Tonight something that factually seems so obvious, really hit me. 1994 was 13 years ago! How the hell did that happen!?

My TiVo has been recording huge amounts of ER in the last few days. It’s worked out that I enjoy American drama shows of that genre and as a result has taken to recording hours and hours of CSI and ER which would seem to be shown several times a day across a number of channels.

I pretty much gave up on ER sometime after Dr Carter, played by Noah Wyle, left for Africa. There are only so many times my brain can believe that so much bad luck and hot nurses can fall upon a county hospital in America. I replaced ER with shows like The West Wing, Six Feet Under, and more recently Lost and Studio 60 on sunset strip. In truth though, thanks to the tireless efforts of TiVo, all I ever seem to watch are episodes of CSI, be that CSI Miami, CSI Vegas, CSI New York, CSI Burnley or whatever.

I usually check the date the particular show was recorded then delete it if its old. I know TiVo can be programed to do this itself, but I’ve not quite worked out how to get it to do that yet. Besides, there are some old episodes that I’ve enjoyed watching again, like the ER episode where Dr Green dies, or the one where Dr Romano gets his arm chopped off by a helicopter.

So when I got in tonight I made a cup of tea and flopped onto my couch to see chill in front of the TV for a while. I started doing my routine deletions of TV shows I don’t want to watch when I happened upon a very early episode of ER from 1994. “Ah what the heck” I thought to myself as I pressed play. I figured it would be fun to watch just a few minutes of the show from back then while I sipped on my last cuppa of the day.

As I settled into the show I was struck by how aged it seemed. The characters were familiar, but the acting, the lighting, even the sound had an aged feel to it, like a sun bleached magazine in a waiting room. The hairstyles and fashion were from a different era, and as I watched cars in the background of one scene it suddenly struck me that 1994 was now part of another era, and that watching this was kind of like listening to an oldies radio station.

1994 can’t be 13 years ago can it? I understand the math but really, it doesn’t feel to me like it was really that long ago. The 90’s don’t feel like years when we wore our hair that different and clothes that today make us think ‘what on earth was I doing!?’ But here I was watching an episode of ‘ER’ from that year and being utterly struck and how the characters have aged and how the fashion and style of the show looks utterly dated today.

Of course as I sit here and think about 1994 I realize that it was of course a different era. I was 23 and only just emerging from a couple of years where I wore nothing but black. I had long hair that made me look like Pauly Shore, and despite countless photographs of me with guitars I never actually got past learning just three cords.

In 1994 Democratic President Clinton was in office in the States, Conservative John Major was the Prime Minster of Britain, The Channel Tunnel linking England with Europe was opened, Formula One world champion Ayrton Senna was killed at the San Marino Grand Prix, Manchester bad boys Oasis released their debut album, Hugh Grant was stuttering his way to A list celebrity with the smash hit movie ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’, and the internet was something that only nerds used.

I recently learned that a 90’s revival bar is opening in Liverpool soon. I initially laughed at the idea, but seeing that old episode on ER made me realize that the 1990’s really have been dead for a long time now, and revisiting anything from that era will indeed require a certain amount of revival.

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[Video] ER Favorite scene : Dr Greene leaves
[Video] ER Favorite scene : Dr Greene’s letter
ER
Six Feet Under
Lost
CSI
CSI New York
CSI Miami
CSI Burnley
TiVo
Ayrton Senna remebered