It’s not that I watch a lot of television (Who Has Time?), but Bill and I are definitely into Studio 60, a new show that is only about four episodes old and is, apparently, at risk of being cut.
Just our luck.
But when we are watching that, we often see ads for ER, a show I watched, oh, maybe eight years ago, but finally gave up on because it was just too much like a freaking soap opera. Oh, and also people’s children would suddenly die or their spouses would die or something like that and I just couldn’t take such emotional upheaval on a weekly basis anymore.
Still, I am subjected (because, I know, I am Choosing to watch television) to advertisements for the next episode of ER, and let me just say that they take themselves Way Too Seriously at that show.
You doubt me? Then why, pray tell, is Every Single Episode of ER promoted as a “very special ER”? Why is it Very Special this time? And how can it be Very Special this time if it was Very Special last time? Doesn’t that sort of begin to alter the meaning of Very Special or something? Or could it be that Very Special does not mean what they think it means?
What could possibly be so special about it? I mean, this time they all get trapped in an elevator. But remember that other time, when they were all trapped in the hospital because of the snowstorm? And then there was the time when the hospital was suddenly under quarantine and so they were trapped by virtue of the fact that the show takes place in a hospital where, at any given time, one might run across some sort of virulent disease.
There seems to be a lot of entrapment on ER.
Or maybe the specialness isn’t so much the emergency room stuff as it is the romances that seem constantly to be shifting, reminding me, as I said, of the soap operas I watched in– when was it?– Right. Middle School.
But the kicker was just last week, I think, when ER somehow broached the standards of ordinary t.v. Yes, ER has been on televsion long enough, or has an audience faithful enough, or has been crafted cleverly enough, or is being marketed cunningly enough to have surpassed the standard “episode” form. Yes, the advertisers of ER informed us that this upcoming episode was not an episode. It was an Event.
That’s what they called it, folks. “An ER Event.”
I don’t know what to begin to make of that, but I will tell you right now that I didn’t witness this Event, and I feel Perfectly Fine about it.
I guess the saying holds true: There are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened.
But when it comes to this ER event, I am not in any of those categories.
