I'm guessing that Abby already has a kid out there somewhere. I'm thinking this from the scene when they were in the baby store where the clerk asks them if this baby was their first. Kovach replies yes, Abby is silent.
Loved the revelation of how Dr. Lennox (James Woods) got Abby over the hump in med school, and how it came full circle. It was also a sobering look at ALS and its effects in the later stages.
The past sequences had that throwback feel to them, and it provided a bit of retrospective of the residents in the ER. Couldn't believe they even reference Mark Greene's passing for one of Lennox's visit to the ER.
I almost didn't recognize Ally Walker (AKA The Profiler).
I was dozing in an out through the episode, so I don't remember everything. What happened at the end? What did Woods do to get Abby "over the hump" of med school. What did they do to acknowledge Dr. Green.
When Abby was in med school, Abby wanted to drop Lennox's class (because she didn't do well on the midterm, and the prospects of passing the class weren't good), and after Abby admitted that her classload had her memorizing so much, Lennox impressed upon her how to conceptualize what's going on with the pieces instead of using rote memorization, and then he started to use a sports analogy, but Abby wasn't into sports, but then she offered that she liked dancing (albeit from a childhood experience being in the school dance play), so he adjust the lessons of how the molecules where just looking for other dance partners when they break off from their bonds. Then he offers to tutor Abby during his office hours, he also bets her $10 that she'll pass his class, and that the most important lesson he will teach her is how to fight (for what she wants). It is the $10 bet that Dr. Abby makes with Lennox that stops him in his tracks when he just wants to go home against her medical advice to stay in the hospital to fight his pnuemonia. It comes full circle for the two of them.
One night when Pratt is at the ER as a 1st year resident, Lennox comes in for treatment and wonders where Abby was, and how deserted the ER looked in terms of staff, and then wondered if there were cutbacks, but Pratt offers that Mark Greene passed away and most of the staff not on call were at his funeral.
If you look in the cast shot (either the opening one, or the closing one, or a bumper shot), it shows Abby with the straggly longer hairdo she had in a past season, presumably the same season that Lennox showed up in, so Tierney had to wear that hideous wig for the flashback scene. Kovach also wore something that made his hair look like it had been cut (the scene where Lennox made like of him being just an ER doc).
I liked the snappiness of the dialogue this episode, plus it appears to be E.R.'s retort to Grey's Anatomy by making the surgical head resident (Albright) to be a big bitch, but it was cute in how Morris and Albright loved to hate on each other.
Clemente is in some deep doo-doo with the shooting of Jodie. (Plus, for all we know, Clemente could have been hallucinating about Jodie's husband Bobby being in there with them at the apartment since Clemente was on drug (evidenced by their snack run in the convenience store).
Ray finds a way to re-connect with music, if just for a day, through meeting a blues man from the time when records were in fashion.
Abby finds out that her amnio came back clean, so she's much happier, though Morris has figured out that she's preggers. Luka brought the news to Sam, a humane thing to do in an E.R. so small.
Neela confirms that Gallant galloped back to Iraq. Dubenko continues his surgical tutlege of Neela in the OR, much to the consternation of Albright.
Pratt's charity streak almost bites him in the rear when a guy places a winning bid on him for charity date, but it was a bidding proxy/friend who was helping out a female friend who shows up for the date.
Overall, a pretty fast-moving episode (directed by Joanna Kerns, Momma Seaver from Growing Pains).
Yeah, what was that all about? Apocalypse Carter. Just a few seconds of him in a Helocopter. The cameo was pretty much showed in it's entirety on the ads for the episode. So Clemente is a big fan of the blow, huh. He better hope his girlfriend pulls through. But it looks like this is his exit from the show.
One thing is confirmed: Carter thinks he's bullet-proof. I could not believe he just wanted to keep on pushing the envelope, I was almost certain he'd get him and his guide shot because he wanted to right a dumb thing he did.
The Vic subplot needs to go away soon.
Neelah looks really cute in those deep blue surgical scrubs.
Pratt is looking at quite a bit of disciplinary action if he 'fesses up. Hmm...
I could give the character the benefit of the doubt and suggest that given his losses, he doesn't care if he lives or dies, as long as he can save someone else. It's awfully rude to endanger the guy with you though.
But as far as the show goes, I really don't care, and the whole segment is a waste of time (besides seeing Mary McCormack), other than a teeny PSA about the situation in Darfur.
Neelah can't bake cookies. She doesn't know when to keep her opinions to herself when she holds an unpopular view at a gathering of military spouses.
Kovach and Abby are a little too cute together, but I'm still buying it.
Pratt comes clean to Kovach and gets an unpaid week to think about what he's done.
Weaver finally go for hip replacement surgery, after putting it off 3 times. Abby agrees to be her child's guardian in case something goes wrong during the surgery.
Sam gets an offer that she probably can't refuse from Armand Asante's character, a rich guy with MDS who needs her nursing services 5 times a week.