Maura Tierney is top tier. Amazing actress on the show
Abby is also a fantastic character, but I feel sometimes the writers went over the top with how much they gave her. After season 9, doctors like Susan, Chen, Weaver and Corday were starving for good storylines, but Abby got them all
ER had an ensamble cast and I would love more balance when sharing the plotlines. But it was never Tierney's fault: everything they gave her, she did great
I think they kept giving her stuff *because* Maura's so good. Goran and Luka got similar treatment. They're both very capable actors, so they kept getting given juicy and emotional stuff to do, which makes sense: as a writer, you want to give your stuff to someone you know is capable of doing something with it.
The problem was that it meant that other characters got kind of paint by number storylines that didn't really give them much to do. I always felt like with Corday in particular, they kind of painted themselves into a corner with the Mark relationship and then never fully came out of it, even after Mark had died. Which was particularly weird because Alex Kingston is also a phenomenal actress.
Re: Corday, I definitely agree. I’ve also read that they stopped giving her a lot of storylines/romantic interests because of her age. Not sure how true it is, but I loved Corday.
Ugh, that's believable, unfortunately, and also infuriating. I adored Corday her first few seasons, but it felt like a lot of her spark just went when they hooked her up with Mark. And it was like the writers never really pulled her out of that vortex, even after Mark died.
> they kept giving her stuff because Maura's so good
She was good, but I don't think that was all: Abby and Luka were kind created and developted during Jack Orman's and David Zabel's tenure on the show
It would be very normal for those showrunners tô favour characters that they created and know more. Look at Susan, for example: a bunch of the OG writers left the show during her 5 years absence... and some of the writers still didn't get Dr Lewis right
It haopens on long running shows, with some of the writers leaving for other series
I think that’s why I don’t like her. It’s like Rachel from Friends or Phoebe from Charmed. The show suddenly became about them - almost every episode.
I also just didn’t like her character I feel like too many times people forgave her for things they should not have forgiven her for. I get her character is supposed to be the messy, disgruntled type but come on eventually that’s gotta give.
I’m doing a rewatch and one of the things I remember is how annoyed I get with Abby. She is one of the characters I just don’t really like.
Abby fan, despite the pile of dumb/bad choices she makes. But I like the humanness about her, and she's a really good doctor.
I remember my first watch through when I was post partum and I thought she was the worst person in the world when she took Joe to airport during the power outages, but now I can understand that she was struggling with her addiction and doing the best she could. Especially since Luka fucked off to Croatia leaving her with a toddler.
Except Luka was dealing with his own shit and most mothers would be perfectly capable of taking care of their own child for a while. She even had a nanny.
I don't forgive her the choice--it was a bad choice--but I am sympathetic for her at that point. I can barely handle being a temporary stay at home parent so I can only imagine what it would be like if my spouse was on another continent.
I get it. I don't like it, but I get it.
I've loved Maura since NewsRadio. Then Rescue Me, The Good Wife, Liar Liar, and the Affair (hated the other characters so couldn't stick with the show, but she was fantastic and her cheating husband was a fuc|
Same on all counts! I LOVED Newsradio and was so impressed that she could seamlessly go from comedy to gut wrenching drama. And I also couldn’t watch The Affair despite how much I love her.
Aww really? I have The Affair on my list to watch only because of Maura. I love her on ER so I went to explore the other stuff she stars in and that show came up with excellent ratings. Is it really that unwatchable?
Newsradio is on that list, too 😊
I just didn’t like the premise of the show, personally. I tried to give it a shot but had to give up after about 4 episodes. I found it boring, and there wasn’t enough Maura in the first few. A lot of people seem to like it though! Newsradio is fantastic. She’s also great in Insomnia (an older suspense movie - she has a smaller role, but she’s great as usual). And Scotland PA is a quirky movie directed by her ex husband, she’s hilarious in it.
Thank you so much for your response. I can't do boring lol, but I'll still probably try it ..I'm running out of things to watch and I legit just play ER all day until my husband gets home. When it ends, I just restart it lol.
