ER

The cast and crew reflect on 15 years in the ER. From the pilot to the finale the stories from Country General have impacted audiences all around the world. Now, the most recognized drama bids farewell.

The plot of the episode "Ambush," which aired in 1997, revolves around a PBS documentary crew filming a "typical day" in the emergency room at Chicago's County General Hospital. The episode was notable for being filmed and broadcast live twice: once for East Coast viewers and again for West Coast viewers.

An absolutely incredible supplement that mixes clips from the show and recently filmed interviews with the principals and the stars and it gives us a great breakdown on the genesis of the first season. We learn about the birth of the show (based on Crichton’s actual experiences while training as a physician), the trials of having the show picked up for television, Spielberg and Amblin’s eventual involvement in the pilot and how Crichton’s mention of Jurassic Park to Spielberg slowed the development down on ER, the circumstances around casting the actors for the main roles and how close relationships were formed with the original cast, finding the perfect location, and so on.

A day's worth of trauma takes its toll on the men and women of the ER. Dr. Greene looks into leaving the ER and joining private practice. Among other events, multiple casualties are brought in when a building collapses. New medical students report for duty, including Dr. Benton's new trainee, the young and inexperienced John Carter.

Dr. Lewis tries to get a mentally disturbed individual admitted to the psych ward. Carter has a difficult day, treating many members of wedding party, suffering from food poisoning. Dr. Ross finally visits Carol, eight weeks after her suicide attempt. Dr. Greene deals with an elderly gentleman having a difficult time letting go of his dying wife. He also discovers that Jenn passed the bar exam.

Carol returns after her eight week absence, finding Doug holding himself responsible. Carter finds himself watching over a mysterious, mentally ill singing woman. Susan clashes with Dr. Kayson over a diagnosis. Dr. Greene treats a domestic violence victim.

The ER treats victims of a gang shootout. Carter arrives late and unprepared for his new position. Mark learns all about being an attending, including senior staff's habit of bad-mouthing the residents, particularly Doug Ross. Mark hires a new chief resident, Kerry Weaver. New third year med students arrive to complete their ER rotation.

Kerry Weaver manages to offend just about everyone in her first day as chief resident. Carol goes on a ride-along with paramedics Shep and Raul, sharing a ferris wheel ride with Shep. Peter and Jeanie's secret relationship comes to a head. Susan is stuck caring for Little Susie while Chloe attends school. Dr. Ross has his hands full with a young pyromaniac. Carter shows interest in med student Harper Tracy.

Carter gets his first patient...and loses him. Susan's feud with Kerry Weaver intensifies when Weaver demands all of Susan's procedures be cleared with her. Chloe abandons Little Susie again for a lucrative career in the flea market business. Carol finishes her paramedic recertification by picking up a very overweight, lethargic man. Shep hits on Carol. Jeanie ends her relationship with Benton. Wendy conducts interviews with various ER staffers for an article on Dr. Greene. Dr. Ross cares for a four-year-old Asian boy with AIDS.

It's the first day of Carter's internship. He has a 36 hour shift and overnight he has to cover the ER, the ICU as well as the surgical patients.

While the whole staff is worried the ER might close, Jeanie has her own problems in dealing with being HIV-positive.

Donald Anspaugh has a new method to increase the staff's efficiency, new intern Maggie Doyle joins the ER and Susan asks Mark to come along to Hawaii.

While a film crew is filming in the ER, it's Elizabeth Corday's first day.

Carter is exited about getting his own med student and Mark and Carol interview candidates for the desk clerk position.

Cynthia Hooper starts as the new desk clerk. Benton and Carla disagree over whether or not their son should be circumcised. Al gets in an accident at work.

Third-year med student Lucy Knight reports to the ER for the first day of her rotation. Greene takes a teacherly interest in her, helping her get acquainted, but she gets off to a bad start with the irritable Carter when she speaks insensitively, and without Carter present, with a patient's wife about her husband's very serious condition. The rest of the day finds her comforting a woman who has suffered a miscarriage, getting locked out on the roof, having Carol bail her out on a simple procedure, and trying to figure out Kerry Weaver's "Tour on Tape."

