Douglas Ross, M.D. is a fictional character from the NBC medical drama series ER, portrayed by American actor George Clooney. He is a pediatric fellow, employed by the pediatric service, but works in the ER. He is later promoted to a pediatric attending in the ER. He appears from the pilot episode before departing in the fifth season episode "The Storm - Part II". Clooney later made guest appearances in the sixth season episode "Such Sweet Sorrow" and in the fifteenth season episode "Old Times".
Douglas Ross, M.D. is a fictional character from the NBC medical drama series ER, portrayed by American actor George Clooney. He is a pediatric fellow, employed by the pediatric service, but works in the ER. He is later promoted to a pediatric attending in the ER. He appears from the pilot episode before departing in the fifth season episode "The Storm - Part II". Clooney later made guest appearances in the sixth season episode "Such Sweet Sorrow" and in the fifteenth season episode "Old Times".
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Douglas Ross, M.D. is a fictional character from the NBC medical drama series ER, portrayed by American actor George Clooney. He is a pediatric fellow, employed by the pediatric service, but works in the ER. He is later promoted to a pediatric attending in the ER. He appears from the pilot episode before departing in the fifth season episode "The Storm - Part II". Clooney later made guest appearances in the sixth season episode "Such Sweet Sorrow" and in the fifteenth season episode "Old Times".
Career
In the pilot episode, which takes place on St. Patrick's Day 1994, Ross is brought into the ER not long before his shift, to be "treated" for drunkenness by his longtime friend, Dr. Mark Greene. Viewers also see Doug's reaction to the near-death of his ex-girlfriend, nurse Carol Hathaway, after she is brought into the ER as a patient following a suicide attempt.
Throughout the next few seasons, Ross is shown to be compassionate, though not always using the best judgment. His love of children 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, Ross leaves him speechless by 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 brashness leads him to confront parents he thinks are irresponsible, and in one instance he publicly assaults a man who had abused his daughter; Ross's counseling in that case just consists of a shrink telling him not to do that again.
Doug Ross was raised by his mother, Sarah, after his father, Ray, abandoned their family. In Season 1, Ross revealed to a patient that he had a son, and he tells nurse Wendy Goldman that he doesn't know his son's name as he's never seen him. Not much else is known about Doug's past.
Doug's estranged son was a large part of the reason that he became a pediatrician. In 2019, ER executive producer John Wells shared, "Part of the reason why he wanted to become a pediatrician and be around children and care for children is because of his guilt that he wasn't the person he wanted to be when he had a child as a young man. That was always meant to be part of who he was, but we didn't want to turn it into a Hallmark movie."
Despite his jumbled personal life, Ross is shown to be a dedicated ER pediatrician, no matter the rules or the consequences. In Season 2, Doug rescued a boy trapped in a flooding storm drain during a rainstorm. His heroic efforts were broadcast live on a local news station, making him a media star. This event helped him earn back his job at County General, because his supervisor in pediatrics originally wasn't going to renew his fellowship due to his repeated disrespect for authority.
During Season 2, Doug's father tries to reconcile with Doug, who has difficulty reconnecting with the man who abandoned him and his mother. Ray owns a ritzy hotel in Chicago, and Doug lets his guard down a little, but is disappointed when his father offers to take him to a Chicago Bulls game and then stands him up. Ross later reveals that he and his mother were abused by his father. Doug later has an affair with Ray's girlfriend, a woman from whom Ray stole money, but ends the relationship when it becomes clear that she has many problems.
Initially, Ross is portrayed as a womanizer who dates and leaves many women throughout the course of his time on the show. At one point, he has a one-night-stand with Harper Tracy, a medical student who had been tentatively pursued by Dr. John Carter; this leads to a rift between Ross and Carter for a time. His womanizing days abruptly end after an epileptic woman he picks up in a bar has a seizure while he drives her home and eventually dies in the ER. Ross learns her name only after her death, which prompts him to stop sleeping around and make an effort to get back together with Carol Hathaway, the head nurse of the ER at County General.
The relationship between Doug and Carol, which had previously ended on bad terms prior to the pilot episode, is rekindled in fits and starts over the course of the first five seasons. Doug leaves Chicago for Seattle during season five.
In the show's sixth season episode, "Such Sweet Sorrow," Carol flies to Seattle to get back together with Doug. Warner Bros. Television, the studio which produces ER for NBC, kept secret from the network the return of Dr. Ross. Instead, "Such Sweet Sorrow" was promoted as Carol Hathaway's goodbye, with no mention of Ross' appearance. The original version of "Such Sweet Sorrow" that Warner Bros. sent to NBC ended after the scene where viewers see Hathaway on the plane to Seattle. At the eleventh hour, Warner Bros. sent an "edited" version of the episode by messenger to NBC headquarters in New York for broadcast. NBC was unhappy that it was kept in the dark as it could have generated valuable ad revenue if it had aired promos that the episode marked the return of George Clooney.
Clooney cited the fans of the show for his reason for making the cameo (he wanted Hathaway's and Ross's characters to get back together, which many fans hoped for). Clooney reportedly only asked to be paid scale for the cameo.
In the season 15 episode "Old Times", Ross is working as an attending physician at the University of Washington Medical Center alongside his wife, Carol Hathaway, who is now a transplant coordinator at the hospital. Together, they help a grieving grandmother (Susan Sarandon) whose grandson was gravely injured in a bicycle accident, convincing her to donate the boy's organs.
In the episode, Doug chats with Sam and Neela after finding out that they are from County, asking them whether any of his old colleagues still work there. Doug and Carol are responsible for getting the kidney for Carter and a heart for another County patient, though they never learn the identities of the recipients.
