All right, folks, a BIG TIME advance preview for you today, as the folks out at Warner Brothers sent me a copy of ER Season 12.  You can’t buy this sucker before mid-January–January 12th to be more precise–so it’s a VERY advanced look we’re getting here.

Now, I’ll warn you up front, I have not seen much ER.  So the previous eleven seasons are kind of a haze for me.  But that’s okay, I’m good enough that I can review a piece on its own merits.  I do it every weekday, you know.

And ER is one piece that’ll make itself very clear from the outset.  See, the plot changes with every passing episode, pretty much, though there are some larger overarching issues that’ll take entire seasons to resolve.  So a synopsis here is going to have to be in the most general terms–it’s a teaching hospital in Chicago, and everybody’s got issues. EVERYBODY.  Every surgeon, every resident, every nurse, every patient.

EH. VREE. BAW. DEE.

Seriously, there’s issues like no tomorrow.  The characters are like walking drama repositories, and frankly, they have to be because this show is so tedious it’s insane.  I mean, they could start a drinking game around this so easily–someone wheels a patient in, take a drink.  Someone says “we need to talk”, take a drink.  Someone scowls at someone, take a drink.  You follow these rules and YOU’LL wind up in the ER yourself with ALCOHOL POISONING.

And if you include “someone has an awkward moment” in the rules you’ll drain a pony keg in about three episodes.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating slightly for effect, but the basic concept is accurate.  This is so deeply overdramatized that it’s not even funny, and frankly, so many things are so similar from one episode to the other that it’s basically just what I said above–personalities constantly clashing.  That’s all ER is.  Over and over and over again–personalities constantly clashing.

The Screenhead Ten Scale realizes that this is a niche product, and if you can”t get enough of the drama, you’ll love this to tears.  And as such, it hands out a six out of ten for being great but only for very specific people.