Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!
This week, things get depressing.
Episode 2.14 “Drama Center”
(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on February 15th, 1984)
This week’s episode opens with a disturbing scene in which a woman, trying to get her car to start on a snowy night, is attacked and raped in the parking lot of St. Eligius. The rapist is wearing a green jacket and a ski mask.
At first, I assumed that the rapist was a random lowlife, someone who would likely never be seen again. But then Dr. Cavanero’s wealthy boyfriend tried to force himself on her and I was left wondering if maybe he would be revealed as the man in the ski mask. However, towards the end of the episode, there was scene featuring Dr. Peter White. Having been banned from working in the ER and from prescribing medicine, White is now working in the morgue and, needless to say, he spends this entire episode bitching about it. As the episode ends, we see that Peter is holding a capsule in his hand, suggesting that he is once again abusing drugs. However, I also noticed that Peter was wearing the same green jacket as the man in the ski mask!
This was a good episode, well-written and well-acted. It was also pretty depressing. Dr. Westphall brings his severely autistic, noncommunicative son Tommy (Chad Allen) to St. Eligius so that Dr. Ridley can examine him. Dr. Ridley warns Westphall that Tommy is aggressive and that Westphall might not be able to continue to care for him at home, despite the fact that Westphall’s daughter (Dana Short) is planning on forgoing her dream college to stick around and help. Westphall ends his day reading Tommy a book (“Your mom bought you this book.”) and breaking down into tears and it made me cry a little too.
Meanwhile, a TV crew followed around Dr. Craig for a documentary. Needless to say, they got in the way and they got on Craig’s nerves. The director was played by Michael Richards, who, of course, is best-known for playing Kramer on Seinfeld and then having a racist meltdown when he got heckled at a comedy club. In an episode that was, emotionally, pretty dark, it was almost a relief to get some scenes of Dr. Craig losing his temper with the documentary crew. As someone who knows William Daniels best as the kindly Mr. Feeney from countless Boy Meets World reruns, it’s been a real pleasure to Daniels as the prickly and arrogant Dr. Craig. Dr. Craig wouldn’t have had much use for the Matthews clan and all of their drama.
This was an intense and sad episode. It was St. Elsewhere at its most emotional.
For years, banker Jack Dundee (Robin Williams) had been haunted by a pass that he dropped in high school. The pass was perfectly thrown by quarterback Reno Hightower (Kurt Russell) but Jack couldn’t bring it in and, as a result, Taft High lost to its rival, Bakersfield. Adding to Jack’s humiliation is that he now works for The Colonel (Donald Moffat), a confirmed Bakersfield fan who also happens to be Jack’s father-in-law. When Jack visits a “massage therapist” (Margaret Whitton) and tells her about his problems, she suggests that he needs to replay the game. Getting everyone interested in replaying the game is not easy. No one wants to be humiliated a second time and Reno, who now fixes vans for a living, fears the he’s lost his edge. Jack dresses up in the Bakersfield mascot’s uniform and vandalizes the town. Finally, everyone is ready for the game. Now, it’s a matter of town pride.
The Best of Times is a likable comedy about getting older and wishing you could have just one more chance to be young again and to have your entire future ahead of you. Jack is haunted by that one dropped pass, feeling that it has cast a cloud over his entire life. Reno is still a town hero but he’s struggling financially and in debt to Jack’s bank. Replaying the game isn’t going to fix their lives but it is going to give them one last chance to relive their former glory and maybe an opportunity to learn that, even if they are getting older, they’re still living in the best of times. The world that these two men live in is skillfully drawn and believable, with character actors like Moffat, M. Emmet Walsh, R.G. Armstrong, and Dub Taylor adding to the local color. Jack and Reno’s wives are played by Holly Palance and Pamela Reed and they are also strong and well-developed characters. Finally, Robin Williams and Kurt Russell are a strong comedic team. Russell is perfectly cast as the aging jock and Williams gives one of his more restrained performances as Jack, allowing us to see the sadness behind Jack’s smile.