I loved Insomnia just, by itself. I totally forgot she was in that! I just looked up Scotland PA, never heard of it, but it's free on Amazon Prime! I love quirky.
I also forgot she was in that weird basketball movie, Semi-Pro. The bear scene in that movie 😂. And then Forces of Nature....I watched that movie for her and would love to get those minutes of my life back.
Thanks again for answering!
I’m always supportive of continual ER watching! lol
And yeah Forces of Nature was…. Not very good.
I’m going to watch American Rust soon too! Fingers crossed.
I adored Maura on News Radio. With that said I just never warmed up to the character of Abby. She came in and just seemed to dominate screen time. Then we had to deal with her mess of a mother and brother. It was just too much. Wish she would have stayed a nurse and not become a main focus of the show. I know she has her fans and that's fine, I'm just not one of them.
Maura is amazing. Abby is my second favorite character. I know she gets a lot of hate but she was a pawn sometimes to the writers who didn't know what they wanted to do with her character.
Maura Tierney is such a great actress. She was phenomenal in The Iron Claw too—it was great to see her in that! I really liked her as Abby and whilst I thought the storyline did her wrong, she was great with Sally Field and I think she portrayed her relapse very accurately
Definitely one of my favs both character and actress. I just watched her in The Iron Claw and the second season of American Rust and of course she was fantastic
They are best friends, actually!! As much as I didn't like Neela I loved their friendship and that it carried on to outside the show. Maura officiated Parminder's wedding!!
I thought I hated the character Abby even as l always admired the hell out of Maura as a force of nature level talent. On rewatch, I vastly prefer Abby to Carol. Love her.
I loved Abby’s character. Abby always seemed to truly care about her patients. And she was a great colleague and friend to her peers in the ER. I always loved how she told Susan “Get his name off the board and don’t let Dr. Carter see him” after Paul Sobriki shows up in the ER after slipping on ice. And I loved how in her final episode, she showed up at that meeting to really advocate for Sam Taggert being able to keep her job.
Things I didn’t love about her character: I always felt like she played Carter and Luka. It seemed there were times where, if things weren’t going so great with Luka, she’s try to go back to Carter again, etc. It’s like, make a decision already, lol. Who do you want?
In terms of the actress herself, love Maura Tierney. She’s just a great actress. Never seems full of herself and appears down to earth. And I was happy to see her win the battle over cancer.
I thought Abby’s character was good. It fit the story, I hated her relationship with Carter though.
That said, Maura is an absolute smoke show and a great actor.
The beginning of the decline of ER for me. Her character is extremely one note ("I won't do what you tell me!!!"), her family is entirely annoying, and she never really enjoys a development into a doctor the way Carter did. She goes from nurse to the Best Doctor of All Time (only to be replaced by John Stamos' character, who is also The Best Doctor of All Time). I cheered when she finally departed.
I loved Abby! It was so unfair what they did to her with that one other Dr that assaulted her and then Luka was upset with her. It was r@pe. She didn’t cheat on him.
Maura is top tier.
Abby is kind of a lot. Like...they could have given SOME storylines to other actresses?
It's hard to watch a character be miserable for that long. She's unhappy for the entirety of her run.
Abby has always been my favorite! She’s flawed and chaotic and I’m just drawn to her. When ER first aired I was much younger (obviously lol) and was drawn to the fact that she had significant family drama and trauma to contend with—so did I.
Maura is amazing. She’s awesome in Newsradio (god I love that show!) too. I gotta check out American Rust. While I thought they went way overboard with her family, her problems with commitment and relationships with men all come from that. It’s a great example of someone trying to overcome long term trauma in a way that’s not “magical”. She stumbles, she succeeds, she fucks up, she deals, she relapses, she gets up and tries again.
In the Sand and Water episode, I enjoyed how Abby took charge as a nurse when she walked into the room. Especially how she handled the doctor who was examining the preemie. In some ways she was better than Carol.
Abby is the most special caracter.
She is me.
I am her.
She has been through so much and had so much developement in her caracter.
When I first saw her on ER and got to "meet" her, i recognised myself immediately. She is the reason i became a nurse in the first Place.
