ER kicked off its second series of high-intensity drama and wry humour by introducing a character who would turn out to be a long-term member of--and a major irritation for--the inner-city Chicago hospital staff. After Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) is promoted to attending physician, the door is open for a new chief resident, and in walks Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), who wastes no time ruffling everyone's feathers with her strict managerial style and subtle putdowns. One of her prime targets, Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), struggles to balance her personal and professional life when she has to take care of her abandoned infant niece. The Lewis character grows the most during the series, along with second-year student John Carter (Noah Wylie), whose natural compassion gives way to professional ambition following the model of his teacher, the ambitious and self-absorbed Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle). Benton angles for a position with a renowned cardiovascular surgeon (Ron Rifkin) and has to deal with the fallout from a relationship with physician's assistant Jeannie Boulet (Gloria Reubens), yet he also starts to show some glimmers of humanity. Greene has his own problems trying to manage a long-distance marriage, while nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies) bounces back from her aborted first-series marriage attempt to start a new relationship with paramedic Shep (Ron Eldard, who also became Margulies' real-life partner). She buys her first house and enjoys an entire series out of the companionship of Doug Ross (George Clooney), who as always runs into problems with his cowboy style and philandering ways. But just when he's finally driven himself out of ER, he has to go play hero when he finds a boy pinned in a storm drain in an episode that was nominated for six Emmys and remains one of the, excuse the pun, high-water marks of the series. That and such episodes as "The Healers," which deals with the aftermath of Shep's daring fire rescue, prove that when ER was at its best, it was as good as anything on television.
Guest appearances include Lucy Liu as the mother of an AIDS-stricken boy, Red Buttons as an elderly husband, Joanna Gleason as an infomercial producer and Jake Lloyd (The Phantom Menace) as the son of a prostitute. DVD bonus features are a little lighter than on the first-series set, consisting of a commentary track (by co-executive producer Mimi Leder, editor Randy Jon Morgan and Laura Innes) on the series' first episode and "The Healers", a nine-minute spotlight on "Hell and High Water", an 11-minute piece on the series' multiple directors, 14 minutes of outtakes and a gag reel. --David Horiuchi (Review copyright Amazon.co.uk)
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