February 10 and 17, 2000, were the days when 30 million “ER” viewers suffered two of the biggest shocks the iconic medical drama on NBC ever delivered. Kellie Martin’s sweet and innocent character Lucy Knight gets stabbed (alongside Noah Wyle’s Dr. Carter) by a patient (played harrowingly well by David Krumholtz) and dies from her injuries. On the day her last episode was airing, according to the two-parter’s oral history in Entertainment Weekly, Martin called her husband in Los Angeles to ask him to go over to her parents’ house and make sure her mother didn’t watch the episode.
She said, “Less than a year and a half [after my sister’s death], to see their daughter dying on screen in such an amazing way that ‘ER’ does, it’s so realistic, they didn’t want to watch that. I said, ‘This won’t be good for my mom to watch.'” Martin was in New York at the time, and she was relieved to learn that her husband did, in fact, stop her mom from watching the episode. The actor also shared that her stint on the hit series came at a difficult time. “My sister had passed away a week before I started ‘ER,'” Martin shared. “So, ‘ER’ was all tangled up with a lot of bad time in my life.”
Looking back on her character’s tragic goodbye, Martin also added, “I was 21 or 22. I remember taking it kind of personally that I was being stabbed and leaving the show. I was definitely traumatized by Lucy’s send-off.”
Lucy’s death was shocking and left a lasting impact
The stabbing was a dramatic twist, impeccably built up and executed with added emotional investment, both from the characters’ and viewers’ perspectives. It’s life or death, and you feel that in every second as Kerry (Laura Innes), Luka (Goran Visnjic), Peter (Eriq La Salle), and all the other hospital workers try to save Carter and Lucy while the time and chance of their survival are rapidly running out. The writing, acting, and directing were all at their peak, culminating in some of the toughest and most heartbreaking moments that “ER” put us through throughout its run.
“ER” was still one of the biggest (if not the biggest) network dramas on television at the time, and the lack of social media certainly contributed to its success and potency. Kellie Martin spoke about that aspect, too, and highlighted how much it affected the popularity of the show — especially her final two episodes. She said, “This was before the internet and spoiler alerts, and all that. There was nobody taking pictures on set. I mean, nobody had cell phones … I think that there’s something kind of magical about that. Almost 30 million people tuned in on Thursday night to watch ‘ER.’ It was appointment television.”