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Santa Barbara, CA, United States
Hi, my name is Kara. I'm kind of a nerd. But I like to think that that's a good thing. Anywho, welcome to my thoughts.
Showing posts with label ER. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ER. Show all posts

Monday, January 18, 2010

My Favorite ER theories

I actually wrote this a while ago, but I figure I might as well put it here.

1. Lucien Dubenko is a robot.


Not too much solid evidence for this, just that he's a little too good at his job (totally pwning Elizabeth in like the first scene he's ever in) and a little too nerdy to be real. Is often either underemotional or showing the wrong emotion. Oh, and his Robot Doc thing he had? Totally his software running in a much older version of his hardware.


Not sure how his yoga obsession figures in to this.


2. Lucy Knight was actually part of some huge conspirancy to break Carter.


How many bad things happened to Carter during the time that Lucy was his student? The answer is lots. However, they weren't trying to kill him, or they would have succeeded. They just wanted to really mess him up. When the effort seemed to not be working, it was decided that killing Lucy was the only way to get Carter once and for all, so she found an appropriate, easily swayed innocent, the schitzophrenic Paul Sobriki, and got him to stab both of them. Lucy's injuries were meant to be fatal, while Carter's were not, though they were probably hoping for more permanent physical damage- ideally the knife wouldn't have missed his spine and he would have been paralyzed. However, stabbing him and killing Lucy did the job at least for a while, driving him into his drug addiction.


3. Luka and Abby are Sims.


Well, the rest of the characters may be too, but they definitely are. The strongest indication is their Sims-style public woohoo during season 12. I mean, exactly sims-style. Abby grabs some clothes she doesn't really want, drags Luka into a dressing room, and makes sweet love to him. I'm not sure if I've ever made sims public woohoo while pregnant, but it's certainly possible. So basically, Luka was created as a family aspiration sim, with a wife, two children, and a nice little house. He started in the medical career track, then, about the time he was an intern, his creator got bored with the happy little Kovac family, and one day when the stove caught on fire, they got Luka out of the room and deleted the door. After his family's death, his creator moved him from Croatiaville to Chicagoville. He then pursued a relationship with Carol, a pregnant sim who he met at work, but while they had "crush" and "friends" status, she was still in "love" with another sim named Doug, who she moved from Chicagoville to Seattleville to be with. He eventually became close with Abby. Abby had been created with a husband, but their creator didn't like him very much, and found it funny to make him mess around with a bunch of female NPC's. She'd stayed at the nurse level of the Medical career tract for quite a while, but had recently moved up to intern, though before moving up again, due to a random event, she got demoted. Luka and Abby woohoo a lot, move in together, are generally great for a while, but eventually stop seeing each other. Luka moves on to Sam, a nurse Sim with a son named Alex, while Abby starts a thing with Carter, who has recently acheived "General Practitioner" in the medical career track. The person who plays him is a little weird, and likes using cheat codes, specifically the one that takes away the age of consent, and the one that gives you lots of money. They're happy for a while, but then the person playing them gets the Bon Voyage expansion pack and sends Carter away for a while, which leads to their breakup. After Sam ends things with Luka, he and Abby find that their relationship status is still pretty high, and while the short-term crush status is long gone, they are still in love. They woohoo, but the person controlling them accidentally hits "try for baby" and she ends up pregnant.


4. It's a bad idea to get married on this show.


Let's see the track record: there's 3 weddings that are shown on the show between two major characters. Mark and Elizabeth get married near the end of season 7. Mark dies from his brain tumor near the end of season 8 (1 year later) Neela and Michael get married halfway through season 12. Michael dies in Iraq at the End of season 12 (5 months later). The 3rd wedding is, of course, Luka and Abby. Luka escapes death by quitting his job at county shortly after the wedding and making himself scarce for a year before he and Abby leave the show altogether. Go Luka. I'm glad you decided to be the exception to the rule


If we're counting weddings, we should also consider Kerry Weaver's relationship with Sandy. While they couldn't get married because they're lesbians and don't live in Massachusetts, they probably would have if they had been a strait couple in a similar relationship. In this case, it's Sandy, the minor character, who dies.


Oh, and then there's our poor friend Greg Pratt. He decides to propose to his girlfriend. Buys a ring. Dies that same day.


Other characters have gotten married but under different circumstances. For instance, Doug and Carol presumably got married at some point, but they waited until they were both safely off the show before tieing the knot. No point in killing off characters who have already left. Jeannie left a few episodes after getting married and adopting her son Carlos. Carter married Kem at some point after leaving the show, though he does have a bit of a close call when he comes back after almost 4 years. In both Carter and Jeannie's cases, they end up separated from their spouses by the time they return to the show.


The moral of the story: this show likes it's characters unmarried. Dating is fine, but you simply can't be a major character and be married. The only main character who started the show married was Mark, who was divorced by the end of season two (apparently, he didn't catch on to the "don't get married" thing). After that, no major characters are ever married for more than a year. When two major characters get married, one of two things will happen within a year. One, they will both leave the show to have a happy little life SOMEWHERE ELSE or, two, one of them will die, so the other is widowed, but not married. Luby tried to take a third option, but eventually reverted to option numero uno.


