ER: Not Keeping It Real

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 15, 2005 3:04PM

Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, strippers who really like you and television medical dramas. What do these things have in common? None of them are real (except for House. That shit’s all true. The woman from last season with a 30-pound tumor? Totally happened to someone at Northwestern).

Confirmation of the latter was provided in an article on CNN.com about Dr. Roxanne Roberts, who is the director of the division of trauma clinical services at Stroger Hospital nee Cook County Hospital a.k.a. County General on the NBC television show ER. Roberts says she puts in at least 60 hours a week and has been at Cook County for the past 25 years.

Despite a name that sounds like it was ripped from either a Fox prime-time drama or a Beatles song, Dr. Roberts is a real doc and says she rarely experiences anything like the crazy-ass plotlines of ER. She says the show is “not realistic” and that “no one could ever be that busy all the time.” A quick Lexis-Nexis search reveals that a helicopter has never fallen on anyone at Cook County either.

So this means there's probably not some really good looking guy in a cell at 26th and California who's trying to free his wrongfully-convicted brother through a series of Rube Goldbergian plot machinations either.

Image: CNN.com