It’s not meant to be a representative day. The characters even hang the lampshade well, telling the newbies that this was an insane day, and the rest will be easier. It being someone’s first day is a common writing technique, it gives the writers a chance to explain things to the audience. The idea is that these are the sort of things that may happen on any given day in the ER. They just all happen on that day for the sake of showing the audience.

The mass casualty event is especially interesting. It’s directly based on the hospital closest to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

[–] MyMindIsLikeAnOcean@piefed.world -2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Throwaway dialogue explaining an impossible day isn’t helpful. I can’t think of a since reason why it needed to all happen on one day…beyond a pretence to get people to keep watching it.

They had a huge opportunity to show what a day is really like for the staff in an ER…which is never ever boring…but they chose to sensationalize one instead. It was a weird hybrid of 24 and a 90s sitcom…with ultra graphic medical scenes.

Like I said…the mass casualty event would have been more than enough for the show to step it up after they showed us what real people are like and what really happens in an ER. But instead we got a perfect storm of staff with every personal problem on earth dealing with every type of patient on earth…with contrived comedic relief as a tone-deaf cherry on top. A clown showed up in the ER to give us dry one-liners? Check.

Swing and a miss.