(Season 15, Episode 12 – “Dream Runner”)
As regular readers of my ER reviews on CliqueClack know, I normally list the five or six plot points of the week’s episode. This time, that’s not going to happen. Oh, it’s not because there was nothing going on this episode — trust me, there was plenty going on this episode. It’s more the fact that the format of this week’s installment was, uh, well …
It was strange. Good strange or bad strange, I haven’t decided yet. It was entertaining in my opinion and it did keep me interested throughout, but I had a hard time getting my head into it all. Maybe you had the same problem as I did. Let’s take the journey together, shall we?
First off, this was a Neela episode. Sure, Archie and Tony and Banfield and Simon were there in some small part, but the main focus was on Neela in a very unusual day. At least, I think it was a very unusual day. From the description that was given on the episode it seemed like Neela was having a weird recurring dream about events that happened … sometime. Or, maybe they didn’t happen at all. Again, it was hard to get my head around it all.
The “dreams” had many of the same factors. While Neela attempted to save the sickle cell patient she first encountered last week, she was also consulting on an ER patient who turned out to be a “dream runner” (not to be confused with Harrison Ford in Blade Runner). On top of that she was preparing to interview with a number of other hospitals for a different new position. From all of this stemmed three different scenarios, each with a different outcome.
I’m not going to detail all that happened in these scenarios because, frankly, I don’t have enough space to address all of the nuances. But, I will mention which one I thought featured the most likely outcome: none of them. Being that they were supposedly all dreams, each one featured a different emotion and action that Neela was feeling at the time.
Thinking about it now, the first sequence emerged out of frustration and anger that Neela may have felt after both of these patients died in real life. The second sequence displayed her determination to take actions that she didn’t take in the first dream. The final dream was almost Groundhog Day in nature because it found a near perfect balance of what should have or could have taken place after learning the lessons of the first two sequences.
Problem is, there were elements in all of these dreams that made them unrealistic. For example, the first dream saw Banfield just quit the ER after getting reamed out by Archie. Even with the hormones kicking Banfield into high gear I don’t think she would have ever up and quit. If that weren’t strange enough, the third dream featured something that I dreaded to see — Banfield and Neela getting together. That was the scariest moment of all! If that wasn’t Neela’s subconscious mind getting its sex up I don’t know what is.
In the end, the whole episode left the viewer wondering what the hell actually happened to Neela and her surroundings. Were the patients really saved? Did Lucien actually offer Neela an Assistant Professorship at County? Did she and Brenner really shag? I would love to know those answers; however, I don’t think that the writers over at ER are going to give us the satisfaction. They’ll just let us ponder the possibilities until our brains melt in our heads. I mean, what do they care? Their show is ending this season, so why bother to let us in on the answers.
Next week on ER: we get back to normal and, if I wasn’t seeing things in the previews, Archie may get to do more than examine his undercover cop friend again.
Clacked by Richard Keller 
on Jan 16, 2009 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
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Er… not unless there was a fourth, extremely wacked-out dream. Perhaps you mean Brenner?
I thought it was an interesting episode…Although, I thought they could’ve used Dr. Corday in a more substantial way with her putting in a special appearance.
As I said in the other post I was disappointed Neela ended up with Brenner in the last dream, mainly because that dream was the one where she was being confident and strong for once, and really choosing and pursuing what she desires – is that Brenner? I wouldn’t have thought so. In the first dream she’s indecisive and that leads to very bad consequences which is something to learn from; she has to grow up in every sense. In the second dream she takes decisions but not everything comes out fine – that, for me, is the more realistic version. The third version is truely a dream – a fantasy, to save all her patients (not always possible), to call Ray (which she wouldn’t do in normal life, she’s too scared) and sleep with Brenner (which I really don’t think she wants but just desires or just projects into Brenner what she can’t get from Ray). Real or not, I don’t know… obviously we’ll find out next week, if the girl she was treating is dead we will know one of the dreams was true. If she’s alive then it was all a dream. Ah! who knows, like the author of this article says here we are with our brain melting in our heads and no one cares! I think the good thing about all this is that Neela is growing inside, she will make decisions soon I’m sure. And seeing Corday again was good, I wish she would have mentioned Dr Greene. I think she left County because of that, the memories… and not the job. Anyway JMO.