dream me the world

Frank is back in the ER he used to thrive in, returning with who knows how many rumors stacked against him and a checklist of people he knows he’s wronged. It’s emotional and tense and such a good premise for real character exploration, and then the season conspires not give him any space for emotional catharsis. Louie’s death was the biggest fumble I’ve seen in modern TV in a long time for both the character and his impact on the show. It was rushed and verbally sad but tonally nothing. Frank works the hotdog case afterwards, Dennis doesn’t even know about it, everyone’s repressing so hard that no one does anything. Instead of a private moment between Frank and Louie with could-have-beens and grey areas about who’s still in Louie (and Frank’s) life after addiction - we got a bunch of characters standing in a room (I though the ER was packed) 90% of them not speaking (then why are they here) as Robby reveals omnipotent Louie knowledge in a monologue (that’s not impactful). And then the season moves on and we get more time from Trinity and Robby doubting Franks recovery than Frank himself discussing it. Frank’s recovery isn’t about him, so he spends the season waiting to impact other people

Samira’s arc was a mess from top to bottom and that fact that the writing did that to her and then the editing doubled down on it is disappointing and exhausting to the nth degree. She should have been a shining star of the season, pushing and pulling with Frank on various cases to keep the energy up when other plot drivers had to do something else. Instead she was shoved into ‘lecture’ patients to learn medical lessons that she’d already know, had her position in the ER stolen by Dennis because her boss is straight up racist, and didn’t get to interact with anyone with the authority an R4 should have (and then they kicked her off. Because WOC aren’t allowed to argue with Robby and stay on the show 😐)

Add onto all of these character choices where they’re positioned to stand still until acted on (paralyzing the show for episodes at a time), the environment was also changed in a way that’s a negative for any building any impact or momentum.

The removal of Gloria means that Robby becomes the ER rule guy to everyone (including Baran) - he’s the enforcer and the victim. There’s nothing for Robby to narratively push against because he’s the one defending the system.

The choice to stop shooting from Robby’s POV gave the camera too much freedom and instead of getting to explore characters in more personally engaging situations, we completely lost any sense of tension and movement in favor of lingering conversations (the Annie conversation between Robby and Trinity should have been a third of the length at least).

The complete avoidance of a central conflict is the worst of the bunch though. First it was going to be the computers going down and that was going to lead to drama (patients getting lost in the gaps, missing medication being blamed on Frank, doctors on top of each other because they have to interact to share information). Then it was going to be the waterpark patients coming in to swamp the ER. Then it was going to be how do they do hand off when the ER is so overcapacity and still drowning with patients

And then they didn’t do any of it. Victoria missed something with a patient but she’s a med student. Nothing went wrong with medication or missing patients, they just kept track of it. They got some waterpark patients but there was nothing distinguishing them from the other people already in the ER or showing the system being filled past capacity so that trickled out into nothing. Hand off was just…completed.

I’m shocked by how many examples of killed momentum I have and it devastated character impact for the whole season (which reduces the scale of the characters).