THE SHOW:

When last we left the intrepid crew of the emergency room at County General, there was plenty of change afoot. In ER - The Complete Fifth Season, George Clooney abandoned ship, leaving the role of sensitive, hunky doctor vacant, and the remaining characters were all shifting around. Dr. Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle) had given up a prestigious surgery slot to pursue a trauma fellowship, while Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston) remained under the thumb of Rocket Romano (Paul McCrane). Romano was pretty much the dude making everyone's life difficult, having recently taken over the chief role in the ER. Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle) continued to progress into his residency, supervising the eager med student Lucy Knight (Kellie Martin), while other characters had more personal subplots underway. Namely, Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) had begun a relationship with Corday, and Nurse Carol Hathaway (Juliana Margulies) revealed that she was pregnant with George Clooney's babies. Benton also found himself getting the wrong end of the stethoscope when his former partner (Lisa Nicole Carson) announced she was moving to Germany with her new fiancée and taking Peter's son with her.

This is pretty much where we are at when ER - The Complete Sixth Season (1999-2000) kicks off. ER operates in real time, with holiday episodes airing around the appropriate day and spanning from autumn to summer in the course of a complete season; this means only three months have progressed since the season five finale rolled to credits. To further shake things up, however, season six would see the introduction of many new characters, two of which are notable for the fact that they are now the main power couple on the show's twelfth and current season. Dr. Luka Kovac is there on the first episode, a mysterious Croatian doctor who is filling in shifts in the ER. Played by Goran Visnjic (Deep End), he is also filling in the heartthrob slot Clooney left open. His character has the same mixture of sensitivity and recklessness that Clooney's Doug Ross did, but he also comes complete with a haunted past (the family he lost to the war in his homeland) and a divine accent. Kovac even ends up befriending Hathaway, and they become the leading doctor/nurse team in the department.

Nurse Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney, Newsradio) first makes her appearance during episode 8, playing one of the nurses who helps deliver Hathaway's twins. A couple of episodes later, she joins the ER as a medical student, becoming a new foil for Carter. Like that character in his early years, she is concerned she may not have the makings of a good ER doctor because she cares too much. Her main difference from Carter, however, is she arrives fraught with personal problems and financial woe, making her far more of the "common man" character than he was. Abby is also in place to take over as the young eager beaver once Kellie Martin leaves the cast.

Obviously, both of these characters are excellent additions to the show since they are now part of the old guard six years later. They both slide into the pool with ease, and within a couple of episodes, it feels like they had been there all along. It's actually one of ER's greatest strengths, being able to continually renew itself, letting the ensemble be a true ensemble so that the show doesn't fall to pieces if a key member leaves. The formula isn't a strict one, but the natural order of an emergency room lends itself to a particular group dynamic that must be maintained. For instance, Clooney's character was a pediatrician, and when he left, a new pediatrics attending had to be hired. Thus, we get Cleo Finch (Michael Michele, Homicide: Life on the Street), a sophisticated protector of children and a new romantic interest for Peter Benton.

Other folks joining the cast include Erik Palladino (Over There) as Dr. Dave Malucci, the hot shot who needs to learn a few lessons in humility, and the return of Ming-Na as Dr. Jing-Mei "Deb" Chen, who had been Carter's rival in the first season before leaving in disgrace. In addition to Kellie Martin's exit in one of the more dramatic and shocking episodes of the sixth season, ER also loses one of my favorite characters, Jeanie Boulet (Gloria Reuben), an HIV-positive woman whose main function at the hospital is being an advocate for patients. Her departure is orchestrated with finesse, though, in a story line that makes sense for the character. When a newborn's HIV-positive mother dies, leaving her baby an orphan with the disease, Jeanie adopts the child and leaves County General so she can take care of him.

Many of the other main story lines on the show involve recurring guest stars. In the first half alone, Carter gets involved with a wealthy breast-cancer patient played by Rebecca De Mornay (Risky Business), Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes, who also directs some episodes) hires her mentor (Alan Alda) only to discover he's in the early stages of Alzheimer's, and Nurse Hathaway tries to help a pregnant junkie (Martha Plimpton, Parenthood) get healthy. Mark also loses his mother and brings his father (Northern Exposure's John Cullum) to Chicago from San Diego so he can keep an eye on him. There is actually a little bit of a Northern Exposure reunion, because Peg Phillips (Ruth-Anne on the series) appears in episode 11 as a patient. Other one-off patients include Gabrielle Union (Bring It On), Shia LaBeouf (Even Stevens), Mitch Pileggi (The X-Files), and Borat's sidekick, Ken Davitian.

Naturally, much more happens on a given season of ER, and The Complete Sixth Season is no different. Every character gets a story arc or two, and the soap opera nature of the series means that every episode gives the show another twist. Each season does have its more memorable moments, however, and in the case of number six, there are plenty of good ones.

