Awesome / Emergency!

• Being a Rescue show, you just KNOW Emergency! is going to have at least one Moment of Awesome per episode.
• The Pilot movie:
  • Gage, DeSoto, and Dixie are dealing with a car accident (the bill legalizing paramedics hadn't been signed yet, so any emergency involving injuries required picking up a nurse at Rampart to administer authorized medical help), Dixie is unexpectedly injured and rendered unconscious, and despite orders from Dr. Brackett not to treat the patients, Gage instead says, "to hell with the orders", shuts off the BioPhone, and treats the victims anyway (including Dixie). Despite a "dressing down" lecture, admonishing them for disobeying orders, Brackett then reluctantly admits to them that they otherwise did a good job. It's this incident that finally changes his tune about the paramedic program. (He had been against it at first for somewhat valid reasons, even though he did train the paramedics.)
    • Brackett's own speech to the state legislature about the necessity of the program is pretty awesome too, pointing out how they can save a life. It's apparently off the cuff, considering that from all appearances he wasn't sure whether or not to endorse the program until he arrived. The program is approved almost unanimously.
    Brackett: Gentlemen, you are all in danger. If an earthquake or a bomb should hit this room right now, I might be the only doctor available to all of you. Oh, sure, independently-owned ambulances with attendants would be here in a few minutes, and rescue units from the fire department, but all they could do is carry you off to where another doctor is waiting. I wonder if you could all last that long. Now what about first aid? Oh, sure, these men are permitted to render some elementary first aid, like your mother did when some kid bloodied your nose, or your wife when she pulled a sliver out of your finger. Have any of you seen a freeway accident lately? I mean close up, where you can't tell the bodies from the steel? Or have any of you had a heart attack recently? Seventy percent of all cardiac cases never live long enough to reach a hospital. How do you think your mother or your wife or the good guy next door would make out under those conditions? Well those are the conditions we're talking about. Now I've given you the impression that I'm in favor of fire department personnel with a crash course in emergency medicine, taking human lives into their own hands. I am not. I'd like to see a specialist handling every bloody nose, so we'd know if it was the result of a good right cross or a tumor. I'd like to see a cardiologist on the scene any time someone drops in the street with a killing pain in his chest. But you can't ask someone not to die while you find out what's wrong with him. And they do die, gentlemen. On the way from where it happens to my hospital. They die by the hundreds every year. Not from mortal wounds, but from neglected wounds. Not from incompetence or indifference, but from time. From lack of time. I'm in favor of more doctors, more hospitals, and better equipment. And I'm also in favor of this program until those other things come along. Because it will save lives. Maybe a dozen lives, maybe a thousand. Maybe just one. And who knows which one.
  • During a night rescue, Gage and DeSoto rescue a victim who suffers a heart attack while they're in contact with Rampart. Brackett, now realizing that the patient's life is more important than strict adherence to policy, orders the paramedics to de-fibrillate even though the bill hasn't been passed yet. Gage reluctantly does so, and the victim is revived after the second attempt.
• At one point, Roy and Johnny are on a fishing trip. Of course, so many emergencies arise that they never actually get to fish, but at one point they bust their way into the county doctor's office (the doctor's obviously not in) with the help of the sheriff, place a long distance call to Rampart, and have them walk them through treating the guy. They need to get into the locked drugs cabinet for a particular medication, and the sheriff promptly smashes the glass with the butt of his service revolver.
  Sheriff: You boys tell me if you need anything else opened.
• Most of the high-altitude rescues Johnny gets into are pretty awesome, but one that takes the cake is climbing the support arch of a bridge to rescue a stranded epileptic kid who climbed up on a dare. He gets up there and starts hooking himself up to the kid, only for the kid to have a seizure and drag them both off the arch before he can secure himself to the kid. Johnny is hanging upside down and swinging back and forth with the still-seizing kid in his arms as the rest of the crew tries to lower him slowly, and he manages to not drop the kid.
• Emergency! has a generally awesome Jazz theme and soundtrack — the main theme and the main incidental cues were written by Nelson Riddle, with Billy May covering the incidental music after the second season. Other composers subbed in on some of the TV movies, including Gerald Fried, of "Amok Time" fight music and Paths of Glory fame. The syndication opening titles, perhaps due to changing tastes in The '80s, use a bare electric bass line under sound design and radio voices.
• In a moment that's also a Funny Moment, Johnny and Roy get deployed to a bank robbery where one of the hostages has had a heart attack. They're promptly taken hostage by the two robbers, and while Roy is treating the man, Johnny proceeds to make friends with one of the robbers by helping him relax with a few deep breathing techniques. Then Johnny starts to talk, empathizing with the robbers & seemingly trying to help them with their plans. Playing up his awe, Johnny coaxes the robbers to show him all the money, exclaiming how he's never seen that much money before in his life, then, as the robbers are grinning like proud little kids, Johnny points out all the flaws in their plan, gradually pointing them towards the realization that they screwed themselves over by calling for an ambulance for the heart attack victim, proving that they won't kill the hostages. The two men surrender without any bloodshed.
• In the episode "Kidding", one response brings Roy and Johnny to a house where a man, a Vietnam veteran, is experiencing a psychotic episode and holding his wife hostage with a knife. They manage to subdue the man without hurting him. It turns out that he's suffering from a brain tumor, so he wasn't responsible for his actions, and the doctors at Rampart are able to help him.

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