than 25 scripted programs in primetime history have equaled the 332-episode total of "ER." It's also the longest-running medical drama ever. Just in terms of pure popularity, you have to go back to the 1960s and the glory days of "Bonanza" to find an NBC hour to match its performance.
"ER" is surely being accorded all of the respect one might anticipate considering its nearly unequaled stature in NBC's annals, replete with a 22-episode final season order and return cameo visits from its collection of famed alumni headed by Clooney and also including Noah Wyle (Dr. John Carter), Sherry Stringfield (Dr. Susan Lewis), Eriq La Salle (Dr. Peter Benton), Julianna Margulies (Nurse Carol Hathaway) and Laura Innes (Dr. Kerry Weaver). "We were determined to give the show a true celebratory final year," says Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. "It had been an easy call, really, to bring 'ER' back for Season 15 because it was still delivering for us, and after it had been cut short by the writers strike it just made sense to send it off right. It's going out as the No. 1 show at 10 o'clock." The series finale, preceded by a one-hour retrospective at 8 p.m., is expected to draw a crowd large enough to justify an ad rate hike to $425,000 per 30-second spot -- more than three times this season's going rate of $135,000. The plot of the finale, written by series creator/executive producer John Wells (who has carried the story line around in his head for a decade, since Clooney's departure in 1999), has been very hush-hush, including who may or may not be dropping by the trauma ward at County General Hospital.
The "ER" phenomenon started as a dusty, 20-year-old, 150-page screenplay that "Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton had written based on his own experiences as a medical resident in a busy ER, and only wound up at NBC somewhat by default, as Warren Littlefield remembers it. Littlefield, now an independent producer, was running NBC Entertainment in tandem with NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer back in 1993. Crichton was riding high on the mania wave surrounding the first "Jurassic" film, and this script, intended to be a feature, was suddenly pitched at NBC through CAA as an ensemble medical drama. "We were intrigued," Littlefield recalled, "but we were admittedly a bit spooked in attempting to go back into that territory a few years after 'St. Elsewhere,' one of the great dramas in the history of the medium, had left our air. Here we had this screenplay from a very hot author that was very long and dusty and all over the place. And yet at its core there was something quite remarkable about it. There were all of these heroic characters who were very flawed. There was a density to it that was dizzying, But it was memorable." By that time, Steven Spielberg also was onboard as a producer, and NBC greenlit "ER" as a two-hour movie. That wasn't good enough for CAA, which insisted on a six-episode order. "We told them, 'Good luck finding that,' " Littlefield says. "We finally came to an agreement after lots of twists and turns." "ER" premiered opposite a "Monday Night Football" game on ABC and did surprisingly well, Littlefield remembers. "Then we moved it to Thursday night and it just took off." This was the mid-1990s heyday of "Seinfeld" at NBC, and so Thursday night at 10 was seen as the choicest spot on television. "We were in the right place at the right time with the right cast," is how Wells sums it up. "A lot of things have to go just right for this kind of success to happen. There's an alchemy to these things when they work. You wind up looking like a genius, but the truth is you can never replicate it." "ER" brought to television an arresting visual style that felt fresh and invigorating, its trademark overlapping story lines feeling somehow compelling rather than overcrowded. It connected with audiences in a way no medical series previously had. Scheduled opposite CBS' "Chicago Hope," the David E. Kelley-produced medical show that was artsier and more character-based, "ER" blew it out of the water. "Our idea from the start was to be an emotional action show," recalls Christopher Chulack, who was an "ER" producer at the start and is riding the series' last wave as an executive producer. "The whole idea was to convey the pace of working in an actual ER. That, and studying the lives of the people who work in that emergency room and how this job impacted them."
Joe Sachs started out on "ER" halfway through its first season as a technical adviser and became a writer and producer on the show, putting to good use the film school training he received while simultaneously attending medical school. He can vouch for the show's commitment to medical accuracy from the start. "We'd bend the rules but never break them," he emphasizes. "A medication that would take 10 minutes to work might take 30 seconds instead. We compressed time. A 12- to 24-hour shift gets pushed into 48 minutes. But we learned that being accurate was important for more reasons than just making real and responsible drama." Sachs says he has files filled with stories from viewers whose lives were saved by something they saw on "ER." "When Dr. Mark Greene finds out the brain tumor that would kill him had returned, the first clue on the show came because his tongue was deviating to the right side of his mouth," Sachs explains. "Six months later, we get a letter from this young mother in Texas who discovered she had a brain tumor at age 28 because her tongue went out to the side. She went in and the cancer was caught early. She wrote, 'Because of Dr. Greene's death, I'm alive.' We have no words for how that made us feel." It's Sachs' contention that "there have been two heroes that made 'ER' so different: the hospital set at Warner Bros. and the steady cam that runs in and out of 10 different rooms and conveys the dizzying chaos of a true emergency facility."