Dr. Corday's father visits from overseas in an attempt to convince her to join his medical practice. Weaver suggests that Elizabeth look into alternative methods to stay in America, like starting over as an intern. Weaver also doesn't let an opportunity pass to remind Doug of the way he bypassed her authority in the McLean case. Lucy continues learning, earning more of Carter's respect than she deserves. Peter takes Reese in for another hearing test. Mark has several discussions with paramedics about the state of the EMT program. Carol hires a nurse practitioner to help out in the clinic. Carter is having trouble being an RA in the dorms.

Mark goes to a trauma scene with the EMTs, where he treats a gunshot victim who has a bomb strapped to himself. Later, Mark’s daughter persuades him to treat a horse with colic, and Jerry gets the bad end of the enema. Carter intubates an elderly woman who is DNR. When her HMO declines to admit her, Carter either has to find a relative quickly or let her die. Kerry finds herself more and more frustrated when Anspaugh suggests that they're not considering her for ER Chief, and she discovers she’s the last to hear that Doug was made a pediatric attending. Corday serves her last day as a surgical fellow. Benton meets with Carla to discuss getting Reese hearing aids. Jeanie returns from vacation. Carter goes out with Roxanne, the insurance saleswoman he treated.

When Anspaugh decides to retire as chief of staff and return to surgery, he appoints Romano as his replacement. Greene expresses reservations about the decision, but Weaver does not support Greene. Romano makes Weaver the new chief of emergency medicine.

After his mother's funeral, Dr. Greene comforts his father in San Diego. In Chicago, Romano surprises Corday by appointing her associate chief of surgery. Corday treats Elaine, Carter's lover, for breast cancer.

A recommendation from Weaver allows Jeanie to have temporary approval as a foster parent for baby Carlos. Reggie and Jeanie get married. Lucy and Kovac talk with a young woman whose husband they believe is very dangerous.

Dr. Carter struggles with his drug dependency; a custodial strike leaves the ER cluttered with garbage; a riot at a high-school football game leaves several wounded.

A young couple cope with their baby being premature; Greene and Corday struggle with their relationship.

Dr. Carter is allowed a cautious restart with small steps. An extremely blond Dr. Malucci is very curious who's made Dr. Chen pregnant. Dr. Benton has been written out of all the hospital's systems and is stunned by Dr. Romano. An unfortunate incident at a Science Fiction convention makes it look like scenes from the movie 'Mars Attacks'.

Weaver returns to the emergency room after a self-imposed sabbatical of three weeks, wondering how her newfound lesbian identity will affect her workplace relationships. Having purposely allowed a mass murderer to die, Greene must keep the secret amidst the scrutiny of his superiors.

Carter is overwhelmed by patients from a rock concert riot. Benton's former girlfriend is killed in a car accident. Newly promoted to chief resident, Chen panics and misdiagnoses a patient. Kovac angers Abby by flirting with a waitress.

Greene's daughter comes to live with him and Corday. Carter and Abby become more intimate. Chen must prove her skills while saving a baby. Weaver terminates Malucci after witnessing him having sex in an ambulance.

Dr. Carter, Abby and other staff of the ER are quarantined as the CDC investigate a mysterious, deadly outbreak.

After another hospital shuts down, the ER is flooded with patients. Dr. Pratt resuscitates a heart-attack victim who had been pronounced dead.

Dr. Carter leads a walk-out of staff protesting lack of security in the ER.

Carter returns from Africa, going straight to Abby's bedside. Her response to seeing him is to ask for her key back. She is very chilly towards him all day until new med student Neela Rasgotra answers a phone call for Carter. The message: Luka is dead. Carter decides to go back to the Congo to bring the body back. Neela has a tough first day in the ER, earning Chen's ire after Pratt flirts with her. Gallant, now a full-fledged doctor, helps to show her the ropes.