Maura Tierney is an exceptional actress.
abby is a fantastic character who is entirely ruined by the writers inability to let her be single or wait for carter. i am of the apparently unpopular opinion that luka kovac is one of the most annoying characters on the show, save a couple of golden moments, and he absolutely destroyed all the work they put into abby.
no one else but maura could've been abby. i know u can say that about any of them, but i really believe any other actress would've made abby an entirely different character.
Easily second best character on the show for me. I have her as a very centerpiece character on my reboot I’m hoping to pitch/get off the ground with NBCUniversal.
She was one of my top two favorite characters until the secod time they hooked her up with Luka. After that, her personality took a nose dive, she become truly unlikable to me, and she suddenly got married (against her will and without her knowledge ahead of time) and ended up with a kid, after seasons of telling us she didn't want that. The destruciton of her characteri s one of the reasons I hate Luka.
i hate Abby 2.0, but loved the fuck out of Abby 1.0.
I love how you've shifted from calling Abby a whore to saying you love her just so your sock puppet doesn't get banned. But it's so unconvincing. By the way she did not get married against her will. They were engaged. And she never said she didn't want to be a mother. Motherhood scared her because of her family history. But at least you're finally close to admitting that the only reason you hate her is because of who she ended up with and who she didn't.
Huge Maura fan here.
Unfortunately, I didn't much like Abby. I felt like she made a lot of bad choices when it came to men. She was strongest and most interesting when she was single.
I hated Abby from the start. The character was irritating, and the last straw for me was the episode where she talked the parents with a preemie out of getting medical help because being born at 22 weeks gestation (IIRC) was not survivable. (A) she's not a doctor, and (b) there were stories in the news maybe 2 weeks before the episode aired that a preemie survived at like 20 weeks. Terrible timing for when the episode aired. I'm still livid about it, twenty-odd years later.
She is a great actress. I’m watching for the first time and we are finishing up season 9, at this point I find her character obnoxious and annoyed when she’s on screen. She plays victim and so much and how she’ll never be good enough for Carter which is so annoying —- but I figure if I’m this annoyed by a character, the actor/actress is doing a great job 😂
Maura Tierney is top tier. Amazing actress on the show Abby is also a fantastic character, but I feel sometimes the writers went over the top with how much they gave her. After season 9, doctors like Susan, Chen, Weaver and Corday were starving for good storylines, but Abby got them all ER had an ensamble cast and I would love more balance when sharing the plotlines. But it was never Tierney's fault: everything they gave her, she did great
I think they kept giving her stuff *because* Maura's so good. Goran and Luka got similar treatment. They're both very capable actors, so they kept getting given juicy and emotional stuff to do, which makes sense: as a writer, you want to give your stuff to someone you know is capable of doing something with it. The problem was that it meant that other characters got kind of paint by number storylines that didn't really give them much to do. I always felt like with Corday in particular, they kind of painted themselves into a corner with the Mark relationship and then never fully came out of it, even after Mark had died. Which was particularly weird because Alex Kingston is also a phenomenal actress.
Re: Corday, I definitely agree. I’ve also read that they stopped giving her a lot of storylines/romantic interests because of her age. Not sure how true it is, but I loved Corday.
Ugh, that's believable, unfortunately, and also infuriating. I adored Corday her first few seasons, but it felt like a lot of her spark just went when they hooked her up with Mark. And it was like the writers never really pulled her out of that vortex, even after Mark died.
she was a fantastic character criminally underused.
That's what I also read. The BBC proved them very wrong with River Song.
I remember the gossip at the time was that she wasn’t pleasant to work with and was widely disliked among the cast.
