Julianna Margulies said she'd always wanted the writers to revisit Carol's suicide attempt to explain why she did it, but John Wells wanted to focus more on Carol becoming more confident and not on her reliving a painful time in her life.
I don't know. I remember reading a fanfic where Carol's dad committed suicide and that was one of the things which prompted her to do it as well.
Wasn't the pilot filmed in an actual abandoned hospital? They couldn't build a set big enough, so they had to actually go on location until the show was commissioned and they could build a proper set.
