Remember when ER was a good show? Like, a very good show? I barely do, but looking at some of the clips from the early entries in Alan Sepinwall's list of disasters (see the basic column, somewhere between depressing and uproariously funny, here) reminded me. The end of that Clooney clip from "Hell Or High Water," where he's saving the kid from the storm drain, is, in my opinion, the moment when his current position in the culture was foretold. They knew what they were doing with that shot of him coming out of the water into the spotlight.

I haven't watched the show in years, and frankly, I cannot rewatch the scene where Carter and Lucy get stabbed, because it was horrible enough the first time, and I remember how just reading that recap (not actually that recap; the next recap, which is what the link goes to) made me cry, so I choose not to put myself through it. Maybe you are made of sterner stuff.