Thursday night TV: Old school style.

Previously on ER: Nobody watched it for ten years.

Carter needs a kidney transplant. Some chick needs a heart transplant. She has a cute moppet daughter. Neela and Sam go to Seattle (convenient) to pick up this heart, and whaddayaknow, it resides inside a little boy in Doug Ross's... clinic? hospital? it's unclear (or I'm not paying attention... who knows). Carol Hathaway works there too, but in some kind of admin capacity. She wears suits and a name badge instead of scrubs, that's how we know she's not a doctor. Or at least I don't think she is.

Also conveniently, there's a kidney there too that's also going to, surprise, Chicago, so Neela and Sam pick that up as well. They know it's going to Northwestern in Chicago, but somehow no one figures out that it's going to Carter. The little boy's grandmother is played by Susan Sarandon, but no one knows why. So the kid dies, and Clooney and Hathaway convince Sarandon to donate the heart. She cries, they cry, it's all very boring. This takes about 45 minutes of the episode. Nobody cares.

Meanwhile, Carter is in a hospital bed with skinny legs and no pants, and is inexplicably lying on top of the blanket, but complaining that he's cold. In walks one Peter Benton, who is now on staff at Northwestern, but has somehow just discovered that Carter is there, even though he's been there for what is presumably a few days. Also, Carter has been supposedly tooling around Chicago for a few weeks now, and somehow these two haven't run into each other yet. They chat it up for a while, Carter vaguely tells us that he and Kem are some kind of separated, because apparently Thandie Newton is too good for the er now, even though I'm not really sure what she's actually done since she was on ER. Benton is apparently still married to? dating? the annoying actress with the curly hair, and Reese is 13. (And the Doug/Carol kids have a spelling test. But more on that in a few.)

Back in Seattle, Ross wanders into the waiting area thingy where Neela and Sam are hanging out, and asks them where they work. The three of them have a really boring, awkward exchange that goes something like this:

Ross: I did my residency at County.
Neela: Oh.
Ross: Does Kerry Weaver still work there?
Neela: No, she left a few years ago. (See, now a fun Kerry Weaver anecdote would have been well placed here)
Ross: How about Susan Lewis?
Sam shakes her head.
Ross: how about Peter Benton?
Sam shakes her head.
Neela: Do you know Abby Lockhart?
Clooney shakes his head. (And actually, he would have a connection to Abby because she delivered the twins. But whatever.)

And so on. Seriously, this was the actual dialogue. How could they possibly not have even been able to come up with fun stories to tell about the old doctors? All they could think of was to name people? Moving on. He bumps into Carol in the hallway, where they chat about Sarandon, and then Carol tells him that the kids have a spelling test, and that the casting department was too lazy and cheap to cast 2 ten year old girls, so they are therefore invisible.

Sam and Neela miss their plane (I don't know) and end up on a tour plane with a reggae band. I don't know.

Back at the ranch, some doctors rush into Carter's room and start putting him on a stretcher. They found him a kidney and it's on its way. Benton follows the surgeons into the OR. How come the OR's on this show look nothing like the OR's on Grey's Anatomy? Benton acts obnoxious and dad-like, hovering over the surgery and annoying the surgical team. Carter gets a new kidney, which we get to look at way too many times, and the chick with the cute kid gets a new heart. Both surgeries are directed in such a slow pace that I start to be confused about which show I'm watching. I half expect a Brandi Carlile song to start playing while George Clooney waxes poetic about gooey organs.

Carter's in recovery. He wakes up and is immediately alert enough to push the medication button and have a whole conversation with Benton, who's still hovering. They chat about their wives or some shit. Carter is also alert and lucid enough to call Kem on his cell phone, which he's using in the ICU or wherever he is that has a bunch of monitors that are definitely not, like, affected by cell phone usage or anything.

Carol and Doug are in bed. Her phone rings. She picks it up. I'm not kidding. It's Anthony Edwards. He wants to know why some dude named Denny keeps asking him about his brain tumor, and how to get cheap flights to Hawaii. That time, I was kidding. It's someone from the hospital? clinic? wherever it is they work, telling her that the heart transplant went well. Oh, and the kidney went to... some doctor. They profess their love for each other, and we fade to black.

"Some doctor"? Really, ER? Nowhere in there could you have worked in that Doug and Carol knew that Carter was sick? In all of that name dropping business, his name didn't come up? For serious? Come on. What is the point of bringing back old characters if they're not all going to interact with each other? Yes, I'm looking at you too, L Word. (Hey! Is that Marina I see on that TV screen??) Sorry, got distracted there for a minute.

And what was the point of bringing on a high profile movie star like Sarandon, just to give her a random storyline that no one cares about? Why create new, one off stories for old characters who are just visiting, when we all know full well that the audience cares much more about reminiscing?

Next week, Neela leaves to go... somewhere, it's also unclear. But, hey! That was Maura Tierney in the preview! Now, wouldn't it have been fun if Tierney and Margulies AND Luka were in the SAME episode?? Also, if everybody dies/leaves/disappears/reappears now, what's going to happen in the series finale? Rory Gilmore is going to be the only character left (no, seriously, Alexis Bledel is guest starring), and she's not even supposed to be on this show.