Detroit Free Press from Detroit, Michigan • Page 66

4G DETROIT FREE PRESSSUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1994 4E.R.' has the edge in medical showdown ing band of compassionate physicians, "Chicago Hope," from "Picket Fences" creator David E. Kelley, is less immediately likable. The doctors of Chicago Hope Hospital, a gleaming surgical palace with all the cutting-edge gizmos, tend to pontificate. Patinkin, an accomplished stage and film actor making his TV series in Jii rushing to work while bopping to the Stones and chatting up his bookie on the car phone. First impression: Arrogant jerk.

Geiger grates. On the non-Thursday movie debut of "E.R." at 9 p.m. Monday on NBC, WDIV-TV, Channel 4, our first encounter By Mike Duffy Free Press TV Writer It's time to rock with the docs. Time to choose your channel-surfing sawbones. "E.R." and "Chicago Hope" square off against each other at 10 p.m.

Thursdays this fall, starting this week, presenting viewers who want to see a well-crafted new medical series with a tough choice. But choose we must. OK, yes, the VCR solves those impossible viewing choices. But we're talking subjective, aesthetic choices here. One of these shows may suit your tastes more than the other.

So let's decide. On the non-Thursday premiere of "Chicago Hope" at 8 tonight on CBS, WJBK-TV, Channel 2, the first thing we see is Dr. Jeffrey Geiger (Mandy Patinkin), hotshot surgeon, swerving down a Chicago freeway in his BMW, opens, nurse calls. Dr. Green dutifully heads back to work.

First impression: Total mensch. Greene is a good guy. Both "Chicago Hope" and "E.R." are well-made, well-acted and well-written. They both possess characters with more than one dimension. They both have the capacity to make you laugh, then make you cry.

But "E.R." is the show I'd rather go back to. Its gritty, fast-paced tempo seems more real. And creator-executive producer Michael Crichton trained in medicine, has infused "E.R." with a contemporary, darkly humorous believability. Plus, Edwards and the rest of a talented young cast that includes Sherry Stringfield George Clooney and Eriq LaSalle Human comprise an appeal 11 Mandy Patinkin plays an arrogant M.D. on "Chicago Hope." debut, heads a prominent cast that includes Adam Arkin, E.G.

Marshall and Hector Elizondo. As highly strung, egotistical Dr. Geiger, Patinkin makes an entertaining lout. And we'll see in coming episodes, as Geiger is humanized, that he is haunted by some personal demons. A child who died, a wife who is institutionalized.

But first impressions matter. And "E.R." makes the more favorable one. "Chicago Hope" two-and-a-half stars, "E.R." three stars. now showing is with Dr. Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards).

He's in darkness, a cramped closet in Chicago's County General Memorial Hospital, trying to catch some precious moments of sleep. Door r.l'.rMiH!m.Hii'll CHECK MOVIE GUIDE FOR ftHOWTIMES Dueling doctor shows take different approaches CHARLIE NASTASSJA SHEEN l( I 1(1 3 IT'S NOT ZZajjaZZ THE jJj 7 FALL KILLS kind of mesmerized by. I think we've come to simpler times." But it's up to the viewers to decide. And "Chicago Hope" and "E.R." certainly offer a contrasting choice. Glossy vs.

gritty, glamour vs. grunge. At ultra-sleek Chicago Hope Hospital, a lavish facility blessed with state-of-the-art medical technology, a staff of highly skilled, highly paid surgeons defy death, derail disease and create wondrous little health miracles. When these amazing doctors separate a pair of female Siamese twins, cute-as-a-button infants from the suburbs, you better believe they both live. And if you're thinking about being a patient at Chicago Hope, it might be nice if you were rich or blessed with deluxe health care insurance.

So scram, you low-class HMO people. Meanwhile, over at frayed-around-the-edges County General Memorial Hospital on "E.R.," our underpaid, sleep-deprived young medical heroes don't have time to think. They're out there on the front lines, just trying to keep even with the gunshot wounds, heart attacks, broken limbs, drug overdoses and assorted other daily catastrophes that transform urban emergency rooms into a health care war zone. This is the home of multicultural medical survival. The poor, the uninsured, the just plain unlucky, they all wind up at County General.