John Carter returns to the Congo to retrieve Luka Kovac's body. He finds however that the area where was killed is still too dangerous to enter. He and Gillian finally manage to hitch a ride with a Red Cross worker, Debbie, who is going to the area. In flashbacks, we learn how Kovac and his fellow aid workers were taken prisoner by rebel troops. They are shot, one at a time, until only Luka is left. Amid the destruction of the eastern Congo, we learn his fate. Carter also makes a fateful decision.

Luka Kovac arrives safely at County General and is hospitalized for treatment. His friend Gillian delivers John Carter's letter to Abby.

After being shot at, Pratt, Jing-Mei and Elgin are trying to get of their sinking car. Sam took Alex with her while fleeing for Steve, Kovac is considering to go after them. Abby wants to go to bed since tomorrow is her first day as a doctor, but is thwarted by Weaver, whose custody battle might take a dramatic turn. A young drug-dealer is brought in with "a foreign object" in her tunnel of life.

Neela is still struggling with her decision not to continue becoming a doctor. We discover that Ray is in a band. Kovac and Sam are amoureux, but where does that leave them?

It's a busy Fourth of July and Carter is the only attending working.

Sam and Luka go on the search for her runaway son, Alex. Meanwhile, Pratt and Lewis guide Abby, Neela and Ray, who have become R2's, on how to teach the new interns.

Much to Ray's dislike, a surrogate mother in labor doesn't want to have a C-section and endangers the life of the baby. Meanwhile, Sam tells Luka she and Alex are moving out. Pratt meets his half-brother and -sister, and Abby makes a difficult decision about a young boy.

Luka has a very bad day: New nurse manager Eve Peyton notices he doesn't want to work with Sam and tells him so. At the end of the day he's drunk and Abby takes him home.

Weaver, Kovac, and the other doctors work frantically to try to save Jerry and a pregnant Abby, who were both critically injured during the shootout that left the ER in shambles. Meanwhile, Sam tries to escape from her ex-boyfriend and his criminal accomplices as they head north, but things quickly turn violent.

As Abby and Luka cope with their newborn's life and death struggle, the couple is shocked to receive a surprise visitor: Abby's mother Maggie. Meanwhile, Sam fears the prospect of criminal charges; Neela discovers that Tony Gates will be joining the ER team as an intern and Morris gets his job back while Weaver gets demoted.

Gates is assigned to the case of a closeted gay man whose partner clashes with his family; Neela meets her new surgical chief, Dr. Crenshaw; and Pratt must cope with the flood of new interns.

Moretti's first day is challenging as the ER is inundated with casualties from the peace rally - including Neela. Dubenko faces a crisis in surgery. Abby, Pratt and Morris conspire about how to deal with a shared problem. A new intern arrives unexpectedly, and Gates is reassigned.

Moretti begins to make his presence felt, as he implements changes in the way patients are seen. The ER staff differ on how procedure when a patient comes in with a bullet in him needed as evidence. Neela finds herself the object of more attention that she wants, or needs. Abby had passport woes, and struggles with the changes being made. Pratt and Morris find themselves forced to defend their actions, Hope prepares for a new mission, and Gates finds himself labeled the reject in his new assignment.

Two wounded police auxiliary officers present challenges in the ER. Neela settles in with Abby as she recovers, while Pratt and Bettina consider their relationship. Gates tries to get a patient on a drug trial, with Dubenko's help. And Morris is in a funk that not even a pretty woman can help.

The 15th and final season of ER begins with the devastating repercussions of the ambulance explosion. As Morris and Neela do everything they can to save a wounded colleague, Abby treats a young girl injured during the blast.

Everyone in the ER is trying to cope with the loss of their colleague. The staff feels defensive toward the new Chief and her tough disposition. Gates and the new interns treat a bio terrorist who has a lethal secret that endangers them all. Neela makes a great effort to get Dubenko back on the surgery staff, and gets help from an unexpected source.

Abby's first day as an attending is bittersweet. Neela is hurt when she finds out Abby's news from someone else. Abby and the new ER Chief argue over how to treat a gunshot victim. Abby comes to Sam's aid when she faces a nurses' disciplinary board.