Hi friends, welcome to TV Tuesday. Today I’m back with season five of ER.

Alright we started the season with a new character alert; Lucy Knight she’s a third year medical student and you can tell she’s never done any practical work. This is how I would feel walking into a hospital if I had to start working there saving lives in the ER. She seems so utterly lost. She has a friend, Bernard, but we’ve hardly seen him.  

Damn, Carter’s beard this season, I’m loving it. He really doesn’t like the new intern because Knight gave the right answer and made him look bad… but that’s exactly what he used to do! Oh how the tables have turned. He’s like the old Benton!

And there it is, Anna. I was wondering how long it would take to figure out what happened with her. She has left to go back to Philadelphia to a pediatrics program back home. You can tell Carter is bitter about this, but is this going to shape his season… I don’t like mean, bitter Carter.

The surprise they pull on Jerry for his birthday is priceless; I love Jerry.  

Okay, I don’t blame Carter for being so crabby, although he’s moving out of that. I forgot that at the end of last season his family cut him off from the family money, or well he didn’t want it anymore, so now he’s taken a job at a university as an RA and he doesn’t get any sleep, poor guy.

Carter seems to be very taken by Lucy, he looks at her like a little sister it’s kinda cute. He’s really impressed by her skills… but guess who did the IV he’s so proud of… Carol.

You’d think that Lucy would set the record straight about her IV technique, nope she’s still faking it so Carol is pissed at her. I don’t blame her at all. Well nothing like an ER emergency to tell everyone she doesn’t know how to start an IV.   

So now it’s Mark’s turn to do a paramedic run. It seems every character at one point is going to be doing ride-alongs.

Oh no, Benton’s son Reece is having hearing problems and it’s not looking good. No, it doesn’t look good at all because they find out that he’s deaf. Benton is having the hardest time coming to terms with that.

So we find out that Romano terminated Elizabeth’s fellowship and so she has to leave, but she’s back… and thinking of starting her schooling all over again and becoming an intern.

Oh Doug. He’s already putting his foot in his mouth, getting mad at a parent when he jumped to conclusions. He’s already being watching for what he did last season.  

I don’t think Elizabeth realized how hard her new internship was going to be. “Interns wear short coats” that’s such a weird line, and I’ve never heard that, maybe this third year is just trying to pull Elizabeth’s leg.

I like this introduction to the Internet. It’s hilarious because Lucy is so into using it, while all the other doctors are so unsure of it.

Carol hires this nurse for her clinic, Lynette Lewis, but she’s working in the ER now, I don’t know why, but her methods are a little unethical, and she’s very judge-y. I do not like her much.

Ugh, the conversation Doug and Carol have about having kids, or I should say the one they don’t have. Carol is late and so Doug is worried, and you’d think that after she found out she wasn’t pregnant they would talk about it, but nah. I used to love how open they are, so I’m not liking the non-verbal communicating.

After a horrible Halloween debacle in the dorms that leads to a fire, this gets Carter fired from his RA job… welp, that is really shitty as that was his only mode of income. Of course Lucy is at the centre of the cause; what is with this girl?

Carter’s having a hard time with her. Not everyone is a teacher naturally, so I’m not sure he is. Not that I think Benton was any better, and I think Carter picked up those habits because he thinks he knows better than Lucy, he wants to do everything for fear of her messing up. Carter could be so much better than this, but he is coming up so bitter this season.

So Benton sees his son being a deaf as having a defect and that it’s really bad, and he needs it to be fixed. I understand he wants to help his son the best he can, but he has to be open to teaching son how to be deaf too.

THE BEARD IS GONE. I’m not sure how I feel about it. After Carter gets stuck to a patient he has to shave it off. I am glad he didn’t leave some sort of goatee.

Now that he’s no longer the RA at the college, he needs a new place to live. He finds an apartment that belongs to Weaver. Oh my. This could get interesting. Oh, very interesting, haha.

So Weaver is told, by Mark, that they are looking wider for a new chief of emergency which pretty much means she’s not getting the position, so she decides she’s no longer going to be interim chief. You can see how much happier she is, and how stressed Anspaugh is.

Damn, Elizabeth is being worked to the bone, she’s walking in a daze, snapping at people, man I feel bad for her. I thought she was going to pass out not almost kill a patient!

