Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.7 “Legionnaires: Part Two”

Posted on January 10, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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!

This week, the hospital’s in chaos!

Episode 1.7 “Legionnaires: Part Two”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on December 14th, 1982)

With one of the wards shut down due to a Legionnaires outbreak, the hospital is in crisis. All of the patients from the infected ward and their doctors have been moved to a new floor and now, everyone is stressed and overworked. Dr. Westphall insists to the Hospital Board that he has no regrets about shutting down the ward and that he did what he had to do. Westphall is vindicated when it turns out that he was correct about the Legionnaires outbreak but he still has to admit that administrator H.J. Cummings (Christopher Guest) has a point about Westphall’s actions causing a panic. Cummings argues that Westphall could have quietly closed the ward without alerting the media. In the end, it doesn’t matter as Cummings explains that he’ll be the one who gets fired over the bad publicity, not Westphall. The episode ends with Westphall returning to his small home, carrying the birthday present that he was supposed to give his son that day. Westphall has dedicated his life to the hospital and it’s obvious that his family has often had to wait until he has time for them.

(I’m starting to understand why Westphall always seems so damn depressed.)

Some people take advantage of the chaos. Two gang members (one of whom is played by a very young Robert Davi) hit Fiscus over the head and steal his wallet after Fiscus stitches up one of their hands. Peter White, eager to get away from his troubled marriage, shows up to work Morrison’s shift for him. Dr. Chandler glares at a nurse that he previously accused of unprofessional behavior. Dr. Craig tries to find someone foolish enough to buy his old convertible from him. And head nurse Helen Rosenthal finds herself being called over and over again to the room of patient Martha Mulvahey (Ann Bronston).

Poor Martha! She has a reputation for being a problem patient, because she’s always calling for the nurses and asking them to do things for her, like wash her hair or raise her bed. Only Helen is willing to put up with Martha but even Helen loses her temper when Martha asks for help putting on her makeup. Finally, Martha breaks down and explains that her arthritis is so severe that she can barely move her hands. She’s a librarian and she can’t even turn the pages of a book anymore. (Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye….) A friend is coming to visit her at the hospital and she just wants to look good for him because she doesn’t want him to remember her as someone who can’t even get out of a hospital bed. Helen helps Martha put on her makeup. At the end of the episode, the hospital may be in chaos but Martha gets to see her friend and that made me happy and brought even more tears to my eyes.

Meanwhile, psychiatric patient Jane Zontell (Laraine Newman) returns to the hospital and checks herself back in for treatment. Dr. Beale (G.W. Bailey) is shocked to learn that Jane is three months pregnant. But it’s only been two months since Jane was last a patient at St. Eligius so that father must be someone at the hospital. Uh-oh.

(Personally, I suspect Fiscus.)

This was a good episode. I cried for Martha. I felt bad for Westphall. I hope someone buys Dr. Craig’s car so he’ll stop bothering everyone else about it. This episode was about how bad things can get at a hospital but, with Martha and Rosenthal, it offered up some hope as well. All in all, it worked.

Made-For-Television Movie Review: Skokie (dir by Herbert Wise)

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Skokie, a 1981 made-for-television movies, opens in a shabby Chicago office.

A group of men, all wearing brownshirts and swastika armbands, listen to their leader, Frank Collin (George Dzundza). Collin says that they will be holding their next rally in the town of Skokie. Collin explains that Skokie has a large Jewish population, many of whom came to the United States after World War II. Collin wants to march through their town on Hitler’s birthday.

If not for the swastika and the brownshirt, the overweight Collin could easily pass for a middle-aged insurance salesman, someone with a nice house in the suburbs and an office job in the city. However, Frank Collin is the head of the American National Socialist Party. a small but very loud group of Nazis who specialize in marching through towns with large Jewish populations and getting fee media attention as a result of people confronting them. Making Frank Collin all the more disturbing is that he isn’t just a character in a made-for-television movie. Frank Collin is a real person and Skokie is based on a true story.

The Mayor (Ed Flanders) and the police chief (Brian Dennehy) of Skokie are, needless to say, not happy about the idea of modern-day Nazis marching through their city. Though they inform Collin that he will have to pay for insurance before he and his people will be allowed to hold their rally, they know that the courts have been striking down the insurance requirement as being a violation of the First Amendment. While the mayor and the police chief worry about the political fallout of the rally, the Jewish citizens of Skokie debate amongst themselves how to deal with the Nazis. Bert Silverman (Eli Wallach) and Abbot Rosen (Carl Reiner) argue that the best way to deal with Collin and his Nazis is to refuse to acknowledge them, to “quarantine” them. As Rosen explains it, Collin is only marching to get the free publicity that comes with being confronted. If he’s not confronted, he won’t make the evening news and his rally will have been for nothing. However, many citizens of Skokie — including Holocaust survivor Max Feldman (Danny Kaye) — are tired to turning their back on and ignoring the Nazis. They demand that the Nazis be kept out and that, if they do enter the city, they be confronted.

