Sharp, Ansel M., Charles A. Register, and Paul W.
Grimes.Economics of Social Issues. 17th ed. Boston:
McGraw-Hill/Irwin, 2006. Chapter 11 illustrates
how unemployment responds to changes in ag-
gregate demand and aggregate supply.
Paul B. Trescott
See also Airline industry; Automobile industry;
Business and the economy in the United States; De-
mographics of the United States; Immigration to the
United States; Income and wages in the United
States; Recession of 1990-1991.
ER
Identification Television drama series
Creator Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
Date Premiered on September 19, 1994
In an era when half-hour comedy shows ruled prime-time
television, this drama series was a smashing success, bely-
ing the network’s original fear that a new, hour-long weekly
drama series might not attract viewers.
Based on his personal work experience at Massachu-
setts General Hospital, novelist Michael Crichton
craftily created a familiar series setting, a hospital,
and then gave the theme a twist, centering the
program on the hectic lives of hospital emergency
personnel instead of on their pa-
tients. Crichton worked with the
producer John Wells and an exten-
sive cast to create a phenomenal
two-hour pilot program focused on
twenty-four hours at a trauma cen-
ter at County General Hospital in
Chicago.ERcenters on the lives of
devoted doctors, caring nurses, and
interesting support staff in a night-
time soap opera that quickly spins
from one medical emergency to
the next. The characters are strong
individuals with a wide range of
personal issues: attempted suicide,
nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna
Margulies); alcoholism and woman-
izing, Dr. Doug Ross (George
Clooney); and marital constraints,
Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Ed-
wards). Characters also deal with the stress and anx-
iety of being: young and female in a predomi-
nantly male profession, Dr. Susan Lewis (Sherry
Stringfield); young and African American, Dr. Peter
Benton (Eriq La Salle); and young and wealthy in
the workaday world, Dr. John Carter (Noah Wyle).
The characters’ concerns and frustrations with one
another create working relationships with intensity
equal to the high drama of working in a big-city gen-
eral medical center. The program leaps from one
dramatic scene to another, always focusing on the in-
terplay of the characters in a traumatic situation.
WhileERis like other medical programs in its
background and setting, its plot is different because it
does not focus on medical geniuses or kindly saviors
performing miracles to ease patients’ ills; instead, it
focuses on six or seven main characters, their interac-
tions with each other and subordinate staff, and their
personal and professional development in a chaotic
environment. Throughout the 1990’s, the characters
and their relationships with one another slowly
evolved and changed: medical students became in-
terns and later residents, staff fell in and out of love
with one another, and personnel changed. Each epi-
sode left the audience sitting on the edge, wondering
what would happen next and how the next episode
could possibly be any more exciting.Impact Three days after the pilot aired, on Septem-
ber 22, 1994, the series took its position on the new314 ER The Nineties in America
Anthony Edwards, flanked by fellowERactors Noah Wyle and Julianna Margulies,
accepts the award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series
during the 1999 Screen Actors Guild Awards show.(AP/Wide World Photos)