Reviews

Little need to reiterate that this is a terrible film; the other reviews do that well. I wanted to add a particular displeasure not yet mentioned: The cliché ending filmed at convocation, with a voice-over of the Animal House/American Graffiti "Where are they now?" blurbs. Suddenly, in the last minute of the film, it decides that it is a retrospective! Until that point it was a 2001 movie depicting 2001 girls, but now we are to imagine it as a movie from 2030 looking back at the turn of the century! Obviously this was tacked on in postproduction as a way of cleaning up the end and trying to give the picture more of a direction. Strange, though, that they had Dominique Swain do it; apparently her voice and diction hasn't changed at all in the intervening 30 years, and she still speaks like a teenager. Guess no-one was paying too much attention. Neither should you...

A dozen or so characters meet each other, speak pseudo-profound lines (Oh, she thought her father never really loved her!) and then pull their clothes off to engage in R-rated softcore sex, which is a little nudity here and there and a lot of huffing and puffing. It's all very fake-o film noir (or is it film sepiatone?), in which emotionless blank looks, staring into the sky, the twinkling lights of downtown at night, and characters pulling on cigarettes are passed off as a meaningful comment and reflection on the human and social condition.

Why bother? The screenplay doesn't have the chops to generate much interest, nor does the Cable-TV type sex.

An awful artifact of the awful 80s. Everything that was part of the poisonous pop culture of the 1980s is present in this unappealing distasteful show where "humour" means a steady stream of sarcasm and insults, misanthropy and self-loathing. Every character on this show hates themselves, their spouses, and the other habitues of the bar, with the exception of "Woody" the slow yokel bartender, who is not hated so much as just kicked around like a puppy.

The stock in trade of "Cheers" is the insincerity-as-punchline:

Sam: "Darlin you know I think you are the kindest, sweetest, most lovable person I've ever been blessed to know." Diane: "Oh, Sam, that's so sweet. I never knew you felt that way." Sam: "Of course I do. Now show me your hooters." {HEE YUK YUK YUK!!!}

"Carla" is probably the most vile and repulsive character ever presented on television. You know the cliche: The angry, insulting, androgynistic, misogynistic, vitriolic hard-nose who is nevertheless lovable and estimable because she is so quick-minded and witty when she insults others.

"Norm" and "Cliff," two alcoholics who spend every day on a bar-stool (the former always in his mailman's uniform suggesting a bee-line from the mailbox to the pub, the latter alluding to absentee wife and kids), presented as good old shoulder-biffers; the episode always ends before they get really drunk and stagger on home.

"Diane" shown as an intelligent educated woman with a very nice apartment of her own: As a beermaid, on a beermaid's wages? (And why does this bar only have two beermaids, two bartenders, and no busboys? And why are there so few drunks?)

The moral of this show seems to be that mutual hatred, if sufficiently pickled in pilsner, becomes fraternity and comraderie.

This show is in the subtext and genre of the old Jack Webb Mark VII productions of the 1950s and 1960s, Dragnet and Adam-12 most notably. The world of suburban Los Angeles is portrayed as a climate of danger and mishap, and the population thereof as irresponsible people who get themselves into jams requiring the salvific help of the paramedic crew of station 51.

Whereas in the crime shows the heroes had to protect the decent citizens from the "bad eggs," in Emergency they have to protect them from themselves. The scripts go out of their way to portray Angelenos as hapless fools: Children get their arms stuck in swimming-pool drains, fat guys at the Rose Bowl game choke on hot dogs, housewives go a little nutty on "you call them diet pills -- I call them goof balls!" and teenagers burn their houses down while working on model rockets.

The show consists of about four or five vignettes of rescue calls where the paramedics strap the victims down and transfer them for follow-up treatment in the "Rampart Hospital." At this time the show shifts to an abbreviated medical-show format. Rampart is an idealised hospital environment in which doctors are always available and atruistic, treatment is delivered rapidly, and, apparently, free of charge.

Emergency was done in the 1970s but its worldview and politics are of the

early-1960s. Everyone in a uniform, be they doctor, nurse, paramedic, policeman or firefighter is your friend who has no other desire but to serve the public good.

Emergency also features some great footage of the early-70s LA landscape, plus haircuts, cars, clothes, seersucker suits, and so on.