Doug Ross
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| Doug Ross | |
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| First appearance | September 19, 1994 |
| Last appearance | February 18, 1999 Special appearance May 11, 2000 |
| Portrayed by | George Clooney |
| Information | |
| Gender | male |
| Date of birth | 1960/1961 |
| Occupation | Former ER pediatric attending |
| Family | Ray Ross (father; deceased) |
| Spouse(s) | Carol Hathaway |
| Children | son (name and mother unknown) Tess and Kate, (mother Carol Hathaway) |
Dr. Douglas Ross is a fictional character from the television series ER. He was portrayed by George Clooney.
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[edit] Personal life
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 had a son, not much else is known about Doug's past. Despite his rambled 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 even helped him earn back his job at County, because his supervisor wasn't going to renew his fellowship on account of his disrespect to authority, but the higher ups 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 mom. 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 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 remains. He goes to California on a road trip with 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 old flame, 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; in the first season, it is mentioned that Doug has an eight-year-old son whom he has never met, but nothing further is ever revealed. Doug's womanizing days come to an abrupt end when he had a one night stand with an epileptic woman who hides her condition and ends up in the ER and then dies after which Doug remains single 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 at the end of 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 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 Washington 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 Brothers, the studio which produces ER for NBC, kept Dr. Ross' cameo in "Such Sweet Sorrow" a secret from NBC, which promoted the episode as Carol Hathaway's goodbye, with no mention of Dr. Ross' appearance. In fact, the original version of "Such Sweet Sorrow" that Warner Brothers sent to NBC ended right after the scene where we see Hathaway on the plane to Seattle. At the 11th hour Warner Brothers 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' characters to get back together, as most fans always had hoped for). Clooney reportedly only asked to be paid scale for the cameo. The portion of the episode with Clooney was filmed on location at the Perfect Storm set which Clooney was filming at the time.
In the 11th season finale "The Show Must Go On" Dr. Ross was briefly shown in a photograph that was part of a slideshow 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.
[edit] 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.
In one episode, Doug learns about one of his young patients, an athlete, is stressed out about being gay and in the closet. Doug initially seems uncomfortable with talking to the boy, who leaves the hospital without revealing what's troubling him.
In one episode, he tries to do a rapid detox on a drug-addicted baby without the mother's consent. This procedure was assisted by Carol, but when the rest of the ER staff found out, Doug was in serious trouble. He was left on probation for 30 days, and was supervised by Dr. Kerry Weaver and Dr. Greene. They had to co-sign his charts.
He vies to be an attending physician for pediatrics. He eventually gets the job, even though Drs. Greene and Weaver were against it because it wasn't necessary and that the funds needed to go elsewhere. Mark was ultimately happy for Doug but Kerry was aghast and railed against his new position, succeeding in making Mark tell her to shut up.
He eventually resigns in the aftermath of a scandal in which he shows a mother how to bypass the lockouts on a Dilaudid dispensing intravenous pump, 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 found out by Weaver and Mark, who reprimanded him but kept the incident under wraps. This event also prompts the closure of Carol's free clinic in the hospital, since it supplied the materials 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 take a job in Portland, Oregon. As a result, when Doug left, he and Carol are on poor terms until she discovers she's pregnant by him. 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 pursue a film career. He also said that there wasn't any strong story in place for his character after Season 5.[cite this quote]
[edit] References
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This article does not cite any references or sources. (April 2008) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. |
[edit] External links
- Character biography at ER Headquarters
- Bio at TNT.com
- Official ER website at NBC.com
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