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

This season starts right where the last one ended off – Sam’s ex-boyfriend, Steve, has shot up the ER and now he’s kidnapped her and Alex. He keeps thinking that the fact that’s kidnapped them, they’ll be a family now. This guy is delusional. Sam tries at every turn to get help, but there’s no success. When Steve’s two friends who he has brought along don’t do as he says, he shoots them dead. He then proceeds to rape Sam, “we’re a family babe” and when he’s fallen asleep shoots him before she drives away. I honestly didn’t see that coming; I didn’t think Sam had it in her to shoot him, but here we are. Her son, Alex, sees the whole thing and you can tell he’s not really happy about it because he still cares about his dad, even if the guy is awful.

Back at the ER, Jerry has to go in for surgery, it’s a long one, and he almost doesn’t make it; Neela’s expertise saves him, and he’ll be making a full recovery.

Kovač is found and he’ll be okay, and they find Abby who’s pregnant and not doing well. As much as she doesn’t want to have the baby, she has no choice but to have C-section. The baby has complications and then to top it off, Abby has complications with her uterus, it won’t stop bleeding so she has to have a hysterectomy to have it removed. Now her baby has to live because he’s the only one she’ll ever have that is hers.

Abby’s mom even comes to stay and watch over little baby Joe. I love how caring and fierce her mother is. We’re so used to how flighty she can be and her crazy episodes, but she’s been doing really well and when Joe is released from the hospital all healthy she says it’s time for her to leave and gosh when she doesn’t want her mom to go… wow they’ve come so far, I love it.

Like with any new season, we’ve got some fresh meat and a brand new round of interns. We get two new memorable ones: Hope, played by Busy Phillipps, I love that her, and Tony Gates played by John Stamos.

Now Gates was introduced last season as a paramedic, and that’s how he started off this season. He was an arrogant thinks he knows everything, does nothing by the books kind of guy… so when he shows up as an ER intern… WELL. Ugh he irritates me so much, I can’t stand his character. So, not only is he Mr. Know It All, he’s messing around with Neela.

Pratt, who is now an attending, has to supervise the new interns and he can’t stand Gates, like at all. It’s really funny to watch because when Pratt was an intern he did the exact same thing – he thought he knew better than his attendings and went and did things without permission. All I can say is, karma is a bitch, Pratt. More on Pratt after we finish unpacking Gates.

It took almost 10 episodes to figure out his situation. We can clearly see he has a thing for Neela, but then he goes home and oh, people are at home waiting for him… wife and kid perhaps? So, little by little we find out that it’s not his kid, and not his wife, or his girlfriend BUT his buddy’s wife and kid. We find out his friend went to war (not clear if he passed – god is that going to be a bonding thing for Neela and Gates, UGH) but we do know that his friend said if anything happened to him to take of his family… and so Gates stuck to that.

When the wife (Meg?) finds out about Neela, she flips and gets really mad at Gates because she expects him to be there for her forever… but he’s all like it was never going to be permanent. Neela tries to break away from him… but she’s not doing a good job.

And then there’s Ray… oh Ray, you had your chance man. He even tried to warn Neela about him, especially since her husband who just died at war hasn’t even been dead a year. So he goes out with a surgical intern, Katie… who then becomes a ER intern. I think Neela wants to get together with Ray, after that ship has sailed (which was a ship I would have totally sunk for) and tries to tell him it’s not a good idea to date the intern… UHM okay, says the one dating the intern? Even Ray says, you can’t have it both ways, very true, very true.

So Neela is now out of the ER and is in the OR as part of the surgical team and her boss is a real piece of work. He’s always belittling everyone, claiming they aren’t capable of what they’re supposed to and he feels he needs to “deal with everyone and their problems.” I actually really like when Morris stood up to him. Morris has been surprising me this season.

He starts the season, same old Morris, class clown who was trying to sell different methods to doctors, even though they were bogus methods. He begs and pleads for his job back and ends up becoming an attending, woof. But like I say, he’s been better this season. He makes a correct diagnosis on a patient even though no one would listen to – I actually felt bad for him. He’s also trying to get with the new intern Hope, which in the beginning I would have said, not in a million years, but now I’m not so sure. She actually asks him out and Morris says no – who is this Morris? I do like how good of friends they become, Morris is really shaping out to be a good doctor, who would have thought?

Back to Hope for a second, so when we first meet her she’s so nervous about doing anything and she’d rather get patients life stories, rather than their medical histories. She’s also heavily religious, which really brings a new dynamic to the ER. But as time goes on, she’s really becoming a good student, more confident in herself.

Back to Pratt now, so aside from having to deal with Gates, his younger half-brother wants to move in with him. He’s reluctant at first, but he caves. When he catches his brother with another man, he kicks him out. When his brother claims it’s just a phase, this makes Pratt happy… I am really disappointed in Pratt, I really thought he was better than that. He even talks to Kerry about it because he feels he needs to talk to another gay person about it. Kerry says that she thinks he’s probably gay and telling Pratt what he wants to hear.

Speaking of Kerry, she’s been through quite a bit. She gets demoted from Chief of Staff and is back in the ER as an attending. They wanted to fire Kovač because of the crap Clemente pulled. Kerry took the fall because she knew that there were complaints from the ER about Clemente. Aside from her ER gig, she’s also become a local news TV personale reporting on different pieces of medical advice.

I also have to say, the way she found love with her producer is so cute! Their meet cute was adorable and I’m so glad to see Kerry finding love.

