Episode Report Card Sars: D | 1 USERS: F YOU GRADE IT Leave It To Weaver
By Sars | Season 6 | Episode 1 | Aired on 09.29.1999
Migraine Guy screams at Weaver. Weaver explains dismissively on her way past him that they have a lot of critical cases at the moment, and MG bellows, "And this jackhammer in my head ain't critical? What kinda bush-league joint is this?" Clearly, none of the ER writers has ever suffered an actual migraine, because if they had, they'd know that a man with a migraine could barely bring himself to lift his head or whisper, much less stalk around a noisy emergency-room hallway yelling at people. Weaver goes into the front-desk area and asks Randi to "kill" MG, and Randi mutters, "Happily." Hathaway is still looking for Michelle the Balloon Brat, and nobody's seen her, but Lily pipes up that she might show up with the two critical cases on their way in, and Weaver says she thought she told Randi to close them to trauma and bitches Randi out, and Randi says she did, but Robert "Rocket" Romano reopened them, and Weaver snarls, "And who asked him?" and Randi snipes, "I did -- it's a protocol thing, he is Acting Chief." Weaver tells her to close them to trauma again and send everyone over to Mercy, and yells at someone else to get Romano on the phone, griping that "we're barely keeping our heads above water as it is."
Cut to Greene and Corday's trauma room. Michelle's mom has severe cardiopulmonary bruising, and things don't look good until a quick-thinking Corday decides to do a bypass until the swelling goes down, a move Cameron calls "gutsy." Oh, boy -- enter the newly-goateed Rocket Romano, who greets Cameron by saying, "Haven't seen you in, oh, gosh, who really cares." Heh. Anyway, he asks what brings Cameron to County, and Corday looks at Romano apprehensively as Cameron says, "Coffee, actually -- I hear it's the best in the city," and Romano smells a rat but says he thinks Corday and Greene have things under control: "I'll go and inspire the rest of the troops." I dislike Romano, but you have to admire a guy who so openly relishes the enmity of others. ["Word." -- Wing Chun]
Romano goes next door and second-guesses Benton's decision to operate on Punkish Guy. He says that, considering the borderline indicators and the risks of surgery, "let's make sure 'maybe' is not part of the equation, okay? Thanks." Benton slumps and rolls his eyes as Romano blows out of the room. During this exchange, the audience gets to see a suspiciously tight close-up of a Thoraseal for the second time in ten minutes, so I guess the manufacturers of Thoraseals ditched the giving-free-notepads-to-doctors idea and paid for a product placement in this episode.