Drew Katzman | 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 dark.

Episode 1.12 “Release”

(Dir by Victor Lobl, originally aired on February 1st, 1983)

The gunshot victim (Tom Hulce) who was saved by Samuels last week has woken up but he has no idea who he is. He is labeled John Doe #12, meaning there’s at least eleven other people at St. Eligius who are suffering from amnesia! That’s a scary thought. There’s a lot of things that I don’t want to suffer from and amnesia is high on the list. I can’t imagine how frightening that would be, not having any idea who you are or where you belong.

Dr. Chandler tries to help John Doe #12 get his memory back but, in this episode at least, neither has any luck. Even an attempt at hypnosis reveals that John can’t remember anything before being rolled into the ER. At one point, an older couple step into the room to discover if John is their son, who has been missing for two years. He’s not, which leaves the couple in tears.

As serious and as heart-breaking as this all is (and both Washington and Hulce give outstanding performances in this episode), there is one moment where Dr. Westphall makes a reference to a “Lt. Gerard,” who is searching for John’s parents. It seems like a throw-away reference, unless you’re familiar with either the 1950s television show The Fugitive or the subsequent 1993 film adaptation. Lt. Gerard was the name of the detective who was hunting for that show’s main character, Dr. Richard Kimble. Ed Flanders delivers the line solemnly and it occurs at a serious moment. There’s no winking at the audience. Instead, it’s simply a reward for the pop culture-literate who might be watching the episode.

For the most part, this was a grim episode. After losing a patient to cancer, Dr. Peter White was ordered to talk his family into signing a release for an autopsy. The autopsy was largely to protect the hospital from getting sued. The family didn’t want an autopsy. Peter didn’t feel the autopsy was necessary. But, having been bullied by his superiors, Peter proceeded to bully and manipulate the dead man’s son into signing the release. In the end, it turned out that Peter was correct. The man did die of cancer. The autopsy was not necessary. Upset over the whole process, Peter said that he felt like he had “raped” a mourning family. The doctor who ordered Peter to get the release merely smiled and said he would see Peter at rounds the next day.

Meanwhile, Dr. Craig was shocked and angered when he discovered that his old friend (played by Andy Romano) had checked into the hospital for gender-affirming surgery. This led to the episode final scene, in which Craig talked about not liking the way the world had changed since he was a young man. The scene was well-acted by William Daniels, who was one of the best when it comes to giving a monologue of frustration.

And finally, Dr. Samuels and Dr. Paxson disagreed on how to treat a patient and this storyline would have been interesting if either Samuels or Paxson had been an interesting character. But they’re not. I don’t care about them. I don’t care about their boring relationship. And, knowing that neither is going to be around once this season ends, I really didn’t care that much about their storyline. With all of the interesting stuff that happened in this episode, I groaned whenever I realized I was going to waste a few minutes watching Samuels and Paxson argue.

This episode left me feeling pretty depressed. Between Peter bullying that family and John Doe searching for his identity, there wasn’t much hope to be found. Still, I have faith that John Doe will find his identity and maybe Peter will even become a better doctor. (He certainly can’t get much worse.) If Lt. Gerard could find Richard Kimble, then anything’s possible!

This week, a handful of doctors save two patients and lose one.

Episode 1.11 “Graveyard”

(Dir by Victor Lobl, originally aired on January 18th, 1983)

It’s the graveyard shift at St. Eligius. The halls and the cafeteria are dark. The ER is oddly calm. There are only a few patients to be looked after and most of the doctors are playing poker and talking about the rather boring subject of Dr. Samuels’s love life.

Only a handful of the series regulars make an appearance in this episode but that’s fine. This episode actually provides a nice break from having to keep track of where everyone is. Unfortunately, as I already said, a lot of this episode is centered around the character of Dr. Samuels. Nothing against the late David Birney, who did a perfectly acceptable job in the role, but Dr. Ben Samuels is just not that interesting of a character. He’s a dedicated surgeon who feels too much, drinks too much, and wants to sleep with his colleagues. That’s fine but I grew up watching General Hospital. I’ve seen a hundred doctors just like Samuels on television.

To me, the far more interesting characters are the people like David Morse’s Jack Morrison or Ed Begley, Jr’s Victor Ehrlich or even Terence Knox’s Peter White. They’re doctors who screw up and aren’t always brilliant and sometimes say the wrong things. They feel like real people whereas Dr. Samuels just feels like a cliche, a holdover from some other medical show. Samuels is not a particularly compelling character and, when I did some research, I was not surprised to discover that David Birney only appeared on one season of the show.

G.W. Bailey’s Hugh Beale also only appeared in the first season and that’s a shame because Bailey’s performance as Beale has been one of the first season’s real pleasures. Bailey plays Beale as a compassionate man who often pretends to be more naive than he is. As a Southerner, he’s an outsider on this Boston-set show and, being an outsider, he can often relate to the patients in the psych ward. Of course, that still doesn’t stop Dr. Beale’s main patient, Ralph the Birdman, from throwing himself off the roof of the hospital in this episode. To be honest, I already suspected things weren’t going to go well for Ralph on this show but his suicidal jump still upset me. As annoying as the character was, he was also finally making some progress. He finally admitted he wasn’t a bird. And then he proved it by showing that he couldn’t fly.

While Ralph plunged to his death, Dr. Samuels saved a gunshot victim (played by Tom Hulce). And Jack allowed the father (James Hong) of one of his comatose patients to perform a Chinese ritual that led to the patient waking up and eventually walking into the cafeteria, where the doctors were playing poker. “Who ordered the Chinese?” Fiscus asked and …. ugh. Not cool, Fiscus.

It was a night of triumph and tragedy. Ralph died but Dr. Samuels and Dr. Paxton agreed to give their relationship another try which …. eh. I don’t care about Samuels and Paxton. For the most part, though, I liked this episode. The smaller cast made it easier to keep track of things and the poker game banter reminded me that the doctors are all people too. Still, I have to feel bad for Ralph. All he wanted to do was fly.