ER is on its way down. I jumped on the ER band wagon two seasons ago. When my wife was on bed rest she watched quite a bit of ER reruns and we got into it. But then we noticed that last season the show began to go down the drain. The attempted romance between Dr. Lewis and Dr. Carter had nothing to it, just as Carter and Abby have nothing to their relationship now. The writers also took a very dark turn and began to play on existential themes, moving away from the sharp, fast-paced medical discourse that characterized the show previously. They also turned Carter into a immature brooding and jaded person, which is not him.

The loss of Dr. Green and Peter Benton, two irreplaceable actors, was monumental. It seems that Carter is now going to be the Mark Green, i.e., the key personality in the show.To "replace" Eric LaSalle (Benton) they brought in a black actor to play a Dr. Gantt, a baby faced, goody guy with military experience. The character had major potential, but due to a combination of bad character writing and development and bad acting on his part, his character has been a bust. They also brought in another black guy, Mekki Phifer, I guess to be another Peter Benton. They just don't get it, Benton was a unique character, he is irreplaceable. This new guy is arrogant, brash, etc like Benton was, but he is just not as good an actor as LaSalle was.

Dr Susan Lewis, an original ER character who returned to ER last year is a mess. She had so much potential, but her character is now so shallow and undeveloped and uninteresting. Ming-Na, Dr. Chen, also came back to the show last year and her character has nothing of substance. I suspect they'll try to do an interracial romance thing between her and Phifer, especially since she had a baby with a character played by Morris Chesnut.

The writers need to start over with these people and develop the relationships that gave ER its depth. It was the characters that made it interesting, now there are few interesting characters left.

Strengths: Maura Tierny (Abby),

Paul McCrane (Romano)

Weaknesses: Everyone else

Sally Field and Don Cheadle are supposed to join the cast for a few weeks which should make for more interesting drama. Nonetheless, ER's last chance was yesterday, I'm out.