A Fond Farewell

George Clooney's politics aside, I have to say I will miss ER. I have been a faithful viewer from the beginning to the end. It's weekly audience shrank to 9 million viewers, but I was still one of the faithful.

I loved the fast paced drama of the series. What I didn't know about the drama was what the Mercury News reported today.

Written in the mid-1970s by the late Michael Crichton as a film script about his days as a medical student, "ER" almost didn't make it to the screen, even though Steven Spielberg was an executive producer.

"Every network passed on it, twice," longtime producer John Wells said recently in The New York Times. "It had all these characters and medical dialogue, and they found it utterly impossible to follow."

NBC reluctantly agreed to make a pilot, but even then, there was some hesitation to put it on the air. (Some top NBC executives still thought the cast was too big and the stories too confusing.) And when it did get a spot, it was opposite a new medical drama — "Chicago Hope"

Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Part and State of Fear. I read State of Fear which was a great novel against the paranoia of global warming.

I enjoyed watching characters come and go. I had my favorites like everyone else. I enjoyed Sally Field, who has always been a favorite actress of mine, play the bi-polar (reader Wyczenski-Lockhart Expert corrected me as to the medical condition she had) mother of Maura Tierney (Abby Lockhart.) I was excited when Kellie Martin of "Life Goes On" joined the cast as Lucy Night because I had been a fan of "Life Goes On." I became emotionally involved in the episode where she died in the ER after she and Noah Wiley were stabbed in an isolated room during a Valentine's party.

But like everything else, "This too must end." I for one will miss it.