man, i don’t normally watch er anymore, but flaming helicopters dropping from the sky? man, talk about bad timing in terms of the fact that american choppers are getting shot down over in baghdad.
anyway, what a complete and total idiotic move. romano was the best character on er. and damn, what kind of death was that? his arm gets chopped off by a chopper one year, and then they drop a chopper on him? jeezus, what is he, wile e. coyote?
noah wyle is dialing it in so obviously. i mean, how much is nbc desperately paying him just so he can show up for 2 minutes every few episodes? is he even on this show anymore?
and here’s a hint, they need to hire hotties for the show. the bend it like beckham indian girl is cute, but that’s about it.
He was actually decapitated by the blade when the helicopter crashed. Well, it actually cut him in half at around shoulder height, for the truly ghoulish. 2 Vietnamese kids were similarly mangled.
I’m enjoying ER quite a bit, although maybe not watching it regularly until recently keeps it from feeling old. A number of the actors are excellent.
Romano was interesting in that the traditional TV arc would be for him to mellow and become warmer over time, and that just didn’t happen. He remained abusive and angry right up until his death. I always wonder when actors leave ensemble shows in some spectacular fashion if it’s for character/plot reasons or if they just want to make sure the actor can’t come back.
As for Noah Wylie, he hasn’t been on the show at all for about a month (his character is doing work for Doctors Without Borders in Africa), and was on last night’s episode for all of a minute. He apparently is getting his giant salary even when he doesn’t appear, which is great freaking work if you can get it. I imagine they’ll either bring him back soon or boot him as well, just to stop paying him.
Oh, and the actor who portrayed Romano gets submerged in toxic waste and pulped by a car in Robocop, so perhaps a gruesome end is fitting for his characters.
I gave up on it two or three years ago. I think it may have been the professional wrestler episode. The storylines just got goofier and goofier until I figured my time could be more productively utilized elsewhere (usually pissed away onPC games).
I thought about doing a screenplay for them where a man drops dead on the street for no reason. After much huffing and snorting from the ER staff as to what caused it, they find a small hole in the top of his head and the sole of his left shoe. It turns out someone dropped a penny off the top of an office building and it fell right through him and out the bottom of his foot. The penny was never found. Perfect for the nutty ideas they were using at the time.
What I loved about Romano is that despite his utter dickishness, he did “come through” when needed. When Lucy came to his house because he was the only one who could install the heart-thing, he was a dick but did the surgery.
Later on, when Lucy is stabbed he puts his shit with Corday aside and goes beyond to save her and goes batshit when they can’t. It’s pretty obvious that he knows who the “good” people are, and while he’s still a dick to them he appreciates them.
Then there’s the people he just doesn’t need, which is most of the rest.
That said, I haven’t watched in years (can you tell by my examples?).
When Noah Wylie dies so will the show; to me, ER is all about Carter - he’s the centerpiece (as I interpret the show from the very beginning). NYPD Blue is all about Sipowitz, and has been since the day he was shot six times (the first episode).
Shows where they have the central character get written off suck because of it. David E. Kelly’s done it twice recently, with Boston Public (ol’ what’s her name) and The Practice (Bobby Donnell). Those shows are very much dead, they just don’t know it yet (and The Practice would have been dead).
Anyway… ER is hosed. Next stop… Las Vegas. What a crappy show. Who cares about some rich Vegas people.
Yeah, I’m pissed about Romano’s death as well. He was my favorite character on the show. But am I the only one who saw a Peter Pan parallel? “You took my hand and now you’ve come back to finish the job!” At least he had a good death scream. I watched the scene about 7 times on my ReplayTV, going frame-by-frame about 4 times, and I was convinced that he was both scared and pissed off when he went.
And about Noah Wyle: apparently back at the beginning of the season he negotiated for a set amount of time away from the show to spend with his family. He’s still under contract for the next couple of seasons, so he’s not going anywhere. But I was surprised to see him on this episode; his presence added nothing, and if he’s back on the show then why isn’t he in Chicago?
It’s funny; at the beginning of the show Thursday night I told my wife that either Romano must be in his last season or they’ll do something nutty like giving him an arm transplant. I just couldn’t see him staying on the show for any length of time with the artificial arm.
Romano was infuriating but uncompromising - he was who he was. And as someone said, they didn’t take the easy way out and make him go through some life-changing event that would make him soft. He was a bastard, but he was Romano. And one of the only truly distinct and strong and interesting characters on the show.
Now he’s gone. Noah Wyle? Who gives a damn. His character has become dull and one dimensional.
