A fun little thought experiment

Used the spoiler flair due to the nature of the post, I'd hate to ruin something for a new viewer.

How much do we think the characters salaries were? What do we think their cost of living was? Etc. How about how it translates now with inflation?

Abby and Luka moved from Chicago to Boston. My family is from the east coast, but moved from the Boston area right around when the show really started. So, their experiences weren't really that helpful with the col of the area.

It's very fun thinking this way about older shows the grew and evolved and lasted almost a full year on television. We get to see what the characters holiday habits were (do they celebrate, what do they buy, do they travel), weddings and what they eat, etc. It allows for the characters to live and breathe in a way that we don't see in more modern shows that give us 6-10 (12 maybe if we're good little children and they want us to have more crumbs).

I have nothing against the pitt but watching a show that has only 15 episodes in the same setting dies lose its appeal and drives the fandom insane. We're expected to make judgements on characters we see for ONE work day. We don't even know what their houses look like. We get random lines once a season about a famiky member or something (with a few exceptions) and how are we supposed to know how we feel about these characters?

90s/early-mid 00s gave us TV shows where we became intimately familiar with characters. How they lived, worked, grieved and loved.

So, here's some ideas if you want to do some character introspection and discussion:

How much do we think characters like Dr. Greene, Dr. Ross, and Dr. Weaver made?

Does Ross and Carol's move to Seattle change much? My stepmother is a nurse who was in Seattle, recently relocated to Spokane. Washington is a union state for nurses.. idk about Illinois, or if there's something specific to Chicago. Maybe it was mentioned in the show, I don't really remember, there's a lot of episodes, man

What about the other doctors or med students? I know the salaries are based off their PGY like Lucy or the later seasons characters.

The nurses, too. For example, my mom is finishing her master's in 5 weeks but she's been a RN for a few years and makes about $100,000 a year. That will change when she's a practitioner. We know the nurses were underpaid in the 90s, but accounting for inflation, do we think their salaries were comparable? The show also implies some were salary and some were hourly, unless they had x amount a year for ER nurses that counted as a "salary" or budget which is what their hourly comes from, hence cutting back shifts to save money.. hospital had to be dire straits for that to be on the table..

What do we think Luka makes? He was a moonlighter for a while, traveled before settling at county general, and worked in Croatia for at least a small amount of time after he >!lost his family!< then he went to Hospice care. What do we think his nomadic lifestyle was like? How much do we think it costs for his boat to be docked?

What about Abby? OB nurse -> ER Nurse -> med student -> doctor. Do we think her salary changed dramatically during this period of time? Ups and downs with going to school?

The surgeons make a shit ton of money, let's be real. Romano is rolling in the dough, every time he gets paged in he's talking about how he was interrupted in the middle of some hobby or expensive habit. And we see his house once and it's giant. He also was overseas for a period of time, I don't remember the details but that's how he found corday.. so who did he pay to take care of his house? He seems the type.

I was just thinking about how carter liked cosplaying poverty and it made me wonder lol who was actually struggling on the show and who was pretty comfortable.