Commentary : ‘HEAL ‘EM AND WHEEL ‘EM’--IS ‘ER’ MEDICINE REALLY THAT GOOD?

Diagnoses abound concerning “ER,” but most draw the same conclusion: This new NBC medical drama is the season’s best, brightest and most innovative.

In a cover story, Newsweek spoke of its “adrenaline rush of trauma, pathos and heroism,” and the tabloid Star agreed that it “keeps viewers’ pulses pounding.” The New York Times weighed in with a theory for the series’ epidemic success: “the American public’s escalating anxieties over health care in the wake of the utter confusion and helplessness in Washington.”

Meanwhile, its ratings speak for themselves. On Dec. 8, “ER,” seen Thursdays at 10 p.m., not only nabbed its biggest audience yet (20 million viewers and a 35% share), it beat out every other drama series.

Clearly, critics and audience alike are drawn to the well-healed folks of “ER.”

But is there more going on here? Is the “ER” phenomenon anything beyond a sawbones love-in?

Well, it just may be that “ER’s” tonic effect on viewers has little to do with medicine and the healing arts. Instead, this series ultimately plays to something far more basic: a fascination with speed. “ER” has less to do with wellness than velocity.

The pace is relentless, as one patient after another is whisked through the emergency room of this Chicago hospital. Here, “heal ‘em and wheel ‘em” is the modus operandi, and viewers are treated to one case on top of the next, from a frat boy who nearly parties himself to death, to a motorist’s severed limb: “Rescue 7’s looking for the rest of his leg,” someone says, and indeed it is found and reattached.

No single affliction is dwelled upon too long, nor any resolution long in coming. It’s all hurry, hurry, hurry as “ER” stays on the run, up this patient-stacked corridor and down that, with the Steadicam chasing the action all the while.

Action is primary on “ER.” Despite such ongoing B-stories as the doctor’s wife who’s sick of her absentee marriage, the hospital psychiatrist who’s losing his marbles, the torn-between-two-lovers nurse, along with occasional Hippocratic hanky-panky in the supply room or anywhere else with a modicum of privacy, extracurricular matters are dealt with only in drips and drabs.

Instead, “ER” concentrates on isolated patients and their respective complaints, to the near exclusion of any cohesive narrative thrust.

Meanwhile, what character development there is can be found only in between spurts of bodily fluids. Along with Anthony Edwards as the selfless Dr. Mark Greene and George Clooney as playboy Dr. Doug Ross, others in the large ensemble tackle roles that can be capsulized as depressed, arrogant, wet behind the ears. A Medicare form has more heft.

Emphasizing mechanics rather than humanity, “ER” trades on the notion that “graphic” is synonymous for “realistic,” and that heroism is primarily a function of endurance (these doctors not only can do it all night long, but for shifts that go on 36 hours or longer!).

“ER” glories in its inhuman burdens. What with long hours, low salaries, high stakes and overtaxed facilities, the ER life is for life-givers who really don’t want one themselves. With the medics fueling it, the ER is a contraption pressed to the limit.

“ER,” then, is like watching cars race at Indy, barrelling around the course with speed, precision, racket and the occasional mishap.

Granted, on “ER” the race is run by foot, in sprints from body to body, or via gurney, with a doctor astride pounding life back into the patient. The viewer never gets an outside look at County General Memorial Hospital. Instead, the hallways are what count: “ER” exists as rooms and corridors, where its machinery can rip.

This is the strategy of “ER,” and the likely source of its appeal. Most people understand neither doctors nor machines, but they like machines far better and, of course, feel more control over them. Obligingly, “ER” presents medical treatment not as drama but as reliable engineering.

Sure, it’s gorgeously produced and exhilarating to watch. But for a series so taken up with blood and guts, “ER” is itself oddly bloodless. This ER is some machine. So, for that matter, is this show.