"Having George at the start was obviously just amazing good fortune," Wells says. Perhaps equally fortuitous was the decision to keep Margulies around when the original plan had been to kill off her Nurse Hathaway in the series pilot. Margulies' chemistry with Clooney convinced the producers to change their minds, and she ended up winning an Emmy for her role. During a recent "ER" location shoot at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce building in downtown L.A., Wyle, Stringfield and Innes were gathered to shoot a scene that seemed a bit like a family reunion. "I'm grateful to have played a character who had such a wonderful evolution," says Wyle, who was 23 when "ER" premiered and is back for the final seven hours after his departure as a regular four years ago. "I came in as a bumbling, stumbling neophyte med student and along the way fell in love, got dumped and got stabbed by a psychotic patient. It's been quite a ride." Stringfield, who left the show on two different occasions, feels like "all of us on this show grew up together and formed lifetime bonds." A lot has happened to their characters along the way: There's been a smallpox scare, a shooting spree and several explosions; a man threatened the ER in a tank; and all manner of death and destruction have run rampant in the hospital corridors. A live episode in 1997 -- performed twice, once each for the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones -- drew significant buzz, as did cameos from a vast array of guest stars through the years including Alan Alda, Ed Asner, Rebecca De Mornay, Kirsten Dunst, Sally Field, Hal Holbrook, Ray Liotta, Bob Newhart, Cynthia Nixon, Stanley Tucci, Forrest Whitaker and James Woods. Tonight brings the most significant death, of course -- that of "ER" itself. But within a week comes rebirth as another series from executive producers Wells and Chulack, the new crime drama "Southland," premieres April 9 in the same Thursday 10 p.m. slot. So NBC won't be left bereft in the interim between "ER" and the premiere of Jay Leno's new primetime hour, which will claim the spot in the fall. A smooth transition is, in fact, why four additional "ER" episodes were tacked on to the original order. "NBC's really allowed us to finish this thing up right," Wells says, "so if it doesn't turn out the way we wanted it's our fault. We've been given every opportunity to go out at the top of our game." 
Saying goodbye to 'ER'After 15 seasons of blood, sweat and tears, NBC's medical drama is sewing it upApril 1, 2009, 08:00 PM ET
It's hardly news these days when a hospital emergency room shutters its doors. But in the case of NBC's "ER" -- which departs primetime with a two-hour finale tonight at 9 p.m. -- it's a very big deal. This is, after all, the series that helped launch George Clooney into the stratosphere, the hospital drama that proved -- even in this age of rampant audience fragmentation and network erosion -- that a show can still keep viewers hooked for 15 seasons when the average life of a show is closer to 15 minutes.
First, there's the story told by the numbers. Fewer than 25 scripted programs in primetime history have equaled the 332-episode total of "ER." It's also the longest-running medical drama ever. Just in terms of pure popularity, you have to go back to the 1960s and the glory days of "Bonanza" to find an NBC hour to match its performance.
"ER" is surely being accorded all of the respect one might anticipate considering its nearly unequaled stature in NBC's annals, replete with a 22-episode final season order and return cameo visits from its collection of famed alumni headed by Clooney and also including Noah Wyle (Dr. John Carter), Sherry Stringfield (Dr. Susan Lewis), Eriq La Salle (Dr. Peter Benton), Julianna Margulies (Nurse Carol Hathaway) and Laura Innes (Dr. Kerry Weaver). "We were determined to give the show a true celebratory final year," says Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. "It had been an easy call, really, to bring 'ER' back for Season 15 because it was still delivering for us, and after it had been cut short by the writers strike it just made sense to send it off right. It's going out as the No. 1 show at 10 o'clock." The series finale, preceded by a one-hour retrospective at 8 p.m., is expected to draw a crowd large enough to justify an ad rate hike to $425,000 per 30-second spot -- more than three times this season's going rate of $135,000. The plot of the finale, written by series creator/executive producer John Wells (who has carried the story line around in his head for a decade, since Clooney's departure in 1999), has been very hush-hush, including who may or may not be dropping by the trauma ward at County General Hospital.
