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

Season seven starts kinda where we left six with Carter going to rehab.

I’m not sure how many months went by, possibly just the summer as it’s September now- why does he always have weird facial hair at the start? The goatee was a horrible look for him. I’m glad he shaved it. So he has to be part of this program for 90 days, and it looks like he does it, but when he returns he just walks away from the hospital as if to not return. I can’t continue if I don’t have Carter!

Abby is having some issues, she’s going through a divorce and there was money that was supposed to be used to pay for med school that didn’t get paid so now she has to defer until the next semester, that royally sucks, but she’s going after her husband so this could get interesting.

Then Chen, we learn is pregnant, but she hasn’t told anyone. Now I’m curious who the father is.

The way this season starts with a huge football fight was intense, but I like intense starts. I’m hoping for a good season.

Ah nah, Carter is coming back. He’s gotta get cleared but he’s coming back. He meets Abby in his AA meeting. Apparently she’s five months clean and so Carter then asks if he would be her sponsor. I think that would be sweet.

I forgot that Abby worked in the maternity ward as a nurse before the ER so we’ll still see her.

Oh. M. Gee! So Elizabeth is complaining about Mark’s apartment so he goes house shopping and finds this beautiful house. When he shows Elizabeth he’s so fixated on the fridge and I was like what the heck, then I went is he going to propose with the fridge? lol and behold she opens the fridge and there is a ring inside. Ahhhh I’m so happy for them. A little bit of a strange proposal, definitely original!

Oh my god! I thought Dave’s hair was bad with the highlights, god he dyed his whole head beach blond, ugh!

It’s Carter’s first day back and he’s pretty much not allowed to do anything. He can see minor patients but if they need anything, he really can’t do it.

They get this big trauma come in and this has everyone doing things they aren’t really comfortable with.

Then we have Abby who is now being brought down to the ER by Weaver so she can still gain experience while still only doing nurse things… that is until she starts doing surgical things and that’s it.

To top off it all off she ends up kissing Kovac, ha! There has been some weird fling thing going on with them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got together.

Romano gets hit with a fine and the consequences are Benton being fired. Damn! Just when he became an attending.

I like that he decides to spend time with his son. They are so cute!

Now Benton is looking for a job anywhere. Somehow Elizabeth pulls some strings and gets him this surgical attending  job in Philadelphia. This is going to really affect all his relationships namely his girlfriend and the one with his son.

Hmm, he’s not going to take the Philadelphia job it looks. Instead he’s going to Romano for a position. I hate that he has to grovel for a job by a guy who’s a racist asshole.

So Abby and Kovac go on a date. I have to say they are so awkward, but on their way home they get attacked by a mugger. I forgot about Kovac‘s anger issues from the war, and he just goes to town on this guy. Shit, technically Kovac killed the guy. I still don’t understand how he can be a doctor with his anger issues.

Carter is allowed to have two trauma patients at a time, slowly moving up. Just when he thinks everything is going, his patient gets shot at while he’s in the room, my god. He takes some time off and his grandmother thinks he should leave the ER, start his own practice. I understand this, it makes sense, but I don’t want to lose Carter.

Benton is now an ER attending and dear lord he can’t run an ER save his life. He has a hard time making decisions, or well he doesn’t want to.

Apparently he and Cleo broke up because he didn’t discuss moving to Philadelphia with her and when he stayed it wasn’t really for her, it was for his son because if he left the state he wouldn’t have custody of his son.

Kovac doesn’t show up for his shift because he’s so obsessed with the man he killed. I get that he’s upset and torn up about it, but it seems he wants to destroy his own life now.

Geez poor Carter. Just when he thinks he’s okay, he has a patient who has never been told they are HIV positive Carter has to break the news; the patient tells his girlfriend and when she finds out she’s positive as well it drives him to run out… unfortunately he gets hit by a bus and dies. Carter seriously can’t win!

Benton has a black patient who asks if she can have a white doctor because she feels more comfortable with a white doctor. I love his response, since she’d already been waiting 3 hours he goes sure you’ll just have to wait another 3 hours. Her expression is priceless!

We learn that Abby’s mom is bipolar and she’s come to he hospital in search of Abby, but Abby wants nothing to do with her. I get that Abby doesn’t want to deal with her mom after all the years she’s had to put up with it, but I also don’t blame her mother because it can’t be easy to have to deal with being bipolar.

The way Sally Field plays bipolar is so good, it’s definitely an amazing performance.

Well her mother doesn’t leave and it’s a good thing. There’s an explosion at the hospital and Abby gets blasted. She’s okay, but you can see the two of them need each other like they’ve never needed one another before.

WHY IS THIS SEASON SO SAD?!?!

Benton’s nephew gets shot and Benton tries so desperately to save him but unfortunately he doesn’t make it. SO. FREAKIN. SAD.

I have a feeling some big shit is about to hit the fan with Elizabeth and her spinal patient who leaks spinal fluid after she operated on him while knowing she had to leave early. Romano already accused her of choosing a quicker procedure to get out of work faster.

Yep, Elizabeth gets served for malpractice.