I didn’t realize Carol was trying to get pregnant… I do hope Doug is on board with this.

Is Carter’s girlfriend jealous of Lucy? He talks about her all the time because they can’t seem to get along, I never thought they would go down this route, but I don’t really want to see him and Lucy get together.

The two of them do end up going on a witch hunt to find this guy who ran away. They have this little girl come in with a strange immunity and only the exact blood match will help her, and her father, the guy they’re looking for, is the only one who can help.  Those two are trying to find the guy, while back in the hospital they find a match, and they are so ready to operate only to find out that the blood could be contaminated and they don’t want to risk that transfusion. They do end up operating and trying very hard to not have to do a transfusion.

So not only does Carter dislocate his shoulder, but his Jeep burns to the ground. My god, what they put those two through, is this going to make them like each other?

In the end they do find the father, but who knows if it will be too late, all they know is that they did all they could do, and they fought the good fight.

They end up hiring someone for the chief position, Amanda Lee, I can tell Mark likes her… possibly a little bit too much, and I can’t read if Weaver likes her or not.

I like Elizabeth’s speech at her M&M about how doctors stay awake for hours on end and that doesn’t benefit patients at all. She had been awake for 36 hours, working, when she made her mistake so I believe her thoughts are valid.

I like how passionate Carol is about everything, she gets mad at a woman who may or may not abort her baby, then when an 8-year-old kills his friend because he didn’t do right by their bet, and how the kid doesn’t feel remorse, and she can’t figure out why he did it. I think this all stems from her wanting to be a parent because she’s worried about being a bad parent, and avoiding raising a bad child. I’m glad Doug is on board with having a baby, and I like how calm he is about it all.

Look at Lucy learning from Carter. When Carter can’t talk a mother into donating her son’s organs to a girl who came in with the same rare blood type, it’s Lucy that introduces the two families, sneaky, sneaky, just like Carter would do.

Holy crap can we hate Romano any more than we do? He goes to some function and gets mad at Benton for starting surgery without an attending (meaning him) and when Benton does step away they find out he’s completely drunk and should not operate. So what does Benton do? Pushes him out of the way, knocking him flat to the ground. Romano has the audacity to try to get Benton fired, my god!

OH MY GOD! JERRY WAS RIGHT! Jerry finds it suspicious that Lee is obsessive towards Mark, stealing things from his locker. No one else sees it but him, but then at the end of the Christmas episode we see her cut out Mark’s face from a photo she took and hang it next to a cut out of her face, like she’s planning to manipulate him to like her. Yikes! We haven’t had a plot like this yet!

Carol picks up on how weird Amanda is. Then well shit really hits the fan, Mark is starting to look up her articles she’s claimed to write since she seems to know a lot of things. Mark can only find an A.W. Lee, who is an Asian man. Mark wants her to get the recognition she deserves and she freaks… it takes her a little but to break down, but she does, claiming she’s never loved another man like him, and that he doesn’t deserve her love. Wow.

Oh my god, Lee’s not a real doctor, and she’s pretended to be one more than once and a lawyer too. My god.

Oh, aw, Lucy is going out with an intern, Dale and now Carter is jealous, haha.

We’re learning things about Weaver we never knew now that Carter has started living with her. She likes to listen to music really loud, she like smoothies and she’s adopted and potentially looking for her birth mother. Interesting. I’m liking this duo. Carter and Weaver are good for each other.

When Benton learns the sign for father and teaches it to Reese, and Reese signs it back, ahhhhh so cute!

Hmm, is Doug administering drugs when he shouldn’t? Oh no. Mark is so pissed when he finds out. Doug broke protocol for the clinical studies by giving this kid medicine when he doesn’t fit the studies requirements. Doug, I guess, thought he was doing a good thing, but the way Mark, Weaver and Carol see it, it wasn’t ethical and quite frankly illegal. The hospital could lose the funding on the study if word got out. My gosh, why does Doug put himself in these situations? I get that he cares so much for his patients; he doesn’t really care much for authority though. 

Carol is really having a hard time with, Lewis the new nurse she hired for the clinic. Carol tells her that she has to include everyone in her studies, not just one race. This whole plot is a hot mess because I know Carol wants to do what’s best for everyone, while this other nurse only cares about black people it seems. There’s nothing wrong with caring about them, but as Carol pointed out the Hispanic population need help too. This new nurse is just not very inclusive.

