luka kovac

(S14E19) Now, let the speculation begin!

Did you really think that ER would end its fourteenth season with everything all honky-dory at County General? You haven't watched it recently, have you? Fact is, the season-ender for the last few years has been some sort of cliffhanger. Last season the fate of Neela was unknown. The year before it was Abby and Luka. A few years before that the fates of Pratt and Jing-Mei were undecided.

Now we have two (or three, or four) characters to consider as potential victims. But, who will be the lucky -- or in this case, unlucky -- one who will end up as a patient in their very own Emergency Room when season 15 of ER begins? Let's take a look at the candidates. Oh, by the way, spoilers ahead if you didn't watch the last three minutes of the episode.

(S14E16) Before I begin this week's review of ER, I want to speak for a moment about the ambulance bay at County General. The place should be considered an Extreme Danger Zone and permanently closed. Over the last fourteen seasons it has been the location of car accidents, tank accidents, explosions, falling helicopters, and now a gas fire. The gas fire was courtesy of a patient who came in from an ambulance drenched in gasoline and was started by a careless smoker. By the way, smoking should be banned from the ambulance bay as well.

If you review some of the ER records you'll find that a good portion of the patients were actually injured in the ambulance bay itself. That doesn't bode well for the hospital. So, I say close it down, make it a nice little park area, and have the patients brought in through an underground parking garage. At least no helicopters will crush them should they fall off the roof of the hospital.

With that out of the way, let's get going with this week's review.

(S14E14) Welcome back!

We haven't seen each other for awhile -- January 17th, to be exact -- so I thought I'd bring you up to speed about what's happening on ER. Apparently, all of the main characters that started on the show are gone and have been replaced by a younger, more horny group of doctors and nurses who tend to whine a lot. Oh, there's also blood, burns, life, death, sadness, joy, naked doctors, doctors having shock treatments, alcoholic doctors who have had extra-marital affairs, blah, blah, blah.

I kid, of course (except for the horny part). If you've read any of my reviews over the last two years you'd know that I'm pretty pleased with the way the show has re-energized itself with new characters and a focus back into the happenings of the emergency room. True, there are some things that still annoy me, like the never-ending curse over Abby Lockhart, but they can be managed because there are other good things about the show.

So, I guess the only question right now is if I enjoyed this week's episode. Well, read on to find out.

(S14E12) "Were you ever drunk at work?"-- Sam to Abby

Good evening, and thank you for flying TV Squad. We know you have many choices in which television reviews you read, and we appreciate your clickage. Our regularly scheduled attendant Rich Keller is unavailable this evening, so I will be serving up complimentary opinions and maybe even a little snark. Truthiness is $5. We appreciate correct change. So, sit right back and let's get started.

(S14E10) "If we keep this thing cranking, we could hit 300. That's quite a milestone." -- Dr. Archie Morris

So, 300 episodes.

No clip show, no big fanfare, no super-humongo guest star (even though Peter Fonda is fairly big). Other than the promos mentioning that it was ER's 300th episode there really wasn't much differing it from episode 159, episode 52, or episode 1.

There were still patients that made us cry a little, doctors that made us laugh, and continuing dramas that, hopefully, came to an end so we didn't end up reaching into the screen and strangling the person causing all of the drama in the first place because she had a chip on her shoulder the size of Mt. Rushmore! Ahem. Like I said...business as usual at County General.

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(S14E09)

After only a handful of episodes, Kevin Moretti has left as ER chief at County General. But, boy, what an active handful of episodes it was! Not only did he turn the ER upside-down to make if more efficient, but he ended up bedding Abby as well. His reason for leaving was the way his son was acting: the boy was having some incredible mood swings that were causing concern for Moretti.

I hope this doesn't mean we've seen the last of Kevin on ER. Frankly, the issues with his son were beginning to intrigue me as well as other viewers and I'd like to see some type of closure. However, with ER being the king of hanging story threads I wouldn't be surprised if we never saw Stanley Tucci on the show again.

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(S14E08) "David Beckham is a wanker!" -- Archie Morris

The producers of ER certainly didn't go halvsies with the quick decline of Abby Lockhart. Getting drunk, sleeping with her new boss, leaving the baby sitter at her house until three a.m., taking Joe to the airport at the same time in the morning to see Luka in Croatia. Heck, I'm surprised that she didn't rob a liquor store with a sawed-off or, God forbid, run for political office.

Luckily, the calming influence of one Luka Kovac has returned to Chicago to get the demons that control Abby back into submission.

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(S14E07) "All this wasted energy is seriously inflating my carbon footprint!"-- Archie Morris

Welcome to Green Week on NBC. If you watched the whole NBC lineup tonight, you have noticed that they all have to work in some kind of environmental theme. My name is Jen, and I'll be our cruise director this evening, because Rich Keller is off saving polar bears in the Antarctic.

The ER is experiencing a heat wave and brownouts, which brings everyone to the ER with heatstroke and stupid injuries as they try to fix their air conditioning at home.

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(S14E05) Let's start this week's review of ER with a few introductions and welcomes.

