What are you talking about? EMERGENCY Squad 51

[Steve Lichtman]

Yanno... I just got the DVD set with the final movies... Stopped watching on the first one. I didn't like Emergency at all. Hollywood Hope. People rarely died. I've had two saves from cardio-pulmonary arrest, in 13 years. Two. They both arrested in the ambulance. Sure, I've brought a dozen or more back, but they didn't survive. They used death to promote the show, and prove paramedics were needed. Then miraculously, everyone else survived. I think the Pilot, "Snake Bite" and "Welcome to Santa Rosa County" were the only episodes I enjoyed.

I won't dispute that a hundred thousand people became EMT's, Paramedics, Nurses, Doctors, et al; from watching the show. But I wonder how many quit, when they realized how ineffective EMS really was (everywhere except in major cities) in the early years?

OK, I won't disagree that "Emergency!" was much more dramatic than real-life. No, I don't have a "big rescue" every shift. And no, I don't have a cardiac arrest "save" every other shift, though I've had 10 I know of over the years. And yes, I know only a couple of their patients died (besides some who came into the ER and died and didn't contact the medics), and I've had a lot more than that.

But "Emergency!" got me into EMS, and I know I've helped a lot of people over the years. Saved? No. Helped? Yes. That's what is effective. I got into "real" EMS in 1977, and I've been here ever since, and I never felt bad because real life wasn't exactly like TV. It's still good.

Funny, though, those same episodes are my favorites, too. And "Indirect Method", about the first woman paramedic trainee (I actually was partnered with the real-life first woman paramedic on whom the episode was based).

 

[Kevin Lynch]

Adam 12

It's funny how the show that spun-off the super hits gets forgotten....Like EMERGENCY spun from Adam 12. The Simpsons used to be a short cartoon on the Tracey Ulman Show.