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.