And speaking about Kovač, he’s been having a bit of a season too. After everything with Abby and the baby, he now has a lawsuit against him. A patient who came in with a cough and congestion, left without the use of his arm and poor eyesight in one eye, which caused him to lose his job, his family and his house, so he’s suing Kovač for patient negligence.

Kovač is worried, but he ends up winning the case. Now he’s seeing the guy, Curtis everywhere. He doesn’t want to tell Abby because he doesn’t want her to worry, but he eventually tells her and she’s pissed because she thought they were past the part of not telling each other things. I get that. But then he says he’s “taken care” of it, more like he went to Curtis’ place of work and gave him a shakedown. *rolls eyes*.

See, Kovač thought that would end things, but instead it escalates things and Curtis shows up at their house, takes Kovač for a drive, holds him hostage on a roof to try and get him to feel the pain he feels… only for Curtis to in the end kill himself.

This scares Abby and when she sees he’s okay, she wants to get married.

It’s right around this time that Abby meets a guy in a bar who isn’t healthy… turns out to be her father. Interesting. I have a strong feeling he’s going to make a return.

We get a new character mid-season, Ben, he’s a new nurse who Sam gets along with. You can feel that tension and I was happy when they did get together for a bit, but her son, Alex is having issues and Ben understands that Alex comes first, so he takes a job somewhere else… hello and goodbye Ben.

Alex is really having a hard time, he’s stealing, lashing out, hitting people, and he starts a fire in their apartment. At first it was on purpose, but when it accidently spreads, yikes. Sam has no choice but to send him away to a behavioural school. She is so torn up about it, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Pratt has not been having a good season. He ends up getting arrested for giving drugs to a clinic that is part of the church without a pharmacy license. He gets suspended and a few hours in jail. He ends up being released and a hearing in which they aren’t going to charge him or take away his license, but he gets suspended and has to complete community service hours. The lawyers think he should spend his time coming up with a legal way for the church to give medication to those who can’t afford insurance.

I was really excited when his brother Chaz shows up again. Pratt wanted to make up because he knows they didn’t leave on good terms. Chaz tells him he wants to get a part time job as a paramedic and it’s Tony of all people who hooks him up and gets him in. Maybe Tony isn’t so bad?

Tony has had a rough season too. I don’t know what he and Neela are, but he tries to break it off with Meg, but she ODs and kills herself when he leaves. This leaves Sarah with no one. Meg lets slip before she dies that Sarah is Tony’s, but they do a paternity test and find out she’s not. Sarah is a smart girl, and she’s upset with her mom, and she’s trying to do everything right because you can tell she wants to stay with Tony… I hope she can stay with him even if he’s not her biological father.

I get forget to mention that Kerry has left the building… literally. I wasn’t expecting her to leave, but when she got a job offer in Miami for a local news station to be a health reporter and Kovač had to cut costs it started to seem like a no-brainer. At first Kerry was upset with Kovač for even suggesting it because she fought to keep Kovač, but she ended up making the decision to leave. I’ll miss her.

DID THEY REALLY JUST KILL OFF RAY ON THE NIGHT OF ABBY & LUCA’S WEDDING, ER HOW COULD YOU? It was such a beautiful episode. Luca pretty much springs a wedding on Abby, with the help of Hope and Morris (who finally get together and they are SUPER cute) – at first Abby is NOT about it, but then she caves when she sees how much work and thought Luca put into it.

Now we all know weddings can be, people hook up, fights happen, well what would a wedding episode be without that? So Tony tries to talk to Neela, but Neela is getting tired of him so they more or less ‘break up’. Then we have Ray who is in love with Neela (I was happy when he finally kissed her) and he hates the way Tony treats Neela and he says as much and this starts an all-out brawl between the two. I also have to add that Daminko (who I really like as a surgeon) kisses Neela, then the new surgical intern kisses her too … everyone loves Neela. When Neela finally decides she wants to be with Ray, he’s piss drunk, probably on his way home when he drops his phone, goes to pick it up and gets hit by a freakin’ truck!!!! I’m mad if he dies.

Well, I’m glad to see that they didn’t kill Ray off, but he did loose both of his lower legs. Neela feels horrible, but in the end he goes to live with his mom. Bye-bye Ray, I’m sad to see him go, but at least they didn’t kill him off.

The season ends on a bang… literally, but I’ll get there. First, even before the wedding, the ER is being shut down and Kovač steps down as Chief… actually he quits his job completely from the hospital. Now he’s gone to Croatia to be with his sick father.

So, to replace him we have Stanley Tucci! His character name is Kevin Moretti and he first joins the ER as an observer as he’s Chief of the ICU, but then decides to take Kovač’s job after what he sees because he thinks the ER needs a different kind of management – the type where they use fear to make them better doctors… we shall see where that goes. The coming season is going to be very interesting.

Tony gets the ok to become Sarah’s legal guardian… until her grandparents make a big deal of it and order the court to take custody of her. Sarah is devastated and doesn’t want to go, so now Tony will have to lawyer up and try to get her back.

After this, Tony just wants to talk to Neela, he hates how they are now. But when he can’t get a hold of her he figures he knows where she went… a rally for war vets. That’s where gunshots go off and everyone starts to run and Neela gets trampled. What a way to end a season.

This was another good season of ER; the finale was a little lacklustre, but it does leave us wondering what is going to happen to Neela but to the ER as a whole with their new chief.