I was obsessed with ER back in the day but found this thread far too late - CBS were already at the end of season 2 by the time I discovered it. Luckily I bought box sets 1-8 about 18 months ago but hadn't yet gotten around to watching. I'm rectifying this now though - averaging 2 episodes per night - completely ignoring all these supposedly hot new shows in favour of re-runs from 1994 and I'm loving every minute of it.
Last night I watched Love's Labor Lost and the two subsequent episodes. Still one of the most gripping and well scripted/shot hours of TV ever.
I used to tape and re watch each episode hundreds of times before the next week's instalment and I've impressed myself at how much I can quote from some of the scripts! There's so much I am getting out of it now as a 40 year old as opposed to a 15 year old though.
I know I'm way behind you all in my re-watch but my initial thoughts are about how young the residents were and how old and maternal I feel towards them now. Susan's struggle to be heard and taken seriously in such a male-dominated working industry is really resonating with me and I'm appreciating the character development with both her and Mark and how they have swapped places in the last few episodes I've watched - Mark, the all-round good guy, hugely competent and well respected at the beginning of the season, has started to believe his own hype and got too cocky, leading so such a huge downfall in LLL while Susan who was more unsure of her abilities has grown in confidence - having overcome a similar mistake leading to patient death - to the point where she is favoured by the new Chief Attending (or whatever his title is - Michael Ironside).
The writing is so good. As someone who often feels like I have more to prove in the workplace because I am of a very different social class and background to most of my colleagues (academia), I am getting a lot more out of Susan's relationship with her sister and I can just imagine the impact of some of my crazy relatives turning up at my place of work. Similarly, I felt huge empathy for Benton in the early episodes of this season. I thought his sister was begin very unfair - it was obvious he cared for his mother but he doesn't exactly have a 9-5 job and while I feel for her and the sacrifices she made to ensure he had the opportunity to go to med school, she surely can;t have expected him to suddenly be readily available as soon as he graduated? Benton is a complex character though and this sympathy has been waning in light of his attitude to his mother's fall and his part in it and his refusal to face facts and put her in a home. The writers really did do an excellent job of portraying realistic and flawed human beings.