From Tv Guide on line:
Question: Once I got wind of the writers' strike, I stopped watching
live TV and started to save as much as possible on my TiVo for the
lean months. Last night, I was looking for something to watch and saw
that I had three episodes of ER saved. But instead of watching, I
deleted them. I decided that I just didn't want to deal with how
negative and dark this show has become. Yes, I know that it is set in
a hospital and that sickness and injury do lend themselves to morbid
themes, but back in the day, this show seemed to be able to balance
the depressing storylines with some lighthearted ones, as well. In the
earlier years, even with so much death and disaster surrounding them,
the characters still had some moments of happiness in their lives.
That's what kept so many people watching. Sure, there were gunshot
wounds and heart-attack patients, but we also got to see people
falling in love, getting together (and remaining faithful), forming
solid friendships and having babies. These days, even when the main
characters do these things, the writers put a negative spin on it.
Yes, Neela fell in love and got married, but her husband got killed in
Iraq. Yes, there was a wedding last season, but Ray and Greg got into
a fistfight and then Ray got hit by a truck and lost both of his legs.
Yes, Abby had a baby, but she almost died delivering him and had to
have a hysterectomy. Oh, and now that her husband has been in Croatia,
she has started drinking again and recently slept with her boss. I
know that drama supposedly makes for good TV, but I've had enough. ER
has become a total downer. At the beginning of the season, people were
saying that ER had gotten its grove back, but I don't see it. Also, do
you think Grey's Anatomy is headed in the same direction? I know that
Shonda Rhimes promised a more light-hearted fourth season, but I
haven't seen much of that. Maybe that's the fault of the abbreviated
schedule. I really don't like the morose and brooding Meredith who
surfaced last season, and unfortunately she's staying around. Nobody
else at Seattle Grace seems to be having anything good happen in their
lives, either. Is Grey's going to become the dark and depressing mess
that ER has become? Can't anyone please have just a little something
good happen to them every once in a while?— Kristin A.
Matt Roush: I don't think Grey's Anatomy is nearly as dire a mope fest
as ER, but Grey's is certainly overdue at least one episode where fun
rather than angst is the prevailing tone. I'm afraid that ship has
sailed for ER. The problem isn't so much that bad things happen to all
of these people, but that unlike the earlier seasons — when the
characters were imbued with passion and an almost unholy charisma and
the cast had actual chemistry — the last few years have been all about
casting promising actors (Parminder Nagra, Shane West, Mekhi Phifer,
even John Stamos) and almost immediately draining them of personality
by trapping them in predictably dreary storylines. For a while, Maura
Tierney and Goran Visnjic kept the show afloat with their Grey's-like
romantic roller-coaster, but even they were ultimately defeated by
ER's all-misery outlook. Thanks for catching me up on recent
developments, though. Saved me a lot of pain.
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