First, we welcome Harold Zelinsky to the recurring character list of ER. Harold is Neela's new surgical intern and he is a bit of a mystery. He says he's twenty-five but the ER staff at County General isn't convinced. Only a pissed-off Abby can find out how old he really is, which is nineteen. This child prodigy began college when he was only twelve after getting a perfect score on his SATs. If that isn't a ringing endorsement of home-schooling I don't know what is.

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Yeah, you read it right. This will be season 14 of NBC's ER, and probably its last. There were rumors that the show would be renewed for another two years, but they never came to fruition.

Last season brought a number of changes to the Emergency Room over at County General. We were introduced to John Stamos as Tony Gates and Busy Philips as Hope Bobeck and said good-bye to Laura Innes as she left the series and her role as Kerry Weaver. By the end of the season we saw Luka Kovac leave his role as ER chief to be replaced by the more intense Dr. Kevin Moretti (played by Stanley Tucci), Ray Barnett lose both legs to a car accident, and Neela (our favorite object of attention) being trampled upon during a peace rally gone bad

Want to know what will happen to your favorite docs during the (supposed) last season of ER? Well, you can find out after the jump. Oh, by the way . . . .SPOILER WARNING!!!! You have been duly alerted.

(S13E22) And now, please welcome Stanley Tucci to the cast of ER. As we reported to you back in March, Tucci was cast as Dr. Kevin Moretti, an ICU clinical director who becomes the new ER chief of staff after Luka Kovac decides to step down (due to the fact that Goran Visnjic , who portrays Kovac, is leaving the show). Moretti officially takes over the ER next week. In this week's episode we get to meet the man and find out a little about him.

Let's analyze Kevin Moretti for a bit, shall we?

(S13E20) Lights out. A-ha. Blast, blast, blast!

Oh, hello there. Didn't see you come in. I must admit you caught me singing. See, the title of this week's ER reminded me of Lights Out, the Peter Wolf song from the early 1980's. That, of course, reminds me of Wolf's former band,the J. Geils Band, which reminds me of their song Centerfold, which reminds me of MTV. That reminds me of how sucky MTV has become.

But, we're not here to talk about the glory days of a music-video channel. We're here to talk about this week's episode, which was another good one. Really, this has been a solid season for this classic medical drama. If they decided to pull the plug on the show at the end of this season I would feel quite satisfied that they left on an up note. Luckily, we have at least one more season of the show to enjoy before it goes to the Eternal Land of Syndication. In the meantime, let's talk about what went on this time around.

(S13E19) Even after 13 seasons and 285 (!) episodes ER can still get to me once in awhile. There will be that one storyline, that one character, that will just hit a raw spot with me and generate a overwhelming feeling of sadness of sympathy. This week's episode had one of those story lines.

It involved a son, who never took care of himself and was dying of heart failure, and his father, who was well into his bout with Alzheimer's Disease. As the episode progressed the son died with the father there to watch. His reaction to his son's death was a bit heart-wrenching to watch. Maybe it's because I have a young son of my own and I would never want to be in a situation where I watch him die before my very eyes.

(S13E18) Now, where were we? I think the last time we visited County General Dr. Carter was just returning to the emergency room after a near-fatal stabbing from a patient, while Carol Hathaway was fighting growing feelings for new doc Luka Kovac. Meanwhile, Dr. Greene was dealing with his father, who was dying of terminal cancer.

What? Those things happened seven seasons ago? Well, its just been so long since we've seen a new episode of ER that I just plum forgot what happened on the last new episode (even though I wrote a review on it and could've gone back to re-read it. I'm so silly!). Good news here is that ER is back with all new episodes for the rest of the season, which will probably culminate somewhere along the way with the marriage of Kovac and Abby Lockhart. In the meantime there's plenty of story to tell.

So, let's stop jibber-jabbering and get on with it.

(S13E15 / S13E16) Since I was away last Thursday and ER wasn't covered I decided to review both this and the previous week's shows. And, as there's much to cover let's get started right away.

If you were to sum up last week's episode I would have to say it was all about living life and taking chances. There were two main stories: one about a comedian whose chance at stardom is shot down by cancer, and another about Greg Pratt's survival as a doctor while appearing before the medical board. The comedian's plight really got to me, more than the usual patient that comes into the Emergency Room. Here was a guy who struggled to get to Chicago, home to some of the best comedy clubs in the nation, only to get side-tracked by a life-ending illness. I thought about myself when I watched that. Here I am, husband, father of four, TV Squad poster extraordinaire, currently embarking on an Improv career that will one day, hopefully, get me out of my little cubicle world. Like that patient my world could be turned upside-down just like that (insert snapping finger noise here).

What surprised me the most about this story line was the reactions of the doctors that treated him. Abby, who has been known to stay the course when making a diagnosis, was trying everything to get her patient to the comedy club. Archie Morris, who you would think would be propping the guy up on a stretcher to get him to the gig, was extremely conservative to the point that he was actually at odds with Abby's decision. I was a bit shocked at Morris' reaction . . . our little red-headed boy is growing up right before our eyes.