Emergency!: Season 02  (1972)

Theatrical Release Information:
Emergency!: Season 02

After an 11-week trial run in the spring of 1972, the NBC drama series Emergency! proved sufficiently strong enough in the ratings opposite the otherwise indomitable All in the Family that the network gave the green light for a full complement of 21 episodes during season two. The paramedics of the L.A. County Fire Department and the staff of Ramparts Hospital waste no time getting down to business in the season opener, wherein paramedics Roy DeSoto (Kevin Tighe) and John Gage (Randolph Mantooth) go to the rescue of a man whose car engine has fallen on him, a motorcyclist is threatened by a willful bull, and a visiting doctor at Ramparts succumbs to a heart attack. In subsequent episodes, the men of Squad 51 adopt a canine mascot named Boots; Ramparts' Dr. Joe Early (Bobby Troup) extracts a youngster's arm from a steering wheel; a potentially deadly virus, brought into Ramparts by a pet monkey, imperils the lives of Dr. Kelly Brackett (Robert Fuller); Nurse Dixie McCall (Julie London) painfully does her rounds despite a seriously injured foot; a large group of children and a nun are trapped in a crashed bus; Roy and John tackle the challenge of teaching a CPR class; the hospital runs up against the brick wall of bureaucracy when the CIA won't give any clues pertaining to a patient's schizophrenia; and, of course, the paramedics rescue several victims "dangling" from a variety of high places, ranging from scaffolds to tree houses. Among the guest stars appearing during Emergency!'s second season are Sharon Gless, Dick Van Patten, Jackie Coogan, future Little House on the Prairie regulars Melissa Gilbert and Katherine MacGregor, and a pre-M*A*S*H Jamie Farr. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide