Word: comical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Actually, that is a good description of the adrenaline-pumped two-hour premiere episode. Since then, ER has settled back into more conventional storytelling, with predictable character developments, comic interludes and some unwelcome sentimentality. On last week's episode, surgeon Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) brought his young daughter to the hospital, and her wise- child observations were enough to induce diabetic shock. (Talking to a little girl whom her father has just treated: "My daddy's your doctor." "(Will) he help make me better?" "That's what doctors do.") Still, the show has retained its grungy immediacy, without the hand...
...Bull Run and Chancellorsville, and survived. Some of the best passages in Family occur when Frazier follows, in a rented car, the marches undertaken by the 55th and tries to take himself back in time. Usually he succeeds, and when he fails he still shows his familiar flair for comic relief: "I figured that my suitcase, briefcase and golf clubs probably weighed about the same as the full kit and rifle carried by a private in the 55th. I considered parking the car and trying some of this march myself, fully loaded, just to get an idea what...
...begat Buster Keaton, who did physical comedy better than anyone ever did, with the exception of Harold Lloyd, and whose works are still fine (see "The General," "The Navigator" and "700 Brides"). And Sennett also begat Chaplin, who learned from him but went well beyond to become the finest comic artist ever, the Little Tramp who mixed laughter and tears. And Chaplin created "City Lights" and "The Gold Rush" and "The Great Dictator" and "Modern Times" and they were very good indeed, taking silent film to a new dimension and adding sound judiciously and creatively...
...psychiatrist is given some good lines. His response to John's description of the unattainable Lisa provokes a hilariously digressive musing on a bikini-clad would-be Lolita form his distant past. But Sachs' timing is sometimes off, robbing the lines of their comic potential...
Guzman doesn't make much use of the comic potential of the subject. Other themes, like John's conflict with his parents, are similiarly suggested then abandoned, to the frustration of the viewer...