Once a regular watcher of the NBC drama ER, I’ve gradually cut off almost all television watching. But I may have a reason to start watching ER again—purely for professional reasons, of course.
No, I’m not going to medical school. ER is in the middle of an adoption storyline. This season’s new Chief of Emergency Medicine (played by Angela Bassett) and her husband Russell (played by Courtney Vance) have decided to take a chance on loving a child again after the devastating loss of their five-year-old son to a fast-killing leukemia, which we see in flashbacks. Banfield, 40 at the time of her son’s death, next suffered a miscarriage at three months.
Over the last few months we have seen the storyline progress as Russell and Banfield try to get pregnant, as she injects hormones that make her even more testy with her staff than usual, as she learns that she has only four healthy follicles, as she undergoes a procedure to retrieve her eggs for in vitro fertilization then awakens from anesthesia to learn no usable eggs were found.
Banfield’s husband mentions adoption, but Banfield has misgivings. She wants to try an egg donor—her niece is willing to donate an egg.
Banfield encounters a nine-year-old girl in the ER making a Valentine for her ill mother. Banfield knows that the mother is actually the girl’s aunt, with whom she has been living since her father abandoned her when she was three.
(The recap published on ER’s website states that the girl “knew that Joanie wasn’t her real mother, but it didn’t matter”. This wording is decidedly NOT Positive Adoption Language. I’ll hope this is a careless mistake of the recap writer rather than blame the show, at least until I can watch that segment again.)
The love between the patient and her little girl seems to melt away some of Banfield’s qualms about adoption. She and Russell began, in last night’s episode, to look at adoption. They attend an orientation session at an adoption agency. Banfield nervously asks her husband if her outfit makes her look too severe. “I want the director to look at me and see a mom,” she says. Before the session starts, another couple jokes that for the fees adoptive parents pay, they deserve sushi for refreshments instead of coffee and rolls.
“Ten thousand dollars buys you a bagel, a cup of cold coffee and a baby,” remarks the man. This remark irks Dr. Banfield, but she holds her peace.
During the orientation, the agency workers says that multicultural adoptions are becoming more common thanks to policy changes, education, and reduced fees. The same man again jokes, “why buy a white baby when you can have a six-pack of black ones?”
Banfield says to the man (who is himself African-American, as are the Banfields), “You think this is funny, the devaluing of black children?”
The man’s wife makes a vulgar remark about Banfield’s uptightness. Banfield and her husband walk out. As they leave, the man leans back and says to Russell,
“I feel sorry for the kid that ends up with you.” Now it’s Russell who’s overwhelmed with anger and punches the man.
It will be interesting to see what decisions Banfield and her husband Russell will make regarding their hoped-for children and how this storyline will play out in this final season of ER.