The ’90s were a very different kind of golden age in television than the one we’re in now. The depth and breadth of quality wasn’t nearly as great as it is today, but the best shows (Seinfeld, NYPD Blue, Frasier, Friends) were not only among the best ever made, but were often the highest-rated of their era. No show exemplified this brief but glorious convergence of quality and popularity more than ER, the NBC hospital drama that won Emmys and critical raves, and made huge stars out of George Clooney, Goran Visnjic, Julianna Margulies, and others, all while dominating the ratings with numbers that would make the producers of today’s biggest hits weep with envy.
Now a new generation can finally see what the middle-aged folks have been gushing about for years. As of this month, all 331 episodes of the Emmy-winning drama series ER are available to stream on Hulu. The beloved NBC drama has never been available to stream before, but as part of a new deal between Hulu and Warner Bros.
We can’t pinpoint why Thursday is the night for medical dramas, but we know it’s been that way since ER debuted in 1994. Long before Meredith Grey ever picked up a stethoscope on Grey's Anatomy or Shaun Murphy diagnosed his first case on The Good Doctor, TV audiences were treated to the dramatic ups and downs in the lives of County General Hospital's emergency room doctors on ER. With its hyper-realistic hospital setting, its hyper-complex narrative and especially its hyper-kinetic aesthetic, ER was the first show of its kind. In its mid-Nineties heyday, ER boasted weekly US audiences of 30 million. It was the world's most watched TV drama for 10 years. When the final season was broadcasted in the United States, it drew the largest audience for a drama since The X-Files finale in 2002. Today, even the most popular network shows struggle to reach 20 million.
ER evolved and changed as cast members came and left. A new wave of characters, in particular the pairing of Maura Tierney and Goran Visnjic as troubled lovers Nurse Abby Lockhart and Dr. Luka Kovac, rejuvenated the show and gave it life. In case you want to brighten up your winter weekend, take a little stroll down memory lane and fall in love with Dr. Luka and Nurse Abby all over again.
However, ER also used its prominent position to deal with ethical issues, from drug abuse to teenage pregnancy, and to show its vast audience the troubles afflicting the US healthcare system. County General was an urban hospital, dealing with social problems of the inner city, be they gang members with gunshot wounds or blue-collar workers injured on unsafe construction sites.
In order to maintain engagement with real-life healthcare issues throughout the 15 years that it run, and to ensure that the fictional doctors and nurses were consistently using up-to-date techniques, ER has a rotating trio of real doctors attached to the writing staff. In 1995, two of those medical consultants, won a writing Emmy for their episode "Love's Labor Lost". Jon Fong was one of the technical advisor on the TV Series ER who prepared Goran Visnjic for the role of Luka Kovac. Each episode of "ER" required one week of preparation in addition to one week of filming. Dr. Fong trained Goran Visnjic and the other actors how to perform medical procedures and discuss medical topics.
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