Bill Morey | Through the Shattered Lens

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.

Due to a chemical spill that is spreading through the ocean, life on Earth is going to end in five years unless something is done. A group of friendly alien offer to give Earth either the “Good Package” or the “Big Gun.” The Good Package can clean up the ocean. The Big Gun is a big gun. They both sound good to me! The aliens only want a glass of water in return and they want that glass to be delivered by CIA Agent Pillbox.

Unfortunately, Pillbox has been killed in the field so the government tracks down a meek office worker named Bob Wilson (John Ritter) who looks just like Pillbox. Tough and streetwise Nick Pirandello (Jim Belushi) is sent to recruit Bob and take him to the aliens. Trying to stop Nick and Bob are a group of rogue CIA agents who would rather get the Big Gun than the Good Package. Nick teaches Bob how to be a “real man” and Bob teaches Nick how to be a real friend. They also beat up clowns.

A box office failure that did even worse with the critics, Real Men is a movie that was saved by cable. When I was a kid, Real Men used to show up on HBO all the time. Whatever flaws the film may have had, the mix of John Ritter’s physical comedy, Jim Belushi’s wiseguy attitude, and the action scenes made it the type of movie that was ideal for home viewing, especially if you had just gotten out of school and wanted to watch something before your parents came home and asked if you had done your homework. Real Men was fun enough to hold up to repeat viewings but it was also slight enough that it wasn’t a huge tragedy if the channel got changed before the movie ended.

When I rewatched Real Men, I thought the film’s storytelling could have been tighter but it still turned out to be better than I was expecting. There were a lot of classic buddy movies released in the 80s and while Real Men may not be the equivalent of a 48 Hours or a Midnight Run, John Ritter and Jim Belushi are still an entertainingly mismatched team. Ritter again shows that he was a master at physical comedy while Belushi provides sarcastic commentary from the side. A lot of the odd couple-style banter is predictable (Bob doesn’t smoke but Nick does) but Ritter and Belushi deliver their lines with enough conviction to still make it work. Nick teaches Bob to believe in himself and Bob is able to both save the world and tell off the neighborhood bullies. The film’s mix of action, science fiction, and broad comedy confounded critics in 1987 but it holds up today.