TV Review: ER Episode 12.06

Thursday, November 03, 2005

From NBC: Clemente (John Leguizamo), Abby (Maura Tierney) and Neela (Parminder Nagra) secretly care for a VIP patient while Dubenko (Leland Orser) tortures the staff via a robotic television camera from home. Sam (Linda Cardellini) is coerced into a management role and is given a dreadful task. Meanwhile, Pratt is visited by his half-brother, and emotions from the past remind him of his father’s (Danny Glover) abandonment. Goran Visnjic, Shane West and Kristen Johnston also star.

My Rating:

This week's episode was probably one of the most emotional episodes for me of this show in a very long time. I think I might have been crying the entire last ten minutes of the show, and it wasn't just one story line that brought on the tears, but two of them. They were really pulling at the heart strings this week.

This week's episode titled 'Dream House' with Clemente bringing in a special secret VIP patient into the ER that no one knows about. He enlists Abby to help, who then enlists Neela, and we discover we have an infant chimpanzee on our hands, and Clemente treats him. At first it appears the chimpanzee is okay, and he is returned home to his mother.

However, things quickly take a turn for the worse, and the chimpanzee is brought back to the hospital in even worse condition than before, and it seems there is no hope for the chimpanzee's survival. The carrier goes to retrieve its mother, and in a sad scene the mother watches as her infant dies. Afterwards, Abby expresses the emotions I know I was feeling myself.

We see human patients enter the ER on a daily basis, but one tiny chimpanzee's death brings emotion to this episode, and it is emotion I haven't felt with a patient in quite some time. Not even with the coma patient a few weeks ago was I this involved. I sat there and cried, and the crying only worsened with the next scene.

During this episode, Danny Glover returns in the role of Pratt's father, and we continue on with this story line. This week, we discover that there was more to this story than even Pratt knew about. His father had attempted to return to Pratt's life when he was a boy, but he was stopped by Pratt's mother. Not only that, but he even made an attempt after his mother died, but that was unsuccessful as well. At first, it appears this new information might heal the rift between father and son, but it quickly becomes apparent that it didn't. Pratt won't give in and forget all the time his father wasn't there for him. I shed more tears over this entire final scene.

This week we also were able to see Eve and Clemente both in the ER at the same time. These two together will be interesting. Although there is mention of interaction, there isn't much true on air time with the two together. Unless you count intercoms. Eve does find out about the chimpanzee, and there does end up being consequences, but that is about it.

Speaking of Eve, she once again laid down the law in this episode, and this time it caused us to see the departure of another one of the long term nurses on the cast. Eve bumps up Sam to management, and she wants Sam's first task to be the firing of her friend, but Sam won't have it. Eve points out she will be fired whether Sam does the firing or not, so they fire her together. Another sad scene here.

A sub - plot of this week's episode focused on Ray. A bit more of a story line for him. The last two weeks he had been stuck on a tox study, and now this week we found out the girl he picked up at one of his shows and has been wild chimpanzee sex with is only fourteen years old. Not only that, but she is also diagnosed with a sexually transmitted disease. I wonder how this will be handled in future episodes. Will this little transgression come back to bite Ray in the butt? We'll have to wait and see.

An even smaller sub plot had Dubenko in the ER via robot. An amusing event to say the least, but it doesn't last all that long once Clemente got involved. The robot was eventually locked away in a room.

The episode moved a bit slow in parts, but it was highly emotional, and I loved it. This is the ER that made me fall in love and keep all these years. The next two episodes look to be fast paced and amazing just from the previews shown. Also, it looks like we will have the reuniting of Luka and Abby. I'm a Carter and Abby person myself, but I always did like Abby and Luka together as well.