tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2474373967694036822.post4475792034972029188..comments2024-03-27T00:18:24.085-04:00Comments on St. Elsewhere Experience: "E.R."Danielhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06486660044959549624noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2474373967694036822.post-68208369595851720392022-10-13T22:06:25.187-04:002022-10-13T22:06:25.187-04:00And so we say goodbye to Dr. Cathy Martin, even th...And so we say goodbye to Dr. Cathy Martin, even though we don't know it. After being completely absent since the end of Season Three, she pops into the E.R., tells Phil she's been "out to lunch" and walks off, never to be seen again.<br /><br />I was still new to St. E when this episode first aired, but I knew the back story and how prominent a character Cathy was. I kept expecting her to reappear during Seasons 5 and 6, but she never did. Her storyline remains one of the most unsatisfying and unresolved arcs on St. E.<br /><br />In re-watching the series, I've come to realize that she was never well developed as a character. We learn almost nothing about her back story or life outside of the hospital. In Season 1 and the first part of Season 2, she's played as comedy relief--the spacy nymphomaniac pathologist who likes to make love in the morgue. She is so devoted to the joys of sex that she takes it upon herself to deflower V.J. Kochar the night before his wedding. (He passes out before they do anything.) In Season 2, her story takes a dark turn when she is raped by Peter White. She starts to get her life back together by switching her specialty to psychiatry only to be brutally raped again. In some of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the series, she suffers a break from reality and becomes a psychiatric patient. Yet she remains an exceptional doctor and, with Fiscus's help, treats another psych patient who had been misdiagnosed. Eventually, she returns to rounds and, by the end of Season 3, has started a new relationship--with V.J. Kochar.<br /><br />And then she disappears until wandering into the E.R. Her last appearance leaves us with few clues as to where she's been or what she'd been up to. She's dressed in a pink coat and a blouse, her hair somewhat disheveled--very unlike her earlier appearances which consisted of black clothes and neatly styled curls. She appears to have reinvented herself. At one point while she was a psych patient, Cathy told Jackie Wade that she wasn't sure she wanted to be a doctor anymore. It looks like she's found a different path, one that only tantalizes us with possibilities.Greg Gildersleevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04547173803003210524noreply@blogger.com