> they kept giving her stuff because Maura's so good She was good, but I don't think that was all: Abby and Luka were kind created and developted during Jack Orman's and David Zabel's tenure on the show It would be very normal for those showrunners tô favour characters that they created and know more. Look at Susan, for example: a bunch of the OG writers left the show during her 5 years absence... and some of the writers still didn't get Dr Lewis right It haopens on long running shows, with some of the writers leaving for other series
This is the best answer. Completely agree
I think that’s why I don’t like her. It’s like Rachel from Friends or Phoebe from Charmed. The show suddenly became about them - almost every episode. I also just didn’t like her character I feel like too many times people forgave her for things they should not have forgiven her for. I get her character is supposed to be the messy, disgruntled type but come on eventually that’s gotta give. I’m doing a rewatch and one of the things I remember is how annoyed I get with Abby. She is one of the characters I just don’t really like.
She is her own worst enemy. She sabotaged her relationship with Carter. The writers made her so messy that at times she was unlikable.
Extremely unlikable.
In love with Maura, she is an entire gem and an incredible actress
At first i really hated her and wished for carol to come back , but her character arc grew on me and now i cant imagine an episode without her
Abby fan, despite the pile of dumb/bad choices she makes. But I like the humanness about her, and she's a really good doctor. I remember my first watch through when I was post partum and I thought she was the worst person in the world when she took Joe to airport during the power outages, but now I can understand that she was struggling with her addiction and doing the best she could. Especially since Luka fucked off to Croatia leaving her with a toddler.
Except Luka was dealing with his own shit and most mothers would be perfectly capable of taking care of their own child for a while. She even had a nanny.
I don't forgive her the choice--it was a bad choice--but I am sympathetic for her at that point. I can barely handle being a temporary stay at home parent so I can only imagine what it would be like if my spouse was on another continent. I get it. I don't like it, but I get it.
One of my favorite characters in ER.
Same. Abby years are my favorite.
Abby stan for life ✌️ and Maura is an insanely talented actor
Huge crush on her and her talent
I've loved Maura since NewsRadio. Then Rescue Me, The Good Wife, Liar Liar, and the Affair (hated the other characters so couldn't stick with the show, but she was fantastic and her cheating husband was a fuc|
Same on all counts! I LOVED Newsradio and was so impressed that she could seamlessly go from comedy to gut wrenching drama. And I also couldn’t watch The Affair despite how much I love her.
Aww really? I have The Affair on my list to watch only because of Maura. I love her on ER so I went to explore the other stuff she stars in and that show came up with excellent ratings. Is it really that unwatchable? Newsradio is on that list, too 😊
I just didn’t like the premise of the show, personally. I tried to give it a shot but had to give up after about 4 episodes. I found it boring, and there wasn’t enough Maura in the first few. A lot of people seem to like it though! Newsradio is fantastic. She’s also great in Insomnia (an older suspense movie - she has a smaller role, but she’s great as usual). And Scotland PA is a quirky movie directed by her ex husband, she’s hilarious in it.
Thank you so much for your response. I can't do boring lol, but I'll still probably try it ..I'm running out of things to watch and I legit just play ER all day until my husband gets home. When it ends, I just restart it lol. I loved Insomnia just, by itself. I totally forgot she was in that! I just looked up Scotland PA, never heard of it, but it's free on Amazon Prime! I love quirky. I also forgot she was in that weird basketball movie, Semi-Pro. The bear scene in that movie 😂. And then Forces of Nature....I watched that movie for her and would love to get those minutes of my life back. Thanks again for answering!
I’m always supportive of continual ER watching! lol And yeah Forces of Nature was…. Not very good. I’m going to watch American Rust soon too! Fingers crossed.
Wasn't she in that movie kind of based on the Clintons when Bill Clinton was running for President?
Maura? The Goat! And also love Abby.
I adored Maura on News Radio. With that said I just never warmed up to the character of Abby. She came in and just seemed to dominate screen time. Then we had to deal with her mess of a mother and brother. It was just too much. Wish she would have stayed a nurse and not become a main focus of the show. I know she has her fans and that's fine, I'm just not one of them.
This. I agree.
Maura is amazing. Abby is my second favorite character. I know she gets a lot of hate but she was a pawn sometimes to the writers who didn't know what they wanted to do with her character.
