'ER' Oral History: The Making Of 'Love's Labor Lost'

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https://www.yahoo.com/tv/er-loves-la...154528630.html

Going into the 47th Primetime Emmy Awards — held twenty years ago this month on Sept. 10, 1995 — there were two letters on everyone’s lips: ER. The medical drama had premiered the previous year on NBC to instant acclaim and monster ratings. (Along with Friends, it created the network’s once-mighty, now-retired “Must See TV” Thursday night brand.) Creatively, the show also left a seismic imprint on the television landscape, shaking up the conventional visual language of the primetime medical drama through lengthy, Steadicam-assisted takes and high-intensity pacing.

So when the Emmy nominations were announced in mid-1995, few were surprised to see the first season of ER dominating the field with 23 nominations, including Best Drama Series. On the big night, though, the show failed to rack up the awards the same way it had racked up viewer eyeballs all season long. ER came away with just eight Emmys and watched the Drama Series trophy be handed to NYPD Blue. To be fair, Steven Bochco’s controversial cop drama, which premiered in 1993, had experienced the same disappointment the year before, missing out on a freshman season Emmy and winning for its sophomore outing instead. (Voters repeated that pattern the following year at the 48th Primetime Emmy Awards, where Season 2 of ER nabbed the series’ first — and only — Drama Series statue.)

Still, ER’s cast and crew found solace in the eight statues they did win, including Outstanding Supporting Actress (for Julianna Margulies), Graphic Design and Title Sequences and Casting. The remaining five Emmys were all awarded to the same episode, “Love’s Labor Lost,” the season’s 19th installment and one of the finest hours the series produced in its 15-year history. Written by ER’s medical consultant Lance A. Gentile and directed by Mimi Leder, “Love’s Labor Lost” was a tour-de-force showcase for Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), the bedrock of County General’s emergency room, who, over the course of one long night, presides over a pregnancy that goes from bad to worse. (Colleen Flynn and Bradley Whitford play the expectant couple.) The episode marked the first time that the series deviated from its ensemble format to focus largely on one case. It also ended with a tragedy–Greene saves the child, but loses the mother–that left a deep impression on both the character and the audience going forward.