Tempers often grow short, but the doctors' compassion rarely evaporates. "E.R." executive producer John Wells sees the two series as a matter of hospital night and day. "The shows are structured very differently, they have different paces," said Wells. "They ('Chicago Hope') follow single stories through an entire episode. The emergency room DOCTORS, from Page 1G But before the head-to-head battle begins this Thursday, each series will have a night alone to lure viewers.

"Chicago Hope" premieres at 8 tonight on CBS, WJBK-TV, Channel 2, hoping for a big launch following "60 Minutes." Then "E.R." makes its debut with a two-hour movie at 9 p.m. Monday on NBC, WDIV-TV, Channel 4. The real duel starts three days later. And "Chicago Hope" creator David E. Kelley, whose "Picket Fences" has won the Emmy as best drama series two years running, is certainly a little fretful about the weekly showdown.

"It's not something we're happy about," says Kelley. And indeed, CBS does seem to be more nervous about the prospect of playing prime-time chicken with the two hospital shows. That's because NBC from "Hill Street Blues" through "LA Law" has a solid tradition of compelling Thursday-night drama success. With "Seinfeld" as the anchor for its long-popular NBC Thursday-night lineup, "E.R." would seem to have the early edge. "We are very uncomfortable with two medical shows facing each other," admits Howard Stringer, president of the CBS Broadcast Group.

"It makes no sense for the audience. And I know everyone is waiting for either us or NBC to blink." Even so, Stringer professes confidence in the outcome: "I think 'Chicago Hope' is the best show of its kind, and it's one of the best shows I've seen in a long time." Not even close, jabs NBC West Coast president Don Ohlmeyer. "I think 'Chicago Hope' is basically 'LA Law' with medicine bags," Ohlmeyer says. "And 'LA Law' was a show that worked in the '80s when excess was something that we were all pace is very different from that. You are moving from scene to scene, from patient to patient.

And you follow the course of the day from the doctor's point of view, from the doctor's perspective." With "Chicago Hope," you often get to know the patients as well as the doctors. And more than on "E.R.," you also get an old-fashioned medical drama involvement in the doctors' bruised personal lives. Kelley suggests that "Chicago Hope" is a more upscale variation on "St. Elsewhere," generally considered the finest medical drama in TV history. "The hospital itself is really at the opposite end of the spectrum," he said.

"As opposed to being a dilapidated old warhorse that's trying to stay alive, Chicago Hope Hospital is rich with resources, rich with money, rich with personnel." And rich with messages. As in "Picket Fences" and during his days of producing "LA Law," Kelley loves to chew over topical issues. Questions of contemporary medical ethics genetic engineering, euthanasia, the controversy over managed health care, etc. will be batted around the ideological operating room. If you want to send a message on "E.R.," however, you'll need a fax.

"We're not going to have episodes which are about an issue," said "E.R.'s" Wells. "You will see the experience as the doctors see it. And if you want to draw conclusions from that you can, but we're not going to preach to you." Both shows are trying to establish medical authenticity. "E.R." is using actual emergency room doctors and nurses as extras in the background of scenes. And though both series will offer more graphic operating room images than you ever saw on "St.

Elsewhere" or "MASH," Kelley has taken an extra step toward reality on "Chicago Hope." You'll catch pretty intense glimpses of blood, surgical incisions and pulsating body parts. The idea, said Kelley, is to send a wake-up call to the viewer. To create the impression that Chicago Hope is a real hospital and "a place where there's despair a place that can be startling and wrenching." But because the "Chicago Hope" premiere might cause some viewers to flinch, Kelley has been careful to tone things down somewhat in future episodes. "Our ideal is not to promote nausea across the country," he said. Despite their obvious differences, both "Chicago Hope" and "E.R." share a boundless empathy for doctors.

"I think that we've had a long period in which doctors are denigrated in various ways," said Michael Crichton Park," "Rising the best-selling author, filmmaker and Harvard Medical School graduate, who created "E.R." "We mostly hear about Medicare frauds and people who do 10,000 eye operations a minute. In the course of that, we forget that there's a traditional quality to medicine of taking care of people," Crichton said. "And there are places where doctors continue to perform as well as they can, as skillfully as they can, and really do heroic actions. I wanted to sort of bring that back into balance and have doctors who are like that." Doctors who are like that will definitely be operating Thursday nights this fall, opposite each other, on "E.R" and "Chicago Hope." Now if only NBC or CBS would offer a little compassion to their viewing patients and shift one of these promising series to another night. We'd all be happier, healthier couch potatoes.

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