E.r. - 05/06/04
 

"Midnight"



Cast: Noah Wyle, Laura Innes, Alex Kingston, Goran Visnjic, Maura Tierney, Ming-Na , Sherry Stringfield, Sharif Atkins, Mekhi Phifer, Linda Cardellini, Thandie Newton, Hallee Hirsh, Cole Hauser, Troy Evans.
Producer(s): John Wells, Michael Crichton, Neal Baer, Jack Orman.

Original Airdate: May 6, 2004.

How many more seasons is ER going to have? I haven't heard anything for after this season.

can someone translate the conversation between abby and weaver into english for me?

I was about to ask the same - my wife was talking to me about the baby and I didn't catch all of it. It seemed somewhat against protocol and that's about it.

Damn, this is not the episode to watch when you are expecting your first child before the end of the summer.

Damn, that was heartwrenching. I still have chills.

Re: Weaver and Abby - I think Weaver was trying to push Abby off of the County General match list because Abby wasn't able to pass her boards. Then again, all I got from it was Weaver was being a skeezy bureaucrat.

Oh damn, I'm in tears over that final scene with Carter and Kim saying goodbye to their child.

I read they're talking to about coming on next year. I think the first one has all ready signed on for a few episodes.

This was a pretty depressing night all around on NBC.

I thought Noah Wyle was great tonight.

I guess Abby won't become a character witness for Weaver:lol:

Glad i'm not the only one that didn't understand that shit!

My wife is due in three weeks (5/27) and my own twin brother died pretty much the same way 30 years ago (5/28)... I can relate.

I was flipping back to NBC during the commercials on w/oAT, and caught this, and then changed to finish watching the overrun. Since w/oAT started, I stopped watching ER.

This episode was very sad. Great acting by Noah Wyle though. I can't imagine how hard it would be to deal with something like that. I wasn't too sure what that Abby and Kerry thing was about either. I think Weaver was trying to screw Abby and Abby turned it around on her.

Interesting - I haven't read any casting rumors lately.

Noah was excellent - his best job in quite some time.

I am definitely glad the wife fell asleep during this ep - she had her second ultra-sound today and it looks like she might be able to come off of her pelvic rest (so things are looking up). This ep would not have been good for her spirits.

If they bring Morris back next year I will be extremely pissed off. We already have Weaver to hate, why the f'ck do we need him around?

I love the character that is Abby.

Recap "Midnight"

A very heartwrenching episode.

Carter and Kimba lose their child due to a very tragic circumstance where the baby squirmed around and tied a knot in his umbilical cord and died in the womb. Carter's father shows up for support and Carter needed every bit of it. The final scene where Carter knows he needs for Kim to say goodbye but she's so reluctant to even look at her son was so sad. It brought tears to my eyes.

Sam's creepy ex wants to try to put his family back together and asks Luka to step aside, which he does for the time being.

Neela is concerned with a 17 year old patient, Elgin, who was hypertensive and appeared to not be in good condition to be out and about. She convinces Pratt to go find him at his residence, and Elgin's not in good shape, but Pratt convinces Neela that he needs to just take better care of himself. Later Elgin shows up in the ER in heart failure. Pratt is exasperated by the turn of events.

It's graduation time for Neela and for Abby. Neela's large family shows up for the ceremonies, and she takes them on a tour of the ER, and gets an eyeful of a patient that wanders around in the buff. Abby barely makes it to walk across the stage. Luka and Susan are in attendance (as is Sam, her ex, and Alex). Afterwards she declines to celebrate with the gang, but calls her mom to tell her about graduation (though her degree was one of those "not quite done, on hold dependent on passing your finals" degee holders).

Weavers finds out that Abby failed her boards (way to go Morris!), and is concerned about Abby being a match while not passing her boards, which would be a bad thing for the hospital, and hints around perhaps trying to pass Abby off to her second choice, and Abby gets very legalistic and defensive about the skeeziness of Weaver's intonations. It was not a pleasant encounter. (I could have gotten the gist of it wrong given the way the dialogue flowed, but that what I got from their scene).

Good luck in a few weeks, G-berg. :up:

Did anyone else start to cringe when Abby called her mom?

Yes, I almost began to change the channel.

:lol: I did

I wonder if that was Sally Fields' voice on the other end? It kinda sounded like her.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one that need that Weaver/Abby converstation translated.

Didn't care for what they did to Carter. Jesus Christ, it's been 10 seasons now, can't the guy get a break??!