The stakes aren’t particularly high in The Best Of Times. It’s just a football game between some middle-aged men looking to regain their youth. But the story sticks with you.
I’ve been having the best time reviewing Rutger Hauer films every Sunday. Today, I revisit THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND from 1983. Hauer made this film the year after BLADE RUNNER, so he was in the prime of his career. It also teams him up with an all-star supporting cast and master director Sam Peckinpah.
THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND opens with CIA Director Maxwell Danforth (Burt Lancaster) watching a recording of agent Laurence Fassett (John Hurt) making love to his wife. When Fassett hits the shower, two KGB assassins come in and kill her. Consumed by grief, Fassett hunts down the assassins and uncovers a Soviet spy network known as Omega. Fassett has identified three American men as top Omega agents… television producer Bernard Osterman (Craig T. Nelson with an awful, glued-on mustache), plastic surgeon Richard Tremayne (Dennis Hopper) and stock trader Joseph Cardone (Chris Sarandon). Rather than arrest the men and risk alarming the KGB, Fassett proposes to director Danforth that they try to turn one of the three men to the side of the West in hopes that this person will provide the information needed to bring down the Omega network.
Enter controversial television journalist John Tanner (Rutger Hauer). Fassett knows that Tanner has been close friends with Osterman, Tremayne, and Cardone since all four attended Berkeley together, and he believes that Tanner can successfully turn one of them. Although initially highly skeptical, the super patriotic Tanner begins to change his mind when Fassett shows him videotaped evidence of his old friends talking with a Russian agent in various capacities. Tanner reluctantly agrees to try turn one of his friends at their annual “Osterman Weekend” reunion which is coming up that week at Tanner’s house. He does have one condition… that Danforth, the CIA director will appear as a guest on his show. Danforth agrees to this condition. So that weekend, Tanner and his wife Ali (Meg Foster) welcome their old friends and their wives into their home, while Fassett has video camera equipment installed and hangs out in a van spying on the festivities. There’s no doubt it will turn out to be an awkward weekend, and you can’t help but wonder if Fassett may have more sinister motives than he’s letting on.
I’ll go ahead and say that I had a great time watching THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND for the first time in thirty-plus years. I’ve often read a criticism that the plot of this film is “incomprehensible.” Based on a book by Robert Ludlum, the story is purposely designed to keep you guessing up until its big reveal, but I didn’t have any trouble following it all. I’d say the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really stand up under close scrutiny. Some of the actions of the various characters don’t always make a lot of sense in light of the movie’s big twist near the end, but that didn’t take away from my personal enjoyment of the film. I just went along with the plot wherever it took me, and that was easy for me to do based on the cast that we have assembled. Any movie that includes Rutger Hauer, Burt Lancaster, John Hurt, Craig T. Nelson, Dennis Hopper, Chris Sarandon, Meg Foster, Helen Shaver, and Candy Yates will get a watch from me. Heck, Tim Thomerson even shows up as a motorcycle cop at one point. It’s a who’s who of excellent actors who always make their films watchable. In my opinion, it’s Hauer, Hurt, Foster and Nelson who do the most with their characters and take home the acting honors for their work here. Burt Lancaster is one of the all-time greats, and he does a good job, but it’s a one note character so there isn’t much he can do. Hopper and Sarandon are also fine, but their characters don’t really stand out. Their screen wives, Shaver and Yates, seem to be here mostly for eye candy because their tops are off for an abnormally large amount of their screen time! Speaking of eyes, the Hauer / Foster team up has to be on the list of the most striking combo pair of eyes in the history of cinema. Foster has the most noticeable eyes of any actress I’ve ever seen.