But she has bigger things to deal with. She finds outs she’s pregnant and Mark on the other hand finds out he has a massive tumour. AGAIN WITH THE SADNESS. I really like how they shot it. They made it out like they’d both been drugged. Although the moment she threw up I had a feeling she was pregnant.

After all this time I’ve been on edge who Chen’s baby daddy is and it’s this guy we’ve never seen before, but it makes sense now. It’s a black man to prove that her parents are racist about the father of the baby being black.

Then there’s Weaver who goes on a date, but she doesn’t realize it’s a date with one of the psych doctor’s who is gay. She thinks that Weaver was sending her messages, but now Weaver is unsure. Is ER dipping into bisexuality in 2000? How forward thinking.

Mark finds out this his tumour is inoperable and of untreated he has 6 weeks, treated, possibly 6 months.

I don’t blame him for getting snippy with Carter, but then he has a seizure that freaks Carter out. I’m surprised he told Carter. Watching him tell Elizabeth was gut wrenching, especially knowing they are going to have a baby.

Abby and her mother are getting along, until they aren’t. Her mother is accused of stealing and jumping through a window. After she’s cleaned up she takes off. Abby claims that’s the way it is. I can’t even begin to imagine the pain of that on both their ends. Again, Sally Field did a remarkable job with the character.

Now Benton is helping his dead nephew’s girlfriend, the one that got him shot and killed, to see if he can get any closer to finding the killer. But he’s somehow got attached to her, keeping her at Cleo’s house. Cleo knows the girl is using Benton but Benton is kinda blind to it.

Elizabeth has her trial for malpractice and she lies saying she did check, when she didn’t fully follow procedure.

Chen has her baby, I love how she calls Carter to help her through the birth; he’s so good with her I love it. Seeing her give birth and then everything she has to deal with giving her son up for adoption. It’s hard.

The fact that she found a couple where the woman is Asian and the man is black, the same as her and the baby’s father is pretty incredible.

No, no, no, no! Carter takes some sort of pill for his headache, is this going to come back to bite him? Oh shit it was Vicodin. Well, he throws them up still whole, I don’t know how he did that. Abby tells him he needs to go to a meeting and he should tell Weaver, but every time he goes to, something gets in the way. He’s also stalling because he knows it could change things.

When he does tell Weaver, this leads to Abby backing out of being his sponsor so this kinda guilts him into telling Weaver. No idea what she’s going to do yet.

Mark finds out that his tumour might not be so inoperable and he’s going into surgery to have it removed. That’s happy news.

So he goes into his surgery on New Year’s Eve of all days. Of course there are complications, it wouldn’t feel realistic is there weren’t. I like how they portray how scared Mark is, especially with him befriending a little boy who is just as scared to show the contrast between the two and how no matter what age you are, you get scared.

We find out the results to Elizabeth’s malpractice lawsuit, it ends in faulty equipment, how convenient? I have a feeling her lawyer did something so the patient can’t actually sue her personally. Elizabeth got off pretty good.

Now she doesn’t trust herself in surgery, and she just walks out as soon as Romano joins her claiming she can’t do it. Yikes.

Why does Kovac always get these kinds of patients? A drunk hit and run comes in, after trying to save the family, Kovac ends up helping the drunk, against his will so he makes it painful. Of course he does because he’s such an angry person.

Peter has too much going on with the girl, Tanisha. Why hasn’t he seen that she’s just using him. It isn’t until she calls in the middle of the night, he picks her up and she thinks she’s gotta seduce him to stay so he now has to call in child services. Then Tanisha goes and trashes Cleo’s place since Peter and her aren’t living together, and that’s really the end. Cleo almost breaks up with Peter again, but he has this whole speech about being not being there for her and the he says he loves her. I don’t know, I don’t feel the chemistry there between them, they don’t really work for me.

But, speaking of chemistry Weaver and her psychiatrist friend, Kim have chemistry. After an awkward kiss that leads to a lot of tension, and Kim saying she can’t just be friends with Weaver, Weaver spends a lot of time thinking about it and I think she wants to be with Kim romantically. This makes sense to me.

The two are together, but Weaver is still second guessing everything. I don’t know what is happening with her character but she is definitely spiralling.

Speaking of spiralling, Elizabeth is having a hard time being a surgeon after everything that went down.

Mark is back to work, that seems rather fast, but he seems really quick to the whip and just telling people how it is in the most crass way ever. It’s totally not like him. Weaver tells him to take some time off but he’s not having that, so now she has to go behind his back. Yikes.

Carter is back to square one where he can’t administer drugs to patients now, but at least he still has a job.

Benton gets forced into being the spokes person for black people in the medical field, all thanks to Romano.

So we know that Kovac has a messy past but it really shines through when he has to heal a bishop and religion plays a part. We learn that he used to be religious but lost god when his family was killed, now with the bishop this opens up old wounds, but it also looks like it heals him too. This was a good character arc because not only so we get to learn more, but he grows too.

