Well... Do They? Clooney's Er Return

Nine years, one Oscar, 18 films and three Oceans (Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen) have accrued since Dr Doug Ross last graced the set of ER. But on Thursday night George Clooney was back for one last medical flirtation - and this time it was final.

Clooney made his reappearance with just three episodes to go in the 15th and last season of the hit NBC drama set in the emergency ward of a Chicago hospital. Transposed to the Washington State hospital in Seattle where Dr Ross now works as attending physician, he is greyer than he used to be. But he retains the sexy, grainy voice, the watery eyes and the deep stare into a patient's soul.

It was that ability, demonstrated weekly over five years until he quit in 1999, that propelled Clooney into a stellar cinema career.

Before he took on the role of Dr Ross he was confined to bit parts in B movies. After it, he took an Oscar as best supporting actor for Syriana, has been voted the world's sexiest man twice and now commands a fee of up to $15m (£11m) per movie.

Clooney didn't let any of that stardom cloud his last ER performance. He was back in a modest blue doctor's gown, a stethoscope slung around his neck.

(Spoiler alert: If you don't want to know plot elements, skip from here).

It took the show's writing team considerable dexterity to bring back not only Clooney but three of ER's other founding stars for this nostalgia-fest of an episode. Dr Ross is reunited, no doubt to the dismay of millions of love-lorn viewers across America, with his girlfriend Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies). To put the question of his availability forever beyond doubt, he even sports a wedding ring. Back in Chicago's County General hospital, Dr John Carter, played by returning Noah Wyle, happens to be awaiting a kidney transplant and is visited by Dr Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle) who happens to be working back in the building. A spare kidney happens to come up - what a coincidence! - at the very Seattle hospital where Ross and Hathaway work.

Clooney used all of the 10 minutes that he is on camera to remind ER fans of the two great skills he brought to bear during his regular stint on the show. First, the pregnant pause - when confronted by a patient grappling with a life and death decision, he can hold the moment, as though time has stopped.

Second, he has the ability to imbue medical jargon with the philosophical depth of Kierkegaard and poetry of TS Eliot. Analyzing an X-ray of a patient's brain, he says: "No blood flow, no corneal or jaw reflex, no gag reflex, we've had the apnea test and now the CBF" as though he were reciting the line "Those are pearls that were his eyes."

To cap it all, the executives at NBC concluded the episode with a shot of Clooney in the nude. Well, naked from the waist up, in bed with Margulies.

The very last words Dr Ross will ever utter? "I love you."

You don't get better than that.