No Crisis in This ‘ER’ : With 23 Emmy Nominations and Strong Ratings, the Show’s Challenge Will Be to Keep the Edge in Season 2

Last fall, nobody knew the names of the stars of NBC’s “ER.”

This year, most people still don’t know their names, but everybody knows their faces. Instead of inching ahead of “Chicago Hope,” “ER” shot out of the box faster than any new show since “Charlie’s Angels” and finished the season right behind top-rated “Seinfeld.”

“ER” took “Dr. Kildare,” jolted it with the electricity of MTV and came up with something new, strange and wildly successful. Two questions remain: Will “ER” dominate Sunday’s Emmy Awards as it did the nominations, picking up 23? And, more importantly, can it repeat its success in Season 2?

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H oused on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, the “ER” set is as grungy as a real emergency room. But instead of bleeding patients, actors sprawl on the gurneys, killing time until the next shot. As episode No. 4 comes together, make-believe nurses work alongside the real thing, hired less for their acting skill than to demonstrate how to pull on surgical gloves with an authentic snap.

Behind the scenes, away from the Steadicam that gives “ER” its look of controlled chaos, executive producer John Wells, his co-producers and writers, many of them veterans of his earlier “China Beach,” grapple with the daunting task of making sure this season is at least as good as the first.

Nobody wants to make any major changes in a show that works so well. On the other hand, they all know a series grows or its audience dies.

“Everybody felt there had to be some degree of evolution in the second year,” says Michael Crichton, creator of the show and its other executive producer.

Originally written as a feature film, “ER” is based on Crichton’s experiences as a young doctor at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital. Steven Spielberg bought the script in the 1980s, but the project languished while the two worked on the screen version of Crichton’s novel “Jurassic Park.”

Crichton’s “Jurassic Park” sequel, “The Lost World,” is due out this month, and he is making one of his infrequent visits to the “ER” set. At 6 foot 9, he towers above the cast members, whom he greets in the gentlest of voices. It is clearly a state occasion, despite Crichton’s friendliness and his casual blue shirt and khaki Dockers.

“ER” has earned two Emmy nominations for Crichton, as executive producer and as writer of the pilot. It is the first time he has ever been nominated for an industry prize, he says. As to what he intends to do at the ceremony in Pasadena Sunday: “Hold my breath.”

No one involved has been unchanged by “ER,” least of all its six Emmy-nominated stars.

“A year ago I was reading for three lines in some B-film--and not getting it,” says George Clooney, who plays pediatrician Douglas Ross, the show’s darkly handsome womanizer.

“ER” was the break that got Clooney, a veteran of “Sisters” and other series, his first important feature film, “From Dusk to Dawn,” due out at Christmas. Perhaps the best thing to happen is a family matter. His famous aunt, Rosemary, appeared on “ER” as an Alzheimer’s patient, confused but still able to sing uncannily like Rosemary Clooney. She, too, could win an Emmy in the best guest actress category.

“It’s that aunt-nephew nomination thing,” says Clooney, “ER’s” chief prankster. “It happens all the time.”

For Clooney, the only downside of the show’s success has been roving packs of would-be journalists, armed with video cameras. He’s not whining, he makes clear, “because I have a great life.” But he had to move fast to evade them recently outside the Ivy in Santa Monica. These guys, he explains, like to bait celebrities with “Who’s the fat chick you’re with?” and “How come your girlfriend’s so ugly?” Instead of photos, he said, “they want you to go up and say, ‘Screw you,’ and then they sell it to ‘Hard Copy.’ ”

Anthony Edwards, who, as Dr. Mark Greene, made the world safe for nice guys with thinning hair, agrees that “ER” has been a life-changer.

“You feel the ramifications of a show like this for a long time,” says Edwards, up with Clooney for best dramatic actor. Last month Edwards signed a multiyear development deal with Disney that allows him to create TV shows, movies and other projects. He says he will target 7- to 14-year-olds, an audience he thinks is smart and underserved.

Nobody is more excited about the awards than writer and medical consultant Lance Gentile, a physician who recently made a midlife shift to TV. Gentile (pronounced genteel ) was nominated for writing the episode called “Love’s Labor Lost.” Only his second script for episodic TV, it pits him against Crichton in the best drama writing category.

Win or lose, Gentile is the happiest rookie in town. “I’m at the bottom of the food chain here,” he says, “but it’s a good food chain.”

The show’s creators are committed to preserving its essence. In “ER” much of what people feel stays inside and is never made explicit. New directors sometimes have to be warned not to dwell on emotion in theatrical, “Ben Casey” fashion. According to Emmy nominee Noah Wyle, the show’s boyish Dr. Carter, the motto of “ER’s” actors could be “Don’t play the moment.”

“We had a lot of discussions about how the second season should differ from the first,” says Crichton. But “ER” could not be what it is if story arcs were writ in stone at the beginning of the season.

“The nature of this kind of storytelling is you try something and see what happens,” Crichton says. “It’s experienced as it goes, more than planned in advance.”

Which is not to say that changes aren’t under way in the world’s best-known ER. Gloria Reuben, who played the physical therapist who charmed Dr. Benton (Eriq LaSalle), has joined the lead ensemble. Her character is married, so she and Benton will have to smolder discreetly in the suture room. Head nurse Carol Hathaway, played by Julianna Margulies, will have more fun this season, thanks to an attractive paramedic (she had to lighten up after last season, which began with her suicide attempt and ended with her non-wedding).

Dr. Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) spends quality time with her dysfunctional sister’s new baby. Sparks fly between Wyle’s Carter and a third-year medical student played by Christine Elise, formerly of “Beverly Hills, 90210.”

Crichton says he doesn’t worry that the show will get all warm and fuzzy in its second season and lose its distinctive edge. But more than that, he doesn’t want to say. Writers make you laugh and make you cry. They also make you wait.

Says Crichton: “I’m checking out the shoe store, and all people will say is, ‘What’s going to happen to Dr. Greene? Is he going to get divorced? What’s going to happen to Dr. Ross?’ ”

Crichton always has the same answer: “Watch the show.”

* The Emmy Awards will be telecast at 8 p.m. Sunday on Fox (Channel 11). “ER” begins its second season Sept. 21 on NBC (Channel 4).