And that’s especially true for a show like ER, which is serialized enough that I’d recommend watching the show straight through from the beginning, as opposed to picking and choosing favorite episodes like one might do with a more close-ended procedural like Law & Order. Just the sheer volume of stuff viewers have available to them in 2018 means that trying to get them to watch a show with over 300 episodes is always going to be a tall order. “To be totally transparent, it was not a no-brainer, because we thought there were some potential risks in terms of if it would really work in this streaming environment,” she says. Lisa Holme, Hulu’s vice president of content acquisitions, says she initially wasn’t convinced that ER was a must-have for the service. Given that ER was extremely popular and ran, all told, for 331 episodes (and technically 333 episodes, thanks to its double-length pilot and finale), you can imagine where closing a streaming deal for the season might have taken some fancy negotiating. Now consider that as more and more TV libraries (any entity that controls the post-air rights to any TV show - usually a studio, but not always) realize the value that older shows in their back catalogs present to streaming services, they’re less likely to sell those shows in package deals and more likely to make blockbuster deals around individual series (especially series that were big hits when they were on the air). NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesĬonsider for a moment that streaming deals for old shows are based on the number of episodes in a show’s run.

ER presented some major risks for any service that considered bringing it into the streaming era When ER finally ended in 2009, it had lasted 331 episodes. But the TV climate of 2018 is uniquely susceptible to a show like ER, for a bunch of reasons. That’s quite a shift for a series that probably spent too many seasons on the air and eventually got a little too amped-up and silly. But overall, it feels like it could be dropped onto the air right now and still be compulsively watchable. Sure, the fashion and hairstyles are out of date, and what social issues it touches on (from HIV to medical privacy) are rooted in the era it was made in. And what’s even more remarkable is that the show doesn’t feel particularly dated, in the way other series of its ilk often do. But now that it’s available in its entirety, viewers are flocking to ER and shoving aside other, newer TV shows in favor of its mid-’90s charms.

The best er episodes