Also glad to see that NBC broke tradition and started ER at 10:05. I was finally able to see the ending of Smackdown! live.

err...not that it mattered...

Thanks... and right back at ya.

(This is number three for us... so we're seasoned. Have fun with your first one... you'll be reading these forums alot at 3 in the morning... not that you don't anyway... ;) )

I haven't slept good since I was a kid - I never know when I will be up reading the forum. It's my wife I am concerned about. I can subsist on an interrupted four or five hour sleep - she can't.

Screw NBC. They run Friends ridiculously long and then run ER ridiculously long too. My TiVo cut out right at the point where the fat kid had just come in and Carter was about to try to get his girlfriend to look at the baby.

My TiVo did the exact same thing. Luckily, I was able to catch the West Coast feed. Damn you NBC & Friends.

Re: abby and weaver.
The way that the match works is if you fail your step exam right before you are supposed to go into residency the residency program can drop you. Furthermore, MOST medical schools say that you must pass the boards before you enter residency and your medical school can keep you one more year without you getting a chance to take them over. Because of that I was surpirsed that she was allowed to take them again.

But if you get dropped from your residency it is totally up to the program that you are entering.

Wow. I'm glad there's no Tivo in Canada;) I was pretty depressing to watch right after the Friends finale. But i knew both shows were gonna overlap; it's NBC after all!!

Re: Weaver Abby conversation

County had Abby as one of their top 20 residents, which if Abby had them as her top choice would be a guarnteed job.

If a prospect does not pass their boards the hospital that was a match, then that hospital is out one resident, and can not choose another.

Weaver was saying that if Abby had County as her #1, maybe she should make her #2 pick her first choice. This would make County not fall one short and screw another hospital.

Abby stated that this is why all of this is suppose to be private and confidential, and Weaver was breaking the law and her and County could be sued.


This is what I got out of the conversaion, I could be wrong/confused as well

Hmm, I caught most of it then, it seemed like I missed a good part of the conversation at the time though.

Like I said, Weaver was being skeezy. :)

This was such a depressing night. First, Friends ends and then I watch Carter's baby die. The final scene was just heartbreaking.

Weaver sucks ass. THey need to fire her.

Great episode. Best this year IMO.

Can some one please fill me in after this point:

(My VCR stopped taping before it was finished)



How many minutes (approx) did I miss?

I can go with that now that she is a doc and not a nurse. They seem to have revamped her character completely. For the better. It also helps that her sideshow carnival family isn't on anymore.

My VCR cut off to. Personally, I'm glad it happened to the Tivo crowd too. I get tired of reading how superior they are. :)

From what my porous memory recalls, all that you missed was Abby calling her mother on her cell phone, telling her that she just attended her med school graduation (but when she looks at her diploma holder, it has one of those "tentative upon completion of final exams or fiscal responsibility" diploma holders in its place).

Umm.. I don't think you guys interpreted the Abby/Weaver conversation correctly. My understanding was that Weaver was saying that since Abby failed her boards, a residency program could drop her, but that since she has such strong clinical skills which Weaver has witnessed first-hand, she would basically guarantee a match at County as long as Abby ranked it as #1 on her match list. In essence, Weaver was promising Abby a residency the next year despite the fact that Abby failed her exam, but I believe Abby became defensive because she still felt like she would be able to pass them before it became a big issue with whatever program she matched to. And while Abby is correct that a discussion like this should not happen according to Match rules, this kinda stuff happens all the time in the real world.

Btw, I'm a 3rd year medical student myself, so I'm not just speaking out of my ass

This is how I took it also. But I was definitely a little confused.


I've missed a lot of ER over the last couple of seasons but started watching again this year because of Thandie Newton's appearances. Still a great hour of television, but still way too damn depressing, which is why I stopped watching before.

I think Weaver was more worried about losing a residency spot should Abby not pass her boards, so she was trying to foist Abby on another hospital as a contingency. Weaver was doing this because Abby's failure at her boards could potentially leave County General one resident short for a year because Abby would not be a resident (should she fail her board the second time as well).

If she truly was paranoid about losing a resident b/c of that then there is no reason to even rank her on the residency program's list. The status of whether a person passes or fails their boards is found out by all the programs before they have to submit their rank list

After finally watching this last night, I agree. It seems consistent with Weaver's character and with the way Abby reacted. Truly shows how much of a beotch that Weaver is considering how sympathetic Abby has been to Weaver in the last few episodes and has literally been a shoulder for her to cry on.