Jeanie has all these men after her this season. First a cop, now a plastic surgeon, my, my.

Interesting, Maggie, who hasn’t really had a plot for some seasons, is having a hard time with the asshole Romano. She brings up Elizabeth’s name and it seems Elizabeth just wants to shrugs it off. Another interesting plot that I’m wondering if it will develop more.

Wow sweetness. Lucy has her first day as a surgical med student, and she gets to work with Benton. My goodness what a softy he has become. Things go wrong with a patient, and she gets upset about it, and Benton is there telling her it’ll be alright, like wow.

So now Romano is blackmailing Elizabeth, saying if she goes forward with her accusations he’ll out she and Benton, and that could get Benton fired. So she backs out. Well, this pisses Maggie off. Maggie is so mad that Romano is just going to get away with it.

Now Romano has wormed his way into the ER as interim chief… GOD NO! I get that Anspaugh is under a lot of pressure, but ughhhh.

Doug has a tough choice to make. He has a patient with a degenerate disorder, ALD (Adrenoleukodystrophy) he’s just a boy and as much as Doug has given him all he can do with drugs, the mother can’t take it anymore because he’s not going to get better. Now she’s pretty much begging him to help with assisted suicide. Oh man.

Then the father just shows up out of nowhere, he’s never shown up for the past few episodes, but now he wants the doctors to save his son. They can’t, I have a feeling Doug did up the dosage of his meds so he would pass on. Now the father is looking into opening an investigation on the death of his son. He thinks Doug murdered his son. Yikes.

Oh no, so the machine that Doug got from Carol’s clinic wasn’t administered for him to use, this could get really bad. They are closing Carol’s clinic; man shit is hitting the fan. Anspaugh is so disappointed in Mark and Weaver from trying to keep Doug’s misgivings a secret.

There’s this big snow storm on top of this, a school bus has had an accident so Mark is going out with the ambulance, Doug wants to come, but Mark forbids it. So what does Doug do? Oh he gets in the car and goes himself. Jeanie goes with him because she seems to be the only one who cares what Doug is going through, I have a feeling this has to do with her time with Scott, Anspuaugh’s son.

Well they get out there and crash.

And while all of this is going on, Carter and Lucy have sex after she kicks him in the chest by accident. I understand the need for comic relief, but I really didn’t want them to get together.

Anspaugh reconsiders closing Carol’s clinic. He’s willing to keep it open, but she can’t be the one running it anymore. The price you gotta pay sometimes. At least they still get to keep it open. Now Carol wants Lewis running it, but she doesn’t want to, I wonder who will take over the clinic.

So I knew that Doug was going to be okay, but Jeanie has been seriously hurt. No, not Jeanie! So it turns out that she has a concussion, but she should be fine. Doug wants to help, but wow Weaver really yells at him to tell him to leave.

Doug really takes that to heart because he tells Carol he’s thinking off resigning (which I already knew because I read the back of the DVD case *sigh*), he wants to go to Seattle. Now Carol has no idea how to process this. Were those goodbye kisses he gave Carol? She doesn’t want to go with him, she wants him to stay, but I don’t think he is.

Was that really Clooney’s last episode? It felt like such a season finale the way he kissed Carol goodbye, and then said goodbye to Mark. I’m not ready to let him go 😦 Well, his name is out of the main credits so he’s officially gone 😦

Wow, what an episode. I love episodes that take place outside of the hospital. Benton is asked to go to this small rural town in Mississippi and woah, what a culture shock. They barely have any technology and the white people are super racist. In his second day Benton decides he can’t do it and wants to leave. On his way out of town he finds an accident on the side of the road that he can’t help but stay and help. This changes his mind and he stays for the two weeks.

This is a whole side of Benton, he cares about his patients and he’s just overall sweet. You can tell this is all out of his comfort zone, but he adapts pretty well.

Seeing him smile and talk about his son is the sweetest thing.  

He gets attached to this one little girl, he misses diagnosing her heart murmur and he’s mad about it, but not the way he normally is. He’s just really sorry, in the end he brings her and her grandmother back to Chicago for surgery to fix it.

