The initial pilot of "Emergency!" was full of the politics of creating the position of "paramedic." But in that case, it was essential to the plot.
In this made-for-TV movie, we get more of the same, but in this case it IS the plot. Over and over we see and hear "we don't do it that way in L.A." to which they get the response from the Seattle crew, "Then you need to change your laws." And after hearing how Seattle paramedics can do things in the field John and Roy can't do back home, we then see rescues that conveniently use those forbidden skills. It goes so far as to show the Seattle paramedics using a special medical tool the primary trauma doctor rigged together for them just that morning. "It worked in Vietnam," he says of the design. We even get to sit in on a meeting where we hear that congress has failed to pass national legislation on the paramedic program at which point Roy quips, "The cost of one ship out in that channel going up in flames would pay for the program for 10 years!" Yes, you guessed it--shortly a ship DOES go up in flames!
That ship fire is, in fact, the key point of the entire movie. But it takes forever to get to that point. The movie clocks in at roughly 90 minutes, and the fire doesn't even happen for the first hour of that time. Between the aforementioned "political" rescues, the rest of the first hour is taken up setting up several different story lines that culminate in everyone from each story line being on the same ship at the same time.
I truly like Emergency!, so much so that I bought the DVDs of this final set of TV movies so that I could say I have watched every episode. However, this one is not one of the better episodes.
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