`CHICAGO HOPE' NOT SPRINGING ETERNAL FOR LAHTI.

Byline: Marilyn Beck & Stacy Jenel Smith

Christine Lahti has not seen last week's season finale of ``Chicago Hope'' - and doesn't know if she will.

Speaking of the episode in which six characters - including Lahti's Dr. Kate Austin - are summarily fired from the hospital where most have worked for four or five years, she says, ``None of us enjoyed doing that segment. It was unnecessary and unfortunate. It wasn't the fact so much that we were discharged, but that there was no closure to the story.''

Some viewers were so confused by the action that they wrote to ask, ``Was it just the characters, or was it for real?''

Says Lahti, ``Believe it, it was real.''

CBS only renewed ``Chicago Hope'' after its creator, David E. Kelley, agreed to write the final episode for this season and the first episode for fall.

Besides Dr. Austin, wiped out were the parts played by Vondie Curtis-Hall, Jayne Brook, Stacy Edwards, Eric Stoltz and Peter Berg.

As Lahti points out, ``Peter and Eric had planned to leave, but the others ... As for me, I have a feature to direct, but I would have given the show one more season if the conditions were right. However, David wanted to re-create the show. I am grateful he created my wonderful character, and I hope to come back as a guest star,'' says Lahti, who turns in an Emmy-worthy portrayal as the mother who killed her child's molester in the June 23 USA Pictures Original ``Judgment Day: The Ellie Nesler Story.''

She adds, ``I just wish the part of Kate Austin had concluded with the second to last episode of this season - when she got into a serious auto accident and acted very heroically.''

Kelley, evidently, felt so little concern for that story - and Lahti's character - that it was never referred to in the finale. ``You see me without a bruise or a scrape - after having been so banged up the week before.''

Change of seasonings

There may be no love lost between certain Spice Girls and their ex-group mate Geri Halliwell - in case you missed reports that Victoria Adams, a k a Posh Spice, has left Geri's name off the invitation list for her summer nuptials to soccer star David Beckham. However, Melanie Chisholm (Sporty Spice) makes it clear, ``I still miss Geri quite a lot. We speak occasionally. I'm sure our paths will cross again. We're both very busy. You know, she has a solo album.''

So we've heard. Meanwhile, Melanie says she's keeping in close touch with the other Spice Girls by phone while here in L.A. making her own solo album. She reports that Emma Bunton (Baby Spice) is busy playing Sleeping Beauty in a film version of the classic fairy tale with Cybill Shepherd in England. And Melanie Gulzar (Scary Spice, now going by her married name) is prepping her solo disc.

Thanks, `Mummy'

The fact that Brendan Fraser's ``The Mummy'' brought in more than $100 million in 17 days of release has to be good news for Arnold Schwarzenegger's ``End of Days.'' The latter - Schwarzenegger's first flick in three years - doesn't open until Nov. 24, but it's being trumpeted with a two-minute teaser on all the screens featuring ``Mummy.'' And seeing as ``The Mummy's'' been seen by more than 20 million people, that can't hurt.

Flower power

Among the many things that should captivate you about the Julia Roberts-Hugh Grant ``Notting Hill'' is the scene in London's bustling Portobello Market with the landscape fast-forwarding through the seasons and ending with spring.

How'd they do that? Well, for one thing, thousands of daffodils were bought a month before filming and deep-frozen. In fact, so many flowers were purchased - $40,000 worth in all - that local traders complained that prices were artificially being driven up.

Little bit country

Country queen Reba McEntire will be heading to Vancouver, British Columbia, for a June 14 production start on ``A Shotgun Christmas Carol.''

Nope, it's not just a countrified version of the Charles Dickens classic. This CBS movie will have Reba as a widow in the Old West who's facing foreclosure on her ranch and gets help from a stranger who turns out to be ... outlaw Butch Cassidy! He's going to let her turn him in for the huge reward on his head, but there are many complications. Of course.

With reports by Stephanie DuBois.

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4 Photos

Photo: (1) LAHTI

(2) CHISHOLM

(3) FRASER

(4) GRANT