Doctors are television's perfect heroes. From Richard Boone in Medic through doctors Casey, Kildare and Welby to the bustling gang in St. Elsewhere, they have wielded their power like benevolent dictators. With a flick of the scalpel, they can make decisions of life and death, and with a consoling word reconcile people to either. They are privy to their patients' closest secrets, deepest fears, most traumatic life moments. Dressed in white, they watch over them like angels. And when they make their bedside pronouncements, they do it from above, like God.
The doctors on ER, however, are somewhat different. They don't look very glamorous, for one thing. Rushing with their gurneys through the busy Chicago emergency room where they work, they wear frazzled expressions and five- o'clock shadows. Patients come and go so quickly -- a gunshot victim here, a drug overdose there -- that the doctors have little time to accept congratulations, grieve over failure or make speeches about the wonderful work they do.
But these TV doctors are miracle workers nonetheless. ER, created by best- selling author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park, Disclosure), made its debut on NBC in mid-September with a cloudy prognosis. Hour-long TV drama had been in a long-term slump, pushed aside by the proliferating prime-time magazines. ER was scheduled, moreover, opposite the season's one other new medical drama -- CBS's Chicago Hope, which boasted bigger stars (E.G. Marshall, Mandy Patinkin) and the kind of high-pitched melodramatics that viewers seem more comfortable with. Yet ER was instantly a huge hit. In its first five weeks, the show has drawn an average Nielsen rating of 18.3, ranking in the top five among all prime-time series. It trounced Chicago Hope so thoroughly that the rival show had to slink away to another time slot. To be sure, ER gets a major boost from NBC's powerful Thursday-night lineup, anchored by Seinfeld. But that didn't help a limping L.A. Law in the same time slot last season; ER has improved on that show's audience by 43%.
Some have attributed ER's success to Americans' current anxiety about health care. A more likely explanation is simply that it supplies something that's been missing from TV for years. Medical dramas have long been out of fashion; the last successful one, St. Elsewhere, was less concerned with the nuts and bolts of medical care than with often baroque interpersonal drama and nuthouse comedy. ER has rediscovered the primal appeal of the doctor show, and a new generation of viewers is eagerly watching.