Justice For Rocket! Why Dr. Romano’s Death in ER Was TV’s Most Frustrating

https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/justice-for-rocket-why-dr-romano-in-er-was-tvs-most-frustrating-death/

ER ran for 15 years and focused on the staff at an Emergency Room in Chicago – so unsurprisingly, there were a lot of deaths over the course of the series. Like many a genre show, episodes where everybody lives were fairly rare. The regular cast were also subjected to a series of traumatic incidents from which their fellow medical staff were required to save them, including but not limited to car accidents, heart attacks, suicide attempts, stabbings, sexual assault, getting kidnapped, being held hostage, getting beaten up, getting shot, and accidentally stepping on broken glass. That last one wasn’t quite so dramatic.

Although they usually pulled through, ER was not afraid to kill off regular or recurring characters. Mark Greene died of a brain tumor, Dennis Gant was killed by a train (possibly by suicide), and Michael Gallant was killed while on active duty in Iraq. As we’ve seen, County General in Chicago was a dangerous place to work; Lucy Knight was stabbed to death while on shift and Greg Pratt was killed by an exploding ambulance. And that’s without even mentioning all the friends and family members who die from various causes over the course of the show (Carter’s grandmother, Carter’s son, Weaver’s wife, Greene’s father, both Jing-Mei’s parents, Benton’s nephew, Benton’s ex-girlfriend, Benton’s mother… the list goes on).

Most of these deaths were dramatic, emotional gut-punches that tugged on the audience’s heartstrings and resulted in some truly acclaimed television, all heightened by the fact every character’s job was to save lives and they were frequently trying desperately to save each other in the ER itself. ‘All in the Family’ (Lucy Knight’s death) and ‘On the Beach’ (Mark Greene’s death) regularly appear on ER ‘Best Episodes’ lists.

There’s one main character death on ER, though, that is notoriously strange – ridiculous, ironic, feeling long overdue to many, probably aiming for dramatic irony but instead landing in the territory of just plain daft: the death of Robert “Rocket” Romano.