{"id":336,"date":"2003-11-21T10:33:05","date_gmt":"2003-11-21T15:33:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp\/2003\/11\/rip_dr_romano\/"},"modified":"2003-11-21T10:33:05","modified_gmt":"2003-11-21T15:33:05","slug":"rip_dr_romano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/2003\/11\/rip_dr_romano\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. DR. ROMANO"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul
\nYes, ER is shamelessly incident-studded and catastrophe-driven, with mid-season cliffhangers the rule and doctors getting beat up in the bathroom almost as often as explosions rock the reception area. But last night\u2019s chopper disaster was acutely observed, through characters old and new, in tiny moments that told you that Ol’ Bullet-head was a goner. Favorite touch: Romano\u2019s final elevator ride up with med student Neela Rasgotra to the sound of muzak playing Tom Petty\u2019s \u201cFreefallin\u2019\u201d (EERILY well-suited to muzak). Sure, Romano was a bastard, through-and-through. And yet he was oddly self-conscious, and the writers made him sympathetic at many key moments: in advising Lizzie on whether to reunite with Mark, who by then was dying of brain cancer; in his epic struggle as a surgeon who knew his faults yet knew he didn\u2019t deserve a prosthetic arm. Talk about toying with the audience\u2019s sympathies. Paul McCrane<\/A> brought a wicked humor to the workday asshole repeatedly redeemed by his superior knowledge of science. In fact, he was about as sympathetic as his more \u201cheroic\u201d colleagues are flawed: think of Carrie Weaver\u2019s self-righteousness and will to political power; John Carter\u2019s denial and numbing sense of entitlement; Pratt\u2019s scrappy machismo; Susan Lewis\u2019s tendency to laugh it up in Vegas and come home married. Second favorite touch: that stoned intern, watching it all from his own private little hell. Third favorite touch: any scene involving Linda Cardellini as Nurse\/mother\/newcomer Samantha Taggart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, ER is shamelessly incident-studded and catastrophe-driven, with mid-season cliffhangers the rule and doctors getting beat up in the bathroom almost as often as explosions rock the reception area. But last night\u2019s chopper disaster was acutely observed, through characters old and new, in tiny moments that told you that Ol’ Bullet-head was a goner. Favorite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/riley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}