I remember watching this great show on Saturday nights back when I was in high school. In those days, the networks put the good TV shows on Saturdays. Today, Saturday night is a graveyard for the pseudo-cancelled. It's hard to believe that almost 40 years ago the concept of the paramedic was a novel one, and this is a great show about the problems and personal lives of those involved in those early days of the program.
Emergency kept the pace fast and interesting with a combination of strange, dramatic, and even humorous cases. More unusual cases I remember from the series include the rescue of a boy trapped inside his own homemade rocket, a man who has difficulty breathing because he has swallowed his partial dental plate, an amateur magician trapped in a safe, a bank robbery hostage has symptoms of a heart attack and the paramedics have to treat him at gunpoint, a patient with an earache caused by mothballs, and an artist trapped inside his own sculpture.
The personal side of Emergency is interesting too. The chemistry between paramedics John Gage and Roy DeSoto is great and their various misadventures are frequently humorous. They're good friends but quite different people. Roy is a family man through and through, and John is a carefree single guy. I remember one particularly funny conversation in which John is actually thinking about marriage but is not sure he and the girl have known each other long enough. He asks Roy how long he knew his wife before they got married and Roy says 12 years. When John says that is a ridiculous period of time to wait, Roy mentions that he and his wife met in the fourth grade. That's a pretty typical conversation for the two. I highly recommend this series. If you've never seen it, even though medicine has changed drastically, it is still good entertainment. Highly recommended.