So they do an evaluation on Mark and both he and Elizabeth are furious. Seeing Elizabeth as emotional as she is is kinda hard to watch knowing that she was this very strong, well put together character. She has been through a lot and this is yet another great character arc.

Speaking of character arcs, Weaver is definitely going on one. She really cares about Kim and you can tell, but she’s definitely not comfortable with being a lesbian and she says as much. I think I have feeling they not be together for much longer.

We really are getting a lot of Kovac this season. The bishop is very close to dying and Kovac finally tells him the reason behind not believing anymore, he prayed someone would help him but no one came so he lost his belief. It’s when the bishop finally relieves him of that pain, then he dies. Very symbolic and done really well. I enjoyed that.

There’s this major train derailment and while out on the scene Elizabeth starts having contractions after falling, that leaves Carter out in the field having to amputate a guy’s legs off. He’s on the phone with Benton the whole time since he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and Benton has this med student following him around because he’s so determined this kid will be the next med student they bring on. Instead this kid is so terrified that he’s out, and Benton thinks he’s just playing; I don’t think so, his face says it all.

Back to Elizabeth for a second, they were able to stop the contractions and it looks like she’s going to be okay.

Mark gets the results back from his incompetence tests… he rips up the results and says he passed, but I have a strong feeling that he didn’t pass. I’m waiting for someone to pick up the ripped pieces and put it together and find out that he lied.

Weaver is such a, I don’t know what to call her, homophobe. Kim tells a patient she’s gay and now that patient is claiming she sexually assaulted her. Now Weaver has to also testify and she’s so frazzled by it all. It’s a good plot to focus on the harsh realities of being gay in the late 90s early 00s. It’s so real and raw and they do it so well because you feel all the emotions with these characters.

So Abby loses a baby, literally. Her patient, a 4 month old baby goes missing and she goes into this frantic mode. Why do I suspect that there’s an underlying arc here?

Mark and Elizabeth finally get married. Of course everything goes wrong, it’s pouring rain, everything is closed, but in the end they do get married and it’s sweet. Not too long after they have their baby, a baby girl named Ella.

Abby’s mother is back, or well Abby has to go all the way to Oklahoma to go get her. Carter goes with her, this upsets first, Kovac and second Carter’s girlfriend Rena. If I’m being honest Carter was a good choice for her to bring, he is very level headed and calm, whereas Kovac would have probably lost it and gotten frustrated. They are completely different people.

Well her mother overdosed just as they reach Chicago and now she left fighting for her life. She pulls through, again, but of course this stirs up Abby’s emotions.

Even while this is all going on, there’s still this animosity between Carter and Kovac, ugh.

Now Abby’s mother has to go to court to see whether she should be hospitalized or not. Abby is all for it, but after everything the court decides that she doesn’t need to be hospitalized and that it’s just Abby not wanting to take care of her mother. Wow. That’s so harsh, but at the same time a huge reality. Her mother does sign herself into a program, and just when Abby thinks she can possibly get her life back, her mother ends up at her house.

Okay, so I really want a backstory on Dave. Everyone hates him, but I want to believe that there is a reason for the way he is. Yes, he does say a lot of stupid shit, sexist shit, but he also seems to have this softer side that we tap into just a the surface level and we’ve never dived deeper, which I could love to do.

Now the hospital is looking to hire someone for chief resident, Carter doesn’t qualify because of his drug abuse last year, and Chen doesn’t either because she went on maternity leave and so she’s behind on her hours. Geez. I wonder who they’ll end up getting. Now Carter is considering leaving. No!

So it’s officially over with Kim and Weaver. I find it interesting that she’s confiding in Kovac, but I’m glad she’s admitting it.

So is Peter’s baby momma trying to get back with him? But while that is happening, Cleo is with Reese and he breaks his hand on the piano and so now there is this huge thing between Cleo and Carla.

Ah, now we get it. So I knew something was up with Abby and the whole baby scene, so turns out she was pregnant before, but she had an abortion because she was afraid of it becoming bipolar, which I get, that would mean she’d have to look after someone all over again. But her mother was actually very smart about it and had some wise advice, you’re not living if you don’t take the risks.

Her mother is doing so much better and she’s going to therapy. It’s so good to se her getting along with her mother, warms my heart.

The season ends in chaos. There’s a mass shooter, a man that Mark has to take away his son because he was abusing him. Now that his son is in the foster system, the man shoots up a foster care centre and continues from there.

So now Romano wants to get rid of Kim because he thinks she’s incompetent but we all know it’s because he’s predacious against gays, so Weaver threatens to be fired and then

OH DAMN! Weaver admits to Romano that she’s a lesbian, oh damn! Finally she admits it, and what a moment to do it!

Wow, I honestly didn’t see that coming. Carter tells Abby to stop talking about kovac because he doesn’t want to be her girlfriend, or her friend for that matter. How did I not see he had feelings for her? I see him acting the same with with jing May a good friend. I don’t like where that went.

Then Peter gets punched in the face by Carla’s husband, I have no idea what is happening there.

WAIT WHAT?! The season literally ends on Mark killing the guy by shocking him. And then it justends. How can it just end like that?!

Now I need to see the next season.