Doug Ross

This article is about the ER character. For the Gene Wilder character, see Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (film).

For other people named Douglas Ross, see Douglas Ross (disambiguation).

Doug Ross
George Clooney as Doug Ross
First appearance	September 19, 1994 (1x01, "24 Hours")
Last appearance	February 18, 1999 (5x15, "The Storm (Part II)")
Portrayed by	George Clooney
Information
Full name	Douglas Ross
Nickname(s)	Doug, Dougie
Gender	Male
Occupation	Physician
Title	Resident (1994-1995) Fellow (1995-1998) Attending (1998-1999)
Family	Ray Ross (father; deceased) Sarah Ross (mother)
Spouse(s)	Carol Hathaway (wife)
Children	Unnamed child (son, with unnamed woman) Kate Ross (daughter, with Carol) Tess Ross (daughter, with Carol)
Religion	Atheist
Born	1962[1]

Dr. Douglas "Doug" Ross is a fictional character from the television series ER, portrayed by George Clooney. George Clooney's removal from the main cast opening credits was in the 16th episode of season 5.

Plot details

Doug Ross was raised by his mother, Sarah, after his father, Ray, abandoned their family. He revealed that his father came back to his family a few times but was never committed to them. In Season 1, he revealed to a patient that he had a son, and he tells nurse Wendy that he doesn't know his son's name as he's never seen him. Not much else is known about Doug's past. Despite his jumbled personal life, Ross is a dedicated ER pediatrician. He has always been committed to medicine and children and to helping no matter the rules or consequences. During Season 2, Doug rescued a boy trapped in a flooding storm drain during a rainstorm. His heroic efforts were filmed on local television thus making him a media star. This event helped him earn back his job at County, because his supervisor in pediatrics wasn't going to renew his fellowship on account of his disrespect to authority, but the hospital administration forced the supervisor to offer Doug a deal to return which he accepted.

During Season 2, Ray, Doug's father, tries to reconcile with his estranged son. Doug has difficulty reconnecting with the man who abandoned him and his mother. Ray has made something of himself by owning a very ritzy hotel in Chicago, and Doug lets his guard down a little, but is disappointed yet again when his father offers to take him to a Bulls game and then stands him up. Doug later reveals the reason why he is so finicky about child abuse because he and his mother were abused by his father. Doug later has an affair with Ray's girlfriend, a woman who Ray stole money from, but ends the relationship when it becomes clear she has a lot of problems herself. Doug gets a phone call one day informing him of his father's passing, and that someone would need to pick up the cremated remains. He goes to California on a road trip with friend and colleague Dr. Mark Greene to collect his remains. Ross finds out that his father was killed in an automobile accident; he had been drunk at the wheel and killed the other driver, himself and his new wife. Doug visits the funeral ceremony to express his sorrow to the victim's family, but ultimately does not and tells the priest overseeing the ceremony that his father was responsible, who then reassures Doug that he truly loved his father. When Doug and Mark find the hotel his father stayed in, he finds his father's car and belongings. They discover home videos that Ray had taken of Doug and his mother. Later on, Doug finds his girlfriend, nurse Carol Hathaway, waiting for him and they kiss passionately.

Doug is a womanizer, who has dated and left many women throughout the course of the show. Doug's womanizing days come to an abrupt end after a one night stand with an epileptic woman who hides her condition and dies in the ER. Doug never even knew her name until after she dies, after which Doug stops dating for awhile until he gets back together with Carol. Doug has an on-again, off-again relationship with Carol Hathaway, the head nurse of the ER at County. He pursued her constantly when she was trying to move on with her life after their horrible break-up. After a while, they become a couple and are even engaged. They seem happy, and were also supporting each other in the ER. Doug was always an advocate for his patients, and often broke the rules to help them. Eventually, his attempts to help his patients went too far - leading to reprisals and the closure of Hathaway's clinic - and he decided to leave Chicago for Seattle halfway into Season 5. Carol decided not to go with him to Seattle, but he shared a drink with his best friend, Dr. Mark Greene, before he leaves. Carol discovers she is pregnant with his twin girls, named Tess and Kate, and these daughters are born after Doug leaves. He's last seen in the Season 6 episode "Such Sweet Sorrow", in which Hathaway leaves Chicago to reunite with him. She finds him working on his boat behind his house in Seattle and the two embrace and kiss. It is later revealed in Season 8 that Hathaway sent for the twins the next day and has been living with Ross in Seattle since.

Warner Bros. Television, the studio which produces ER for NBC, kept Dr. Ross's cameo in "Such Sweet Sorrow" a secret from NBC, which promoted the episode as Carol Hathaway's goodbye, with no mention of Dr. Ross's appearance. In fact, the original version of "Such Sweet Sorrow" that Warner Bros. sent to NBC ended right after the scene where we see Hathaway on the plane to Seattle. At the 11th hour Warner Bros. messengered an "edited" version of the episode to NBC headquarters in New York for broadcast — NBC had no time to preview the episode prior to airing what turned out to be an extended episode in which Clooney appears. NBC was miffed that it was kept in the dark as it lost valuable ad revenue it could have generated if it had aired promos that the episode would mark the return of George Clooney. Clooney cited the fans of the show for his reason as to why he agreed to make the cameo (he wanted Hathaway and Ross's characters to get back together, as most fans always had hoped for). Clooney reportedly only asked to be paid scale for the cameo.

