'ER' still provides suspense

The season premiere of "ER" tried hard to recapture the show's pressure-cooker aura, showing how people's lives can come unglued. But in order to compete with ABC's \"Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,\" the show now has to be more optimistic, undermining its edginess.\nDr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) is recovering from his drug addiction, learning how to live with the pain resulting from stab wounds he received during last season's Valentine's Day massacre without the help of pain killers. But the episode suggests that Carter might be bumping and falling down a few of those 12 steps when he gets busted for smoking a cigarette in an airplane lavatory.\nI can sympathize with Carter. This year, I gave up Coke. The soft drink, not the narcotic. It might as well be the white powder, because giving that junk up is the hardest thing I've done. When that cool, bubbling liquid kisses my lips, it's like Jesus Christ himself dropped in my mouth and yelled "Have a shot!"\nSMACK! It's alright, I've regained my self control.\nThursday's episode of "ER" had its lighter moment. After getting poison ivy on her hands, Dr. Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston) unwittingly spreads it to Dr. Greene's (Anthony Edwards) emblems of his masculinity.\nDr. Benton (Eriq La Salle) is still getting jerked around by the chief di tuti chiefs at the hospital, Dr. Romano (Paul McCrane). Many people, including me, hate that sonuvabitch Romano, yet I'm glad the show keeps him in a prominent position. Why? Because he's that arrogant, sadistic backstabber who screws you over at every opportunity and yet prospers, proving that there is no justice in the world.\nSuch a person can also be a woman, like Dr. Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), the one-legged autocrat who reminds me of an annoying little Chihuaha who yips away -- the kind of dog that you just want to kick a field goal with. I want to see an episode where someone breaks off her good leg and beats her with the wet end.\nAnother plot point that hits close to home comes when medical student Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) gets shafted by the hospital bureaucracy and her ex-husband. Because her ex doesn't pay one tuition check, she can't work for three months. The writers for this show must have spent time at IU, because they know how abusive bureaucracies can cheat you out of graduation just to squeeze every last dime out of you. Every one of you who has been told by IU a month before graduation that one class suddenly doesn't cross-list anymore knows exactly what I'm talking about.\nReminded of all this BS, I felt a great cathartic relief when a football player, who was injured at a big game, had a heart attack and his friends outside started throwing a riot.\nIt was as exhilarating as the Bobby Knight riot, only this was actually a riot. But then they brought the football player back to life, and I felt cheated.\nHe should have died. Call me sick, but sometimes I like to see the good guys lose, like on "Hill Street Blues," just so I can nod my head and say, "Yup, life sucks."\nThat's the kind of ending "ER" episodes occasionally had in its first season. In one episode, Dr. Green and his staff work feverishly for 45 minutes to deliver a baby. It's a bloody mess that rivals any Civil War hospital. The baby lives, but the mother dies.\nIn Dr. Green's defeat lay a glimmer of truth, just enough to fill you with righteous indignation. A moment where television came as close to reality as possible.\n"ER" is still worth watching, though. Even with its tacked-on endings, it still manages to pull a "Clerks" and turn man's inhumanity to man and all the misery of existing on this God-forsaken mudball we call Earth into entertainment.