After 12 years of being on the air and with 267 episodes in the bag, ER reached its 13th season and an official milestone in terms of its cast: the final vestiges of the original major players from the first seasons were gone. When ER began back in 1994, Anthony Edwards served as the undeniable protagonist with an incredibly strong supporting cast (George Clooney - hard to beat that). The writing was terrific and only seemed to get better with each passing episode and season. By the time Edwards passed on the baton to Noah Wyle, who had the chops to lead but was nowhere near as charismatic and endearing as Edwards, the show took a slight dive in quality. However, the supporting cast was quickly shored up to re-elevate the show and keep it at roughly the same level, allowing ER fans to finally transfer their love for Dr. Greene to Dr. Carter. And the show carried on, but eventually even Wyle decided he needed to step away and during Carter’s adventures in Africa, the spotlight officially fell even further to supporting characters with Eriq La Salle now being the strongest of the leads (though personally I think he was better than Wyle, but that isn’t important). What matters is that as the baton passed from one lead to the next the show became increasingly about the ensemble and less about the particular struggles of any one doctor.
When ER introduced Dr. Luka Kovac (Goran Visnjic) into the cast in the sixth season, it wasn’t obvious that he was being prepped to inherit the spotlight for three seasons down the road, but that’s what happened. The legitimacy of Kovac’s leading man inheritance was given a boost by a small arc with Noah Wyle wherein he officially hands off the baton, and the show transitions fully to being about Kovac’s love life and also those of the other doctors. He was the clear lead, but it required a little bit of finagling to get audiences to accept him. It wasn’t so much an issue of not being a strong enough actor, it was more an issue of ER being an ensemble show by that point and there being no character as equally fleshed out as the one they were dismissing (Carter). However, what might be even more important is whether or not the audience had the stomach to transfer their loyalty to yet another leading man.
This represents the ultimate struggle of any show that stretches on longer than the norm. No longer was ER a show that focused heavily on one doctor’s journey through life and the side stories of those who toil around him, it was officially an anthology of stories stretched over 22-episode seasons with no single character really standing above the rest. The writing and stories were still stronger than many of the shows it competed with, but the most vital element of what the show used to be had vanished: the ability to cultivate the audience’s emotional investment in the lead character.
You can’t blame the audience, 12 seasons of television is a long time to hold on, and when characters cease to be fleshed out naturally and receive desperate storylines like a kidnapping or yet another tortured pregnancy, it’s hard to sustain the interest. This issue didn’t start in season 13, or in season 12. It really started back around season 8 when the writers began creating an exit strategy for Carter but failed to prep his successor. When season 13 finally rolled around, most of the original characters from the first seasons have exited save for a few, but the ones that do remain used this season as their curtain call (Laura Innes as Dr. Kerry Weaver) or were never fully realized characters to begin with (receptionist Jerry Markovic played by Abraham Benrubi).
Ultimately, season 13 sees no dip in the quality (from season 12) of the stories or writing – which is damned impressive, however that hasn’t been the issue for the last 3 seasons. No matter how good the stories and writing for season 13 were, what drags it down is the lack of focus on a central character. Season 12 shared this same issue, but it became even more pronounced here as the writers attempted to phase in John Stamos as a regular player. What little momentum Kovac had built up as the head doctor is quickly sapped away as Dr. Tony Gates (Stamos) is clearly intended as his replacement.
If you followed ER all the way to season 13 without fail, then these problems and more are certainly apparent to you, however you may be more willing to forgive the show if you were able to transition from loving ER as a strong character-driven show to an ensemble show. You can’t argue with an ensemble cast of Linda Cardellini, Shane West, Scott Grimes, Maura Tierney, Mekhi Phifer, and Parminder Nagra – but the characters either have no depth or have become somewhat ridiculous. When Dr. Romano was killed off in the 10th season, Weaver was left as the sole representation of ER’s penchant for strong supporting characters. With her departure, so goes the waning interest ER had sustained to this point.
DVD Bonus Features
Like the past season releases, all you’ll find here are deleted scenes. A little something extra would have gone a long way towards making this set more appealing considering the season’s lower ambitions.
"ER: The Complete Thirteenth Season" is on sale July 6, 2010 and is not rated. Drama. Directed by Andrew Bernstein, Christopher Chulack, Joanna Kerns, Lesli Linka Glatter, Richard Thorpe, Stephen Cragg. Written by R. Scott Gemmill, David Zabel, Lisa Zwerling, Joe Sachs, Janine Sherman Barrois, Karen Maser, Virgil Williams. Starring Goran Visnjic, John Stamos, Laura Innes, Linda Cardellini, Maura Tierney, Mekhi Phifer, Parminder Nagra, Scott Grimes, Shane West.
