This episode is among the weakest for a show that ran 15 long seasons. The writers seemed to want Abby to have a spin with each character (literally, with desk manager Frank) as she wraps up her tenure at County.
Abby has a confrontation with Banfield (Angela Bassett in a painfully scenery-chewing role as frosty, imperialistic ER Chief with a heart-rending loss in her past) and two ridiculous scenes: Giving a suicidal teen a syringe of a heart-stopping drug as "plan B" if he doesn't jump and the knee slapper of Abby busting in on a department meeting lecturing that the ER takes the patients nobody else wants and that Taggart (Linda Cardellini) was just doing her job.
Watching Abby spew platitudes and lecture department heads had me waiting if she was going to demand they recite the Serenity prayer with her.
Not content that she hasn't thrown out all her fairy dust, Abby has a faker of a feel-good scene doing the tango with Frank (Troy Evans) who's astonished doing the tango with a dance partner yields better results than following foot positioning stickers on the floor. It really wasn't that much of a shocker, Frank, nor did it give any warm n fuzzies.
Morris (Morris Erby) serves up another fake moment as he learns it's Abby's last day. The writers also dust off the rabbi who married her and Luka now appearing as an ER patient who's stunned "Abigail" ("It's Abby!!") doesn't recognize him.
Luckily Haleh (Yvette Freeman) saves the day and takes Abby to the basement to see the locker tags on the wall for staff who left County. Freeman makes this scene quite touching and saves this episode from its characters overacting and all the ridiculous teeny plot threads.
It was about this point I was begging for ER to be sent to the woodshed. It no longer had the touchstone characters like Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) or Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle) who helped create one of the best long-running weekly drama series and featured B level actors (Rebecca DeMornay, Ray Liotta, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, Christina Hendricks, Teri Garr, Lucy Liu and many more) in good roles.
A handful of episodes later, the series limped off the stage, much to our relief.
Abby has a confrontation with Banfield (Angela Bassett in a painfully scenery-chewing role as frosty, imperialistic ER Chief with a heart-rending loss in her past) and two ridiculous scenes: Giving a suicidal teen a syringe of a heart-stopping drug as "plan B" if he doesn't jump and the knee slapper of Abby busting in on a department meeting lecturing that the ER takes the patients nobody else wants and that Taggart (Linda Cardellini) was just doing her job.
Watching Abby spew platitudes and lecture department heads had me waiting if she was going to demand they recite the Serenity prayer with her.
Not content that she hasn't thrown out all her fairy dust, Abby has a faker of a feel-good scene doing the tango with Frank (Troy Evans) who's astonished doing the tango with a dance partner yields better results than following foot positioning stickers on the floor. It really wasn't that much of a shocker, Frank, nor did it give any warm n fuzzies.
Morris (Morris Erby) serves up another fake moment as he learns it's Abby's last day. The writers also dust off the rabbi who married her and Luka now appearing as an ER patient who's stunned "Abigail" ("It's Abby!!") doesn't recognize him.
Luckily Haleh (Yvette Freeman) saves the day and takes Abby to the basement to see the locker tags on the wall for staff who left County. Freeman makes this scene quite touching and saves this episode from its characters overacting and all the ridiculous teeny plot threads.
It was about this point I was begging for ER to be sent to the woodshed. It no longer had the touchstone characters like Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) or Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle) who helped create one of the best long-running weekly drama series and featured B level actors (Rebecca DeMornay, Ray Liotta, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, Christina Hendricks, Teri Garr, Lucy Liu and many more) in good roles.
A handful of episodes later, the series limped off the stage, much to our relief.