In the 11th season finale "The Show Must Go On" Dr. Ross was briefly shown in a photograph that was part of a slide show at Dr. John Carter's farewell party.

In the season 14 episode, "Status Quo", Jeanie Boulet mentions Doug and Carol when she returns to the ER. Nurse Haleh Adams states that they are living happily in Seattle and that their daughters are now in 3rd grade.

In the Season 15 episode The Book of Abby, long-serving nurse Haleh Adams shows the departing Abby Lockhart a closet wall where all the past doctors and employees have put their locker name tags. Amongst them, the tag "Ross" can be seen.

In the season 15 episode "Old Times," Dr. Doug Ross is working as an attending physician at the University of Washington Medical Center. He is helping a grieving grandmother (Susan Sarandon), whose grandson was gravely injured in a bicycle accident. He talks to Sam and Neela (after finding out they were from County), asking them if any of his old colleagues still worked there. Doug and Carol are directly responsible for getting the kidney for Carter and a heart for another County patient, but they never discovered who received the organs.

Career

In the pilot episode, which takes place on St. Patrick's Day 1994, Dr. Ross is brought into the ER not long before his shift to be "treated" for drunkenness by his longtime friend, Dr. Mark Greene. Throughout the next few seasons, Doug is shown to be compassionate, though not always using the best judgment. As a pediatrician, he deals primarily with children. His love for kids is best seen during darker situations, such as when a child is in danger. When Peter Benton talks about how surgeons deal with emotionally charged cases and ER doctors have it easy, Doug leaves him stunned into silence when describing cases that include a young girl who beat her mother to death, a kid who is going to lose his leg to cancer and another kid who is dying from a life of homelessness. His lack of judgment leads to him going as far as to assault abusive parents in the ER, but his counseling in that case just consisted of the shrink telling him not to do that again.

He is a passionate doctor who puts the welfare of his patients, especially children, above his medical career. In one episode, Dr. Ross saves a young boy who is drowning and is flown in to County General using a news helicopter. This garners him much attention, earns him an award and saves his job. Doug doesn't handle authority well, even when his best friend, Dr. Mark Greene is his boss. Doug is a pediatrician, but in several episodes has performed medical procedures on adults, usually when the other doctors are busy.

In one episode, Doug learns that of his young patients, an athlete, is stressed out about being a closeted homosexual. Doug initially seems uncomfortable with talking to the boy, who leaves the hospital without revealing what's troubling him.

In another episode, he tries to do an ultra-rapid detox on a drug-addicted baby without the mother's consent. This procedure was assisted by Carol, but when Greene and Weaver discover the procedure, being done in violation of hospital policy and the law, he is punished. He was left on probation for 30 days, and was supervised by Dr. Kerry Weaver and Dr. Greene, who had to co-sign his charts. Doug's attitude towards patient treatment often has consequences for his coworkers and supervisors, who have received reprimands from their superiors for Doug's actions.

He vies to be an attending physician for emergency pediatrics. He eventually gets the job, even though Doctors Greene and Weaver opposed his promotion because the position wasn't necessary and the funds were needed elsewhere. Mark was ultimately happy for Doug but Kerry was aghast and rallied against his new position.

He eventually resigns in the aftermath of a scandal in which he shows a mother how to bypass the lockouts on a Dilaudid PCA, enabling her to give a lethal dose of medication to her terminally ill son. Doug had earlier stolen medication from a pain medication study and given it to the mother, only to be discovered by Weaver and Mark, who reprimanded him but kept the incident private. The incident also prompts the closure of Carol's free clinic in the hospital, since it supplied the PCA to this mother, and Doug faces suspension from work at County and possible criminal charges. A friend of Doug's stands up for him and the charges against him are dropped, but Doug resigns from the hospital and plans to move to Seattle. As a result, when Doug left, he and Carol are on poor terms until she discovers she's pregnant with his twin girls. Her clinic is later re-opened, but Carol has to report to her former assistant there.

Dr. Doug Ross was written out of the series because Clooney wished to focus more on his now expanding film career. He also said that there wasn't any strong story in place for his character after Season 5.^{[cite this quote]} He was reportedly asked to return briefly in season 8, to make an appearance during late in the season, in Anthony Edwards' last episode (he'd be featured in Dr. Mark Greene's funeral), but Clooney declined because he did not want his cameo appearance to overshadow the departure of a beloved character on the show. In an interview with TV Guide, original ER cast member Noah Wyle, who worked alongside Clooney for five seasons, revealed that Clooney was returning to ER for its 15th and final season in 2009. His new arc began in Episode 328, titled "Old Times", with Julianna Margulies also returning as Carol Hathaway.

References

1. ^ "The Healers". Mimi Leder, Writ. John Wells. ER. NBC. 1996-02-22. No. 16, season 2.

External links

• Bio at TNT.com
• Official ER website at NBC.com