The "ER" phenomenon started as a dusty, 20-year-old, 150-page screenplay that "Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton had written based on his own experiences as a medical resident in a busy ER, and only wound up at NBC somewhat by default, as Warren Littlefield remembers it. Littlefield, now an independent producer, was running NBC Entertainment in tandem with NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer back in 1993. Crichton was riding high on the mania wave surrounding the first "Jurassic" film, and this script, intended to be a feature, was suddenly pitched at NBC through CAA as an ensemble medical drama. "We were intrigued," Littlefield recalled, "but we were admittedly a bit spooked in attempting to go back into that territory a few years after 'St. Elsewhere,' one of the great dramas in the history of the medium, had left our air. Here we had this screenplay from a very hot author that was very long and dusty and all over the place. And yet at its core there was something quite remarkable about it. There were all of these heroic characters who were very flawed. There was a density to it that was dizzying, But it was memorable." By that time, Steven Spielberg also was onboard as a producer, and NBC greenlit "ER" as a two-hour movie. That wasn't good enough for CAA, which insisted on a six-episode order. "We told them, 'Good luck finding that,' " Littlefield says. "We finally came to an agreement after lots of twists and turns." "ER" premiered opposite a "Monday Night Football" game on ABC and did surprisingly well, Littlefield remembers. "Then we moved it to Thursday night and it just took off." This was the mid-1990s heyday of "Seinfeld" at NBC, and so Thursday night at 10 was seen as the choicest spot on television. "We were in the right place at the right time with the right cast," is how Wells sums it up. "A lot of things have to go just right for this kind of success to happen. There's an alchemy to these things when they work. You wind up looking like a genius, but the truth is you can never replicate it." "ER" brought to television an arresting visual style that felt fresh and invigorating, its trademark overlapping story lines feeling somehow compelling rather than overcrowded. It connected with audiences in a way no medical series previously had. Scheduled opposite CBS' "Chicago Hope," the David E. Kelley-produced medical show that was artsier and more character-based, "ER" blew it out of the water. "Our idea from the start was to be an emotional action show," recalls Christopher Chulack, who was an "ER" producer at the start and is riding the series' last wave as an executive producer. "The whole idea was to convey the pace of working in an actual ER. That, and studying the lives of the people who work in that emergency room and how this job impacted them."
Joe Sachs started out on "ER" halfway through its first season as a technical adviser and became a writer and producer on the show, putting to good use the film school training he received while simultaneously attending medical school. He can vouch for the show's commitment to medical accuracy from the start. "We'd bend the rules but never break them," he emphasizes. "A medication that would take 10 minutes to work might take 30 seconds instead. We compressed time. A 12- to 24-hour shift gets pushed into 48 minutes. But we learned that being accurate was important for more reasons than just making real and responsible drama." Sachs says he has files filled with stories from viewers whose lives were saved by something they saw on "ER." "When Dr. Mark Greene finds out the brain tumor that would kill him had returned, the first clue on the show came because his tongue was deviating to the right side of his mouth," Sachs explains. "Six months later, we get a letter from this young mother in Texas who discovered she had a brain tumor at age 28 because her tongue went out to the side. She went in and the cancer was caught early. She wrote, 'Because of Dr. Greene's death, I'm alive.' We have no words for how that made us feel." It's Sachs' contention that "there have been two heroes that made 'ER' so different: the hospital set at Warner Bros. and the steady cam that runs in and out of 10 different rooms and conveys the dizzying chaos of a true emergency facility."
"Having George at the start was obviously just amazing good fortune," Wells says. Perhaps equally fortuitous was the decision to keep Margulies around when the original plan had been to kill off her Nurse Hathaway in the series pilot. Margulies' chemistry with Clooney convinced the producers to change their minds, and she ended up winning an Emmy for her role. During a recent "ER" location shoot at the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce building in downtown L.A., Wyle, Stringfield and Innes were gathered to shoot a scene that seemed a bit like a family reunion. "I'm grateful to have played a character who had such a wonderful evolution," says Wyle, who was 23 when "ER" premiered and is back for the final seven hours after his departure as a regular four years ago. "I came in as a bumbling, stumbling neophyte med student and along the way fell in love, got dumped and got stabbed by a psychotic patient. It's been quite a ride." Stringfield, who left the show on two different occasions, feels like "all of us on this show grew up together and formed lifetime bonds." A lot has happened to their characters along the way: There's been a smallpox scare, a shooting spree and several explosions; a man threatened the ER in a tank; and all manner of death and destruction have run rampant in the hospital corridors. A live episode in 1997 -- performed twice, once each for the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones -- drew significant buzz, as did cameos from a vast array of guest stars through the years including Alan Alda, Ed Asner, Rebecca De Mornay, Kirsten Dunst, Sally Field, Hal Holbrook, Ray Liotta, Bob Newhart, Cynthia Nixon, Stanley Tucci, Forrest Whitaker and James Woods. Tonight brings the most significant death, of course -- that of "ER" itself. But within a week comes rebirth as another series from executive producers Wells and Chulack, the new crime drama "Southland," premieres April 9 in the same Thursday 10 p.m. slot. So NBC won't be left bereft in the interim between "ER" and the premiere of Jay Leno's new primetime hour, which will claim the spot in the fall. A smooth transition is, in fact, why four additional "ER" episodes were tacked on to the original order. "NBC's really allowed us to finish this thing up right," Wells says, "so if it doesn't turn out the way we wanted it's our fault. We've been given every opportunity to go out at the top of our game."
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