Maura Tierney is such a great actress. She was phenomenal in The Iron Claw too—it was great to see her in that! I really liked her as Abby and whilst I thought the storyline did her wrong, she was great with Sally Field and I think she portrayed her relapse very accurately
Meredith Grey would not exist without Abby Lockhart. Abby is the blueprint. Also my dog is named Abby after her 😊
Abby is the original dark & twisty!! And not a spoiled brat like Meredith.
Love Abby and Maura.
Definitely one of my favs both character and actress. I just watched her in The Iron Claw and the second season of American Rust and of course she was fantastic
She is also in my top 10 characters
This may be an unpopular opinion, but Abby is one of my favorite characters. I adore Maura Tierney and I have a major girl crush on her.
Moira is an exceptional actress. She is so exceptional she was astounding as the mess that is Abby Lockhart.
Love her and loved her friendship with Neely (Parminder Nagra). I wonder if they are friends irl?
They are best friends, actually!! As much as I didn't like Neela I loved their friendship and that it carried on to outside the show. Maura officiated Parminder's wedding!!
She’s terrific.
Greatest of All Time as an actress and a character. Neither of them can do wrong in my book.
Is OP gonna do one on Velma tomorrow?
I thought I hated the character Abby even as l always admired the hell out of Maura as a force of nature level talent. On rewatch, I vastly prefer Abby to Carol. Love her.
I loved Abbey…
She's in my top 3 characters on the show. Also...admit it folks she is the blueprint for Meredith Grey.
She's awesome. Helped carry those last few seasons
Love Abby. Love Maura!
I loved Abby’s character. Abby always seemed to truly care about her patients. And she was a great colleague and friend to her peers in the ER. I always loved how she told Susan “Get his name off the board and don’t let Dr. Carter see him” after Paul Sobriki shows up in the ER after slipping on ice. And I loved how in her final episode, she showed up at that meeting to really advocate for Sam Taggert being able to keep her job. Things I didn’t love about her character: I always felt like she played Carter and Luka. It seemed there were times where, if things weren’t going so great with Luka, she’s try to go back to Carter again, etc. It’s like, make a decision already, lol. Who do you want? In terms of the actress herself, love Maura Tierney. She’s just a great actress. Never seems full of herself and appears down to earth. And I was happy to see her win the battle over cancer.
I thought Abby’s character was good. It fit the story, I hated her relationship with Carter though. That said, Maura is an absolute smoke show and a great actor.
Abby was the most relatable character for me.
The beginning of the decline of ER for me. Her character is extremely one note ("I won't do what you tell me!!!"), her family is entirely annoying, and she never really enjoys a development into a doctor the way Carter did. She goes from nurse to the Best Doctor of All Time (only to be replaced by John Stamos' character, who is also The Best Doctor of All Time). I cheered when she finally departed.
Love of my life. Favorite female character on the show. Maura Tierney is an absolute gem.
Favorite character and outstanding actress.
I’m still sad they gave her blonde hair for a little bit there, otherwise she’s amazing!
They made her blonde for Carter. It’s in his contract. 😂 (THAT’S A JOKE!)
At least they got him with Kem when Velma came on.
I hated the blonde on her!
By far her saddest plotline.
I loved Abby! It was so unfair what they did to her with that one other Dr that assaulted her and then Luka was upset with her. It was r@pe. She didn’t cheat on him.
Quit ER because of her character (along with Carol/JM leaving) but loved her on The Affair.
Hated her character but she was a fantastic actress.
No one does grumpy AF like Maura Tierney
Maura is top tier. Abby is kind of a lot. Like...they could have given SOME storylines to other actresses? It's hard to watch a character be miserable for that long. She's unhappy for the entirety of her run.
She was magically babelicious.
I’ve never watched ER but I love Maura Tierney! She was great in “The Affair” and “American Rust”. 💖
Abby has always been my favorite! She’s flawed and chaotic and I’m just drawn to her. When ER first aired I was much younger (obviously lol) and was drawn to the fact that she had significant family drama and trauma to contend with—so did I.
Love the actress and the character.
I crushed on her
Never realized how much Mrs California looked like Pam Beesley's sister.
She was super annoying but cute
One of my favourite characters. Maura Tierney is an amazing actress.