This is the great Sam Peckinpah’s final film, and I don’t agree with the people who complain that his career ended with a whimper. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is not in the same league as THE WILD BUNCH, RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY, THE STRAW DOGS, or THE GETAWAY, but not many films are, including most of his own. And this movie is certainly visionary in one area, and that is found in its main theme about the damage that can be done with the manipulation of the media, including physical media, like videotape and audiotape. The primary driver of the film from the very beginning to the very end is the danger of false information that looks and sounds true. I can promise you that as I type this, and as you read it, there are people all over this world trying to make lies sound or appear true so they can share them on the news and on social media. I invite you to question everything you read, watch or hear on any outlet where you receive your news. Peckinpah’s final film beats this into our heads, just 40 years earlier.
Sam Peckinpah was known for his stylish and violent action sequences. THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is more of a paranoid thriller, but it does feature some good action. There’s a chase sequence early in the film where Hauer’s wife and son are kidnapped, and he’s forced to commandeer the truck of honeymooners John Bryson (a Peckinpah regular) and Anne Haney (Greta from LIAR LIAR) to take off in hot pursuit. The scene features Peckinpah’s signature stunts, slow motion, and a myriad of cool tracking shots. There’s another fun scene where Hauer is using a baseball bat to defend himself against his pal Craig T. Nelson, who’s been shown to be a martial arts expert. It’s an exciting scene even if Hauer does get his ass kicked, in slow motion no less. And I always appreciate a movie with some good crossbow action, especially when it’s being wielded by a lady. The poster of the film prominently features a lady with a crossbow and we get to see Meg Foster step into that role in the actual film. She gets one especially gruesome, blood gurgling kill.
Overall, I think THE OSTERMAN WEEKEND is a good film. It is not nearly as bad as the critics of the time labeled it, and it’s not as good as Peckinpah’s best work, but you can certainly do a lot worse. It has a great cast, a timely message, a lot more sex and nudity than I remembered, and some cool action sequences. It’s definitely worth a watch!
Way back in October, around the same time that I first decided that I would do a series of reviews of political films and that I would call it Lisa Gets Preachy (subsequently changed to Shattered Politics), I noticed that the 1995 film The American President was scheduled to be shown on TVLand.
“Hey,” I said, “I’ve definitely got to watch and review that!”
So, I set the DVR and I recorded The American President.
And then, I just left it there.
You have to understand that it’s rare that I ever leave anything unwatched on my DVR. Usually, within an hour of recording a program, I’ll be watching it. I have even been known to go so far as to make out very long lists of everything that I have on the DVR, just so I can make check them off after I’ve watched. As a general rule, I am way too obsessive compulsive to just leave anything sitting around.
But, for whatever reason, I could never work up any enthusiasm for the prospect of actually watching The American President. I knew that, eventually, I would have to watch it so that I could review it. Unlike those folks criticizing American Sniper on the basis of the film’s trailer, I never criticize or praise a film unless I’ve actually watched it. But I just couldn’t get excited about The American President.
Can you guess why? I’ll give you a hint. It’s two words. The first starts with A. The second starts with S.
If you guessed Aaron Sorkin, then you are correct! Yes, I do know that Sorkin has a lot of admirers. And, even more importantly, I know that it’s dangerous to cross some of those admirers. (I can still remember Ryan Adams and Sasha Stone insanely blocking anyone who dared to criticize the underwritten female characters in Sorkin’s script for The Social Network.)
But what can I say? As a writer, Aaron Sorkin bothers me. And since Sorkin is such an overpraised and powerful voice, he’s that rare scriptwriter who can actually claim auteur status. The Social Network, for instance, was not a David Fincher film. It was an Aaron Sorkin film, through and through.
And, after having to deal with three seasons of the Newroom and countless Aaron Sorkin-penned op-eds about why nobody should be allowed to criticize Aaron Sorkin, I’ve reached the point where dealing with all of Aaron Sorkin’s signature quirks is a bit like listening to the drill while strapped into a dentist’s chair. I am weary of pompous and egotistical male heroes who answer every question with a sermon. I am tired to endless scenes of male bonding. I have had enough with the quippy, quickly-delivered dialogue, all recited as characters walk down an endless hallways. I have no more sympathy for Sorkin’s nostalgic idealism or his condescending, rich, white dude version of liberalism.