One that I am sure many will enjoy is Hathaway giving birth to her twins, and the ups and downs that follow for a single mother who also has a demanding full-time job. This change in her life naturally adds more dramatic tension to any case where she has to deal with children, including a mother with Munchausen's Syndrome and an emotionally devastating episode where she and Kovac have to tell a young brother and sister that their parents have died. Also shoved through the emotional ringer is Corday, who gets caught up with a vicious criminal who has carjacked and killed several women. While under her care, he attempts to engage her in some sub-Silence of the Lambs mind games that can come off a little weak, but some of the hard choices he pushes on Lizzy makes it an effective narrative device for the character.

Probably the one that stands out the most in the minds of those who watched the shows when they aired was the Valentine's Day episode--#13, "Be Still My Heart." David Krumholtz (Numb3rs) comes into the ER with a headache, and his treatment creates friction between Carter and Lucy. This causes them both to miss that his headache is really a pronounced sign of a more agitated state of mind, and this slip has dire consequences for the both of them. Without giving too much away, it's the impetus for Lucy no longer being on the show and will set Carter's trajectory for the rest of the season. The follow-up episode is of the variety that ER does best: the fast-paced medical thriller where doctor's rush through difficult cases, barely pausing to let the audience catch up. The writers and producers may hold our hands through these kinds of shows, but it's only to keep us running behind their docs.

The back half of the season is a little heavy, both with Carter's fallout and Mark seeing his father through his cancer. Death is always a powerful force on ER, but it has an even more ravaging effect when it strikes close to one of the doctors and he or she is powerless to stop it. Episode 20 is one of the saddest in the show's history. Abby also has several rites of passage to go through as she gets involved in complicated cases far beyond what is required of her. On the lighter side, we learn more about Kovac while he and Carol share a friendship and the producers tease us with the possibility that their feelings may run deeper. Of course, who could blame them if they did? She's gorgeous, fun, and compassionate. He's handsome, sweet, and tortured. They're each like some kind of hat trick of love. Then again, when Carol has Doug Ross trying to get her to move to the Pacific Northwest with their children, it's no surprise that season six also turned out to be the last one for Juliana Margulies.

The season finale is the usual ER big event. Benton and Kovac are dispatched to an elementary school where robbers on the run are shooting at the kids. A disagreement in the field leads to heat back at the hospital, and while Benton has to perform some acrobatic surgery on a child, Kovac finds more frustration with a pregnant patient who wants to refuse surgery and let her baby die. Unlike other seasons, this one doesn't end with fiery explosions, however, the last show rings out on more interpersonal explosions, reminding us that ER is nothing without its characters as the creators cement the changed guard for season 7.

THE DVD

Video:
One of the earliest shows to switch over to widescreen, ER - The Complete Sixth Season was put on DVD in a "matted" widescreen format to match the original airing but fine-tuned for widescreen sets. It all looks really crisp, I didn't see any compression issues.

Sound:
The no-frills sound mix is clean and clear, with no distortion or problems. There are also Spanish and French subtitles.

Extras:
Just about every episode has deleted scenes. They are sometimes just quick character moments, other times substantial chunks that filled out some of the stories on the episodes or even set up new scenarios we never saw. They can either be accessed from the episode selection menu, where they are tied to the installment they were cut from, or you can watch them from their own menu, either selecting an individual excision or watching them all at once.

Disc 6 also has the season's gag reel, which has some funny bloopers, some not-so-funny bloopers, on-set practical jokes, and one mooning with two butts. It lasts about twelve minutes. (The reel, not the mooning. That's mercifully brief.)

The packaging sticks to the design of previous seasons, with a skinny, folding cardboard holder that slides into an outer slipcase. The interior has a disc-by-disc, episode-by-episode guide, giving synopses, writing and directing credits, and indicating which episodes have "Outpatient Outtakes."

FINAL THOUGHTS:
While other shows falter when faced with cast changeovers, ER - The Complete Sixth Season never skips a beat, maintaining the high level of quality the series established in its first five seasons. As far as television shows of the last ten years are concerned, none has the track record ER has for consistent performances in prime time. The characters are always alluring and the situations the doctors face are attention grabbing. This sixth season falls smack in the middle of the show's current history, and it represents the program at an apex. Highly Recommended.

Jamie S. Rich is a novelist and comic book writer. He is best known for his collaborations with Joelle Jones, including the hardboiled crime comic book You Have Killed Me, the challenging romance 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, and the 2007 prose novel Have You Seen the Horizon Lately?, for which Jones did the cover. All three were published by Oni Press. His most recent projects include the futuristic romance A Boy and a Girl with Natalie Nourigat; Archer Coe and the Thousand Natural Shocks, a loopy crime tale drawn by Dan Christensen; and the horror miniseries Madame Frankenstein, a collaboration with Megan Levens. Follow Rich's blog at Confessions123.com.