GRRRRR!

(Wherein I rant a bit about a TV show. Move on if easily bored.)

After the conclusion of this past season, I decided that ER, which I have watched faithfully since its second or third episode way back in its first year, is going to have to work pretty damned hard to keep me coming back next year. This season was, in my view, terrible. There were too many overwrought episodes set in Africa that kept making the same points over and over; characters were dragged incessantly through emotional dreck for no reason at all; a favorite character of mine was killed off in as shockingly bad a manner as I can recall; the cast was once again allowed to bloat with all manner of boring newcomers (I may like Parminder Nagra enough as an actress to confer upon her "Move Over Britney!" status, but her character is a dud); the season finale ended with one of the dumbest cliffhangers I have seen since "Why, Bobby, what are you doing in the shower?"; and so on. About the only good thing about this season was that Maura Tierney got to do something other than stand around looking weepy.

Well, apparently the producers have already put themselves in the hole, as far as I am concerned. Alex Kingston, who played Dr. Corday, has been bumped from the show. According to the article, this is so they can keep focusing on "younger" characters (i.e., the ones I don't care one whit about). So off goes a long-established and interesting character so we can watch more of Linda Cardellini playing the single-mom nurse with the stalker husband. Yippee.