Check in with the ER fangirls in your lives, folks: After seeing photos of Mariska Hargitay and Julianna Margulies together at the US Open, we are not ok. Not one bit. Maybe not ever, ever, ever again.
Honestly, if you’re a fan of anything either of these two extremely talented women has ever done, the natural fangirl reaction to seeing them in the (sort of) wild is to lose it. Then, up the complete meltdown if you happen to be a fan of both. Now, just try to imagine the catastrophic inability to function if you’ve literally grown up obsessed since the ’90s.
Hi. That’s us.
(But totally not in a creepy way, we swear. We’re stanning respectfully here.)
It’s just a lot, ok? Like. A lot, a lot.
Of course, what you might not know if you weren’t an ER viewer back in the day — side note: fix your shit, already — is that Hargitay and Margulies played two characters who…did not mesh. To say the least.
One of the most hilarious things ever to happen on that series was the scene where Carol Hathaway (Margulies) and Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) interviewed Cynthia Hooper (Hargitay) for a desk job. And…well. Let’s just say exactly zero people on the planet can master the “what the fuck is wrong with this bitch” energy that was coming from our girl Carol.
It was an absolutely hilarious, iconic moment in television history. Actually, imagine the way the internet would break if Mariska and Julianna did a sitcom together. Make it happen, you TV cowards!
But back to the ER spiral of doom and the one grudge we’ll always have: the love letter. (To be clear, though, it’s not as bad as that other shitty letter situation…)
No, Cynthia, “C.H.” isn’t Cynthia Hooper, and Mark’s trash ass would never write whatever that was to you. That was intended for Carol. Rude.
Or, we can talk about ER 4×09 “Obstruction of Justice,” where Carol lectured Cynthia about hooking up in the lounge…only to later be caught by Cynthia, doing what? Ah, yes. Hooking up in Exam Room 3.
Honestly, one of these days, we’ll talk about the absolute horrible framing of Cynthia. As a kid, yours truly fell victim to the purely misogynistic and male-gazey characterization, thus hating her. (It probably didn’t hurt that Carol was constantly giving “for fuck’s sake” around here either. Because in this house, we wanted to be Carol Hathaway.) But all these years later, we just want justice for her. And we wonder if Carol would have grown to feel the same.
Of course, we realize that actors are not their characters. So, Carol and Cynthia being the opposite of besties has nothing to do with whether or not the absolute queens behind them could hang out 25 years later. But we can’t help it. Putting Margulies and Hargitay together in the same place — or even the same sentence — sends us on an immediate ER spiral.
So, anyway. The bottom line? Recovering is not an option because there was too much talent and beauty in one place. And one half of that pairing…both liked Ralph Lauren’s post with the photo and put it in her Instagram story.
So, we’re basically dead. That’s the long and short of it. We’ll get back to rubbing our single brain cell against itself for real analysis at a later date. Until then, here we are. In the grave, screaming.