5. You should never let your child work at County General.


Not for their sake (though it does seem a little too likely that they will get shot/stabbed/killed by falling helicopter), but for yours. Parents of the major characters on ER have a tendency to die. Benton's mom, Doug's dad, both of Mark's parents, Archie's dad, Luka's dad, plus both of Carter's grandparents all die, and almost all of them are from natural causes and old age.


6. Archie Morris is a Weasley


I was convinced by the whole thing with his kids from his sperm-donor days showing up. You know, how they're all redheads, even the black one. Normally, red hair is a recessive gene, so while some of hims kids could be redheads, it's unlikely that they all would be, and the one with the African American mom would certainly not inherit the red-hair gene. Unless, of course, it's the version of the red hair gene that the Weasley family has, which is dominant over any othe possible hair color. Yup, Ron has a cousin, and his name is Archie. Actually, he's more like Bill's age or a little older. Archie was Bill and Charlie's favorite American cousin growing up. But he's a squib. Hence his poor relationship with his father.



And I shall close with some ER quotes:


"You were the victim of a truly astounding confluence of technical problems, miscalculated pharmaceuticals, and a rat activist." -Lucien, to Neela


"Luka, last time you went, we thought you died. But instead you came back with Malaria" -Abby



Carter: Well, if you'll all excuse me, I'm going to put my years of education and training to the test... by drawing blood from a heroin addict! Come on Ivan.


Sunday, January 17, 2010

A summary of my obsessions thus far this school year.

Here's a brief outline of what I've been watching the last several months:

There's shows that I've just recently gotten into, and watched all the old episodes in a short amount of time-

*ER: It had been on since I was like 3 years old, and ran for 15 seasons, up until last year I guess they decided that they had ran out of ideas and/or fans. I'd watched a few episodes before, in my ROP Health Careers class Junior year of high school, but I'd never watched much. At a rate of one season every weeks or two, I went through and watched all 300 and some episodes. I'm not really sure why I love that show so much, but it has something to do with 1) I'm totally a Carter fangirl and 2) The medical stuff is really interesting to me. During this time, I alternated between omg totally premed and omg totally not premed, every day or so. Now, I'm back to no idea if i want to go that way or not.

Now, I finished ER in time to take a break from the compulsive TV on the Internet habit for dead week and finals, then, once I got home for christmas break, my sister got me watching...

*Torchwood: Is it the action? The sexiness? The welsh accents? The (sometimes) creative sci-fi plots? Probably some combination of the above got me completely hooked after watching one or two episodes. So, during the 3 weeks that I was at home, with no homework to do or textbooks to read, I watched the 3 seasons of Torchwood (2 full seasons, plus the 5-episode miniseries for season 3). The show gets cheesy at times (I don't have a really high opinion of John Barrowman's acting skills), but I absolutely love it.

After finishing Torchwood, I decided that it was about time that I watch some of it's parent show...

*Doctor Who: I've just in the last couple of days finished with the specials that aired a couple of weeks ago. I was definitely aware of Doctor Who, but I'd never watched any of the new series or the classic ones. Now that I've watched all of NuWho, I may go back and watch some of the classic show- I've already watched a couple of serials from the 5th doctor. Because he's David Tennant's (the 10th doctor) favorite. So now I'm on the bandwagon, waiting just a few more months for season 5 and the debut of the 11th doctor. I'm to see Tennant go (because he's a great actor and definitely fun to look at), but I'm keeping an open mind on Matt Smith.


Then there's shows that are new-ish and I've been more or less keeping up with via Hulu:

*Flashforward: I come for the cast (Joseph Fiennes, John Cho, the guy who plays Norrington in Pirates whose name escapes me, then after a while, my favorite hobbit, Dominic Monaghan), I stay for... well it's just a good show, ok? It's kind of a trippy Sci Fi serial.

*Castle: Has been on since last winter. I had to watch it because it stars Nathan Fillion. And I kind of have a weakness for those quirky crime dramas.

Then there's shows that have been on forever that I've been more or less keeping up with:

*Scrubs: Probably my favorite sitcom. Kind of weird since they changed it this season and JD's only there some of the time, but I still like it.

*Bones: With my 3rd Favorite actor named David. I like it for similar reasons as those for liking Castle I guess. It's just been around a lot longer.


Which leads me to my all time favorite show...

*Numb3rs: Is the only show at this point that I actually have to watch when there's a new episode on, rather than just waiting to watch it on the internet. I've been watching Numb3rs since the second episode when I was in 8th grade. Except for a while last year when I lost interest (they kind of are running out of ideas), I've watched every Friday night whenever a new episode is on. And this season it's gotten better again, what with the Charmita wedding in the making. So yes, thank you Numb3rs for making math cool. It makes Differential Equations much more interesting when I know I can go solve crime with them. Or something.


So yes, I do watch too much TV. Yes, I am aware that it's not good for my GPA. But I don't see myself stopping any time soon. :D