I did not watch ER in the 1990s because it was too gross. Or, at least, I assumed it would be. I’m a pretty squeamish person so, despite the fact that the show had become a watercooler series even among some of my friends in high school, I took a pass on all the scalpels and sutures and stats. The first serial drama I truly loved was The West Wing. I loved the speed of it, the energy, the way they all talked with such high-wire fluency and casual erudition. It was, like ER, and like so many of the other series I’d come to love over the next decade, a fantasy of competence. Just a little less gross.
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