Is it time to pull the plug on the nation's most interminably long running hospital drama?

I like to relax on a Thursday evening every now and then, watching the local NBC affiliate, and this is just what I was doing last night when I heard the telltale overly-dramatic music and realized a commercial for the hospital drama "ER" was on, and asked J if he thought maybe it was going to be the "most dramatic show yet?" Because, after their - what, 600 or so? - years of being on the air, that seems their only plug nowadays. "In the most dramatic episode yet, love blooms in the most unlikely of places. But can this couple make it? Their relationship is tested when a bioterrorism threat shakes the hospital. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse...is the emergency room being taken over by alien forces? Will the patients be asked to serve their county as untrained soldiers in a fight against a deadly group of impoverished tribesmen who'll stop at nothing to kill every last American? A surprise visitor makes tonight's 'ER' the most emotional show you've seen so far, you DON'T want to miss it."

Listen, I've been in my fair share of emergency rooms, and even when we had to go to the one in Atlantic City when Vinnie had an awful ear infection, and there were drunks roaming the waiting room with their pants pretty much falling off, I mean, it was nothing like "ER." I'm all for the show's writers upping the action because, you know, it's a TV show and all and we don't want to sit there bored, but they've gone too far. Truthfully, things started sliding when George Clooney left. That's just my opinion, though.