My god, Jeanie, she now has Hepatitis C, I feel so bad for her. First being HIV positive, now this. I hope she’s going to get better.

Carter is now doing a ride-along, and well that goes horribly. There’s a big scuffle at the scene, he ends up driving the ambulance, which he shouldn’t be doing, and he hits a person. My gosh. Well, that leads to retaliation and the family and friends of the guy he hits opens fire at the ambulance, obviously aiming for Carter, but they get another paramedic, who ends up dying. Carter feels absolutely terrible because he knows that it was meant for him. This job is seriously a scary job; you truly don’t know what is going to happen.

Carol is truly missing Doug, but these headaches that Mark is so worried about, is actually worrying me, I can’t see another cast member go so soon! Wait, is Carol for real? Is she truly pregnant? What are the chances? They wanted to have a baby, he leaves and now she is, my gosh.

So Weaver finds her birth mother after searching for year, or so she thinks. She finds this old woman who is on her death bed and Weaver is sad that she doesn’t get more time. It’s sad, but Weaver has to test her blood once she’s admitted to the hospital and that’s when she realizes that that woman is not her mother. Gosh, I feel so bad that she’s spent years and she still can’t find her.

It’s interesting how full circle Mark’s PTSD plot has come. He sees a new janitor who looks like he needs help, his back is sore. All Mark wants to do is help him, but what he doesn’t realize is he needs a lot more help than Mark can give him. He has PTSD from abuse back in Nigeria, and while Mark can fix the physical pain, he can’t fix the emotional. Then there is the man’s wife who was also abused, sexually, when she finds out she can be intimate with her husband for the first time, she tries to kill herself, but her husband wants to take the blame. He can be deported, but the court needs to prove that he truly has PTSD, but he can’t remember what happened. It takes Mark opening up about his trauma, for the man to start opening up and remembering.

Who would have thought Mark would have made it to this point? Mark was so filled with hate, that it seems crazy he’s finally using it for good. It’s so good to see Mark in this position; what a character arc.    

Carol is very on the fence about keeping her baby, since Doug’s no longer around, but in the end she decides she’s going to keep it! Oh I’m so happy for her, she deserves this after everything she’s been through.

Elizabeth has been having a rough time of it. She really wants the trauma fellowship, but now Benton has signed up and shown interest, and when Romano finds out, well we know he’s going to make it a living hell for both of them. On top of that she was supposed to speak at a conference, but that doesn’t turn out. Everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. Mark helps her get there, but they get locked in a room and miss the conference. They end up at a wedding doing the tango instead, it was cute.

I like that Mark and Elizabeth have been hanging out and become friends, they are funny together, obviously in a good way.

In the end, Benton gets the fellowship, the fellowship that she proposed to Weaver. That truly sucks. I don’t get why Romano was so keen to keep Benton, he didn’t seem to like him very much… or maybe he’s jealous of Benton, I have no idea Romano’s game.

Carol finally tells Doug, but Doug isn’t going to be coming back for her. She tells him not to, but she thought he would anyways. It almost seems out of character for Doug not to come because he’s so involved in children’s lives, that it’s weird he doesn’t want to be a part of his own child’s life. I get that it probably has to do with George Clooney not being on the show any longer, but it would still be nice to see him every once in a while. 

The season ends with Carol finding out she’s having twins, oh damn! When the nurses find out, of course they don’t say anything, they all just smile at her. But the big surprise at the end when they finally tell her they know as so heartwarming.

Waver finds a little boy wandering the streets. Turns out this little guy was kidnapped by the nanny, my gosh. Seeing both Weaver and Carol attend to him was adorable. 

We found out a few episodes ago that Lucy has been on Riddel since she was a kid. Carter tells her she needs to get off it, so she goes cold turkey off the meds and she’s a bouncing lunatic. Something is going to happen, other than making a fool of herself.  

Well hot damn, when Anspaugh gives Romano a big piece of his mind and I am all for it.

Benton finds out that Reece’s mother got remarried and is planning to move to Germany for her new husband’s job… and they’re taking Reece with him. I feel so sad for him because Benton really, really loves his son.

Oh no, I think Benton is going about this the wrong way, he’s pretty much kidnapping his son.

And that’s how we end the season, can’t wait for the next one!