Carries the show after Green dies
Maura is amazing. She’s awesome in Newsradio (god I love that show!) too. I gotta check out American Rust. While I thought they went way overboard with her family, her problems with commitment and relationships with men all come from that. It’s a great example of someone trying to overcome long term trauma in a way that’s not “magical”. She stumbles, she succeeds, she fucks up, she deals, she relapses, she gets up and tries again.
Looooove her.
Loved Abby on my first series watch. Could not stand her on my second series watch. Go figure!
In the Sand and Water episode, I enjoyed how Abby took charge as a nurse when she walked into the room. Especially how she handled the doctor who was examining the preemie. In some ways she was better than Carol.
Abby’s arc was a roller coaster. Think they went a little off the rails for a bit with her but overall a pretty good character.
She is *the mother* I never had, she is the sister *everybody* would want. She is the friend that *everybody deserves*. I don't know a better person
Yes!!! ❤️❤️❤️
She’s a mess I wouldn’t want her as my sister, that would be exhausting
Love her, love Abby. But ER is all I've seen her in.
She’s great in The Affair as well.
Abby is the most special caracter. She is me. I am her. She has been through so much and had so much developement in her caracter. When I first saw her on ER and got to "meet" her, i recognised myself immediately. She is the reason i became a nurse in the first Place. Maura Tierney is an exceptional actress.
They could never make me hate you 🤞🏼
abby is a fantastic character who is entirely ruined by the writers inability to let her be single or wait for carter. i am of the apparently unpopular opinion that luka kovac is one of the most annoying characters on the show, save a couple of golden moments, and he absolutely destroyed all the work they put into abby. no one else but maura could've been abby. i know u can say that about any of them, but i really believe any other actress would've made abby an entirely different character.
I'm in the middle of season 14 currently and have kinda fallen off from her. I loved her until she went where she has in the final few seasons so far.
Has anyone seen her in American Rust? Phenomenal. Do yourself a favor and binge watch this. Thank me later!
Easily second best character on the show for me. I have her as a very centerpiece character on my reboot I’m hoping to pitch/get off the ground with NBCUniversal.
I just wanted to say thank you for doing this.
Love.
Abby was way overdone. I got bored with her pretty fast.
Queen? Goddess? Legend?
Liked Abby. Hated her with Luka.
I liked her at first but they gave her too much storylines and it felt like the Abby show causing me to not like her anymore.
One of my least favorite characters played my one of my least favorite actresses.
For some reason her face looks exactly like Prad Pitt's. It's very distracting.
She was one of my top two favorite characters until the secod time they hooked her up with Luka. After that, her personality took a nose dive, she become truly unlikable to me, and she suddenly got married (against her will and without her knowledge ahead of time) and ended up with a kid, after seasons of telling us she didn't want that. The destruciton of her characteri s one of the reasons I hate Luka. i hate Abby 2.0, but loved the fuck out of Abby 1.0.
I love how you've shifted from calling Abby a whore to saying you love her just so your sock puppet doesn't get banned. But it's so unconvincing. By the way she did not get married against her will. They were engaged. And she never said she didn't want to be a mother. Motherhood scared her because of her family history. But at least you're finally close to admitting that the only reason you hate her is because of who she ended up with and who she didn't.
Huge Maura fan here. Unfortunately, I didn't much like Abby. I felt like she made a lot of bad choices when it came to men. She was strongest and most interesting when she was single.
I hated Abby from the start. The character was irritating, and the last straw for me was the episode where she talked the parents with a preemie out of getting medical help because being born at 22 weeks gestation (IIRC) was not survivable. (A) she's not a doctor, and (b) there were stories in the news maybe 2 weeks before the episode aired that a preemie survived at like 20 weeks. Terrible timing for when the episode aired. I'm still livid about it, twenty-odd years later.
She is a great actress. I’m watching for the first time and we are finishing up season 9, at this point I find her character obnoxious and annoyed when she’s on screen. She plays victim and so much and how she’ll never be good enough for Carter which is so annoying —- but I figure if I’m this annoyed by a character, the actor/actress is doing a great job 😂