David Morgenstern

Dr. David Morgenstern was a fictional character portrayed by William H Macy on the television show ER. He was the chief of emergency medicine until 1997 when he resigns short after he has a heartattack. David Morgenstern is responsible for a sage piece of advice that has been handed down throughout the series. In the pilot episode, when Juliana Margulies' character, nurse Carol Hathaway, is brought to the hospital with a drug overdose, Morgenstern tells Dr. Greene (Anthony Edwards) that he needs to "set the tone" to get the unit through the difficulty of treating one of its own. "You set the tone" is repeated several times in the series, once jokingly by Doug Ross (George Clooney) to Greene and at two other key moments. When...