The Untimely Canon: ER S1E6 “Chicago Heat”

Original Air Date: October 20th, 1994

Teleplay by John Wells

Story by Neal Baer

Directed By Elodie Keene

Streamed on Hulu

As I’ve noted before in these posts, my wife and I lived in Chicago briefly. While it was only for about 9 months, I will say that we were lucky to avoid the heatwaves that have become somewhat synonymous with the city in TV shows and movies that take place in the summer months in the Windy City. We weren’t as lucky at avoiding the brutal winter, but that is neither here nor there. Still, having worked and lived in the city, I can only imagine how oppressive and uncomfortable it would be when the heat tops the 100 degree mark.

What do you get when you couple a 102 degree October day, an A/C issue at County General, and the virulent epidemic that is systemic and so-called “benign” racism that permeates every aspect of American culture? What you get is the 6th episode of ER, “Chicago Heat.”

While the title would make you think that the major theme of the episode is about the unseasonably hot weather that is gripping the city of Chicago, that would be an inaccurate estimate. Instead, this episode centers around race, first and foremost. The type of racism that is not over the top and in your face is front and center in both of the main storylines.

First, in what I consider the A storyline, Doug Ross(George Clooney) and Mark Greene(Anthony Edwards) are tasked with treating a 5 year-old girl named Kanesha Freeman(the adorable Karla Green) who is brought into the ER in respiratory distress. This causes quite a bit of alarm as Kanesha has a pretty serious heart condition that makes Mark and Doug pretty sure that she’s taken a turn for the worse. However, when the symptoms don’t match up with any heart ailment that they can think of, they decide to run a tox screen to see if the young girl has been poisoned. Lo and behold, Kanesha is suffering from a cocaine overdose at the ripe young age of 5.

This is where the casual racism rears its ugly head.

Doug, looking at Kanesha’s father(Richard Brooks) through his privileged white man’s eyes and seeing nothing more than a black man with a 5 year old that found some coke somehow, assumes that the drugs came from the dad. He refuses to release the little girl, even though she’s okay to go home, because he thinks that she is unsafe in the custody of her own father. Mind you, this is a middle class African-American man who owns his own home and has a job, as the awesome Nurse Connie Oligario(Conni Marie Brazelton) reminds Doug. She also asks him if he would be as suspicious if the girl was named Stephanie and lived on the North side, to which the answer is obviously no.

Doug, of course, sees the error of his ways(this is still network TV after all and Doug is still a nominal hero of the show), and realizes, after drug tests on the entire family, that Kanesha’s older sister, Shandra, is the source of the drugs. He offers to help Mr. Freeman find help for his daughter, though Freeman looks, rightfully, suspicious of Ross’s change of heart.

The other major race-based storyline of the episode involves Dr. Peter Benton(Eriq La Salle) having to take care of a victim of a shooting. The victim is a young black kid and the shooter is recurring patient Ivan the liquor store owner(John LaMotta). Ivan has shot the kid because he claims that he had robbed him and shot him previously. However, we find out, after the young boy dies, that he had been unarmed, chased from the store, and shot in the back by Ivan multiple times. Ivan is clearly distraught about the kids death but, again, that doesn’t change the fact that only a racist society would have deemed the young black man such a threat, with no weapon, just for being black in a white man’s store.

Other Notable Character Moments

• John Carter(Noah Wyle) was barely in the episode. He stitched up Ivan and then wandered around looking lost the rest of the time. Not a great day for our favorite med student as for character growth.
• Carol Hathaway(Julianna Margulies) was, unfortunately, limited to just background in some of the treatment scenes and romance subplots with both Tag(Rick Rossovich) and Doug. Tag does ask her to move in with him, so that is at least advancing.
• Susan Lewis(Sherry Stringfield) has a pretty big episode. We meet her sister, Chloe(Kathleen Wilhoite, who seems to only play quirky, problematic sisters in shows I watch), who shows up broke and homeless. She convinces Susan to let her stay at her place, then she promptly steals her credit cards, leaves her apartment unlocked, and steals her TV. Chloe will be a thorn in Susan’s side for some time to come.
• Edwards’s Greene is taking care of his daughter, Rachel(Yvonne Zima), as his wife, Jen, is in Milwaukee looking for an apartment for herself and Rachel. Because of being short staffed, he is forced to bring Rachel to work, where she befriends the young Kanesha and watches Peter work on the dying boy. All in all, a pretty horrible job of parenting by Mark for exposing her to all that trauma but a decent job of him trying to reassure her that he will always take care of her.

Notable Guest Stars

• Kathleen Wilhoite as Chloe Lewis, Susan’s nightmare of a big sister. Wilhoite would play another nightmarish sister a few years later on Gilmore Girls, which means she’s probably going to be in at least 2 canon shows.
• Richard Brooks as Mr. Freeman, the father of the 5 year old OD. Brooks is fantastic in his controlled fury at Doug for assuming that he is the source of the drugs. Of course, Brooks has had some experience being controlled in his fury, having played an ADA in the early seasons of Law & Order.
• Andrea Parker as Linda Farrell, a pharmaceutical sales rep who shows up several times in the episode and flirts her way past Carol to Doug at one point. Parker is a pretty regular face on TV shows throughout the ’90s and ’00s and, I’m guessing, will be in more episodes of this season as we move forward, though I honestly don’t remember the character from previous watches.
• Barry Shabaka Henley as a violent crimes detective that comes to look into Ivan’s shooting of the young boy. Henley is one of the great “that guy” actors of TV and film and I was very happy to see him in his brief scene, even if I am struggling, even now, to remember anything else that he’s been in. He is the definition of a background character actor.

MVP of the Episode

While I’m tempted to give this to the nuanced portrayal of Doug Ross’s racism, and the acknowledgement of it, that George Clooney comes through with, I’m going to, instead, give it to the victim of that racism, Richard Brooks as Mr. Freeman. Brooks is one of those severely underrated actors who never got his big break. He underplays every scene in a way that makes him intensely interesting in everything I’ve ever seen him in and I’m not upset about the fact that I know that he will make another appearance or two in the canon as we go.