Most of all, I’m sick of people making excuses for an acclaimed, award-winning, highly-paid screenwriter who is apparently incapable of writing strong female characters. I’m tired of pretending that it doesn’t matter that Aaron Sorkin is apparently incapable of viewing female characters as being anything other than potential love interests or silly distractions who need to be told to go stand in a corner while the menfolk solve all the problems of the world.
Fortunately, as a result of The Newsroom, quite a few critics are finally starting to admit what they always knew to be the truth. Aaron Sorkin is not the messiah. Instead, he’s a somewhat talented writer who doesn’t understand (or, in my opinion, particularly like) women. At his best, he’s occasionally entertaining. At his worst, he’s pompous, didactic, and preachy.
And, of course, Aaron Sorkin is the man who wrote The American President.
So, The American President just sat there until a few days ago when I sighed to myself and said, “Okay, let’s watch this thing.” As I watched it, I promised myself that I would try to see past the fact that it was an Aaron Sorkin-penned film and just try to judge the film on its merits.
But here’s the thing. It’s nearly impossible to separate one’s opinion of Sorkin from The American President. If you didn’t know that Sorkin had written The American President, you’d guess it after hearing the first few lines of dialogue. The film, itself, was directed by Rob Reiner but it’s not as if Reiner is the most interesting of directors. (What’s odd is that Reiner’s first films — This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, Stand By Me — are all so quirky and interesting and are still so watchable decades after first being released that you have to wonder how Reiner eventually became the man who directed The Bucket List.) In short, The American President is totally an Aaron Sorkin film.
President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) is a liberal Democrat who, as he prepares to run for a second term, has a 63% approval rating. However, when Shepherd decides to push through a gun control bill, he finds that approval rating threatened. And then, when he listens to environmental lobbyist Sydney Wade (Annette Bening) and tries to push through legislation to reduce carbon emissions, his approval rating is again threatened. And then, to top it all off, he starts dating Sydney. It turns out that Sydney has protested American policy in the past. And, since this is an Aaron Sorkin film, everyone outside of the Northeast is scandalized that President Shepherd is having premarital sex in the White House.
And, to top it all off, there’s an evil Republican named Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss) who wants to be President and is willing to use the President’s relationship with Sydney to further his own evil Republican ambitions.
But, ultimately, it’s not just those evil Republicans who make it difficult for Sydney and the President to have a relationship. It’s also the fact that the President agrees to a watered down crime bill and that he does not hold up his end of the bargain when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.
“You’ve lost my vote!” Sydney tells him.
But — fear not! There’s still time for President Shepherd to give a speech that will be so good and so brilliant that it will, within a matter of minutes, totally change every aspect of American culture and save the day. How do we know it’s a great speech? Because it was written by Aaron Sorkin!
Actually, I’m being too hard on the film and I’ll be the first admit that it’s because I’m personally not a huge fan of Aaron Sorkin’s. But, to be honest, The American President is Aaron Sorkin-lite. This film was written before the West Wing, before the Social Network, before that Studio Whatever show, and before The Newsroom. In short, it was written before he became THE Aaron Sorkin and, as such, it’s actually a lot less preachy than some of his other work. It’s true that, much like The Newsroom, The American President is definitely Sorkin’s fantasy of how things should work but at least you don’t have to deal with Jeff Daniels throwing stuff or Emily Mortimer not knowing how to properly forward an email.
Instead, it’s a film that will probably be enjoyed by those who share its politics. (And, make no mistake, The American President is more interested in politics than it is in the love story between Andrew and Sydney.) Michael Douglas does well in the role of the President. Meanwhile, Annette Bening is so likable and natural as Sydney that it almost make up for the fact that she’s yet another Sorkin woman whose existence is largely defined by looking up to her man while inspiring him to do the right thing and forgiving him when he doesn’t. Personally, I would have been happy if the film had ended with Sydney telling the President, “Thanks for finally doing the right thing but I have a life of my own to lead.”
Through the Shattered Lens 