With the support of the ACLU, Collin sues for his right to march through Skokie. The ACLU is represented by Herb Lewishon (John Rubinstein), a Jewish attorney who hates Collin and everything that he stands for but who also feels that the First Amendment must be respected no matter what. When Lewishon is asked how he, as a Jew, can accept a Nazi as a client, Lewishon relies that his client is the U.S. Constitution.

Skokie is a thought-provoking film, all the more so today when there’s so much debate about who should and should not be allowed a platform online. (Indeed, Collin and his Nazis would have loved social media.) Lewishon argues that taking away any group’s First Amendment rights, regardless of how terrible that group may be, will lead to slippery slope and soon everyone’s First Amendment rights will be at risk. Max Feldman, and others argue that the issue isn’t free speech. Instead, the issue is standing up to and defeating evil. The film gives both sides their say while, at the same time, making it clear that Frank Collin and his Nazis are a bunch of fascist losers. It’s a well-acted and intelligently written movie, one that rejects easy answers. Needless to say, at a time when so many people feel free to be openly anti-Semitic, it’s a film that’s still very relevant.

As for the real Frank Collin, he would eventually be charged with and convicted of child molestation. After three years in prison, he changed his name to Frank Joseph and became a writer a New Age literature. He’s looking for Atlantis but I doubt they’d want him either.

Film Review: The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper (dir by Roger Spottiswoode and Buzz Kulik)

Posted on January 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The story of D.B. Cooper has always fascinated me.

D.B. Cooper is the name assigned to a man who, in 1971, hijacked an airplane, demanded $200,000, and then jumped off the plane after he got the money. Reportedly, he was well-dressed and unfailingly polite during the entire hijacking. When he jumped off the plane, he was about 10,000 feet over the Washington wilderness. After he jumped, no further trace was found of him. Over 50 years after the incident, the identity and the location of D.B. Cooper remains a mystery.

It’s been said that, even though Cooper had a parachute with him when he jumped, there’s no way that he could have survived the jump. And yet, no body has ever been found. (Of course, finding a body in the wilderness is not as easy as some people assume.) Nine years after the the skyjacking, some of the money that Cooper received was found on the banks of the Columbia River, which was several miles away from the area that Cooper jumped over. Did Cooper survive the jump and lose the money? No one can say for sure.

Over the years, many people have come forward to say that they know the identity of D.B. Cooper. Many distant fathers and secretive boyfriends and long lost friends have been accused of being D.B. Cooper. Some of those suspects are more likely than others. Even John List, the murderer who inspired the Stepfather films, was suspected at one point.

D.B. Cooper remains a fascinating character precisely because he’s never been captured and the mystery itself will probably never be solved. Because he remains an enigma, it’s easy to project your own pet obsessions on him and his story. Myself, I always imagine D.B. Cooper as being some sort of clever, fun-loving international rogue, even though there’s not really any evidence to back that up. But, the fact of the matter is that I have a weakness for clever, fun-loving international rogues so, of course, that’s who I’m going to imagine D.B. to be.

I certainly would never imagine him to be like the character at the center of 1981’s The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper.

In this film, D.B. Cooper turns out to be Jim Meade (Treat Williams), a Vietnam vet and all around jackass who steals the money so that he can get back together with his estranged wife, Hannah (Kathryn Harrold). Hannah does take him back because, seriously, who is going to say no to that much money? Jim and Hannah spend the entire film running from one wilderness location to another. They steal cars. They steal trucks. Meade steals an airplane at one point. Hannah gets worried often and Jim tends to yell, “Woo hoo!” whenever he gets excited about anything. At one point, Jim and Hannah are chased across some white water rapids. When Hannah and Jim reach dry land, Jim gives the finger to the river. I will say that, as someone who grew up in the South, Jim is a type of character who seems very familiar to me. I’ve known a lot of Jim Meades and Treat Williams doesn’t do bad job playing Meade as being an impulsive, loud-mouthed good old boy. The only problem is that, at no point, does Jim Meade come across like someone who could have pulled off what D.B. Cooper pulled off.

Jim is being pursued by two old army buddies. The scruffier of the two is Remson (Paul Gleason), who somehow manages to keep popping up like a cartoon character at the most inopportune of times. No matter what bad thing happens to Remson, he still shows up good-as-new a few minutes later. Paul Gleason gives an energetic performance as Remson, a character who has little in common with the uptight authority figures that Gleason later played in The Breakfast Club and Die Hard.

The other person chasing Jim is Bill Gruen (Robert Duvall), who served with Meade in Vietnam but who is now working as an insurance investigator. Gruen says that he knew Meade had to be D.B. Cooper because only Meade could survive jumping out of a plane over wilderness terrain. Gruen wants some of the money for himself. Despite his greed, it’s hard not to like Gruen because he’s played by Robert Duvall. The best scene in the film is one where Duvall and Williams, exhausted from chasing each other, have a weary but friendly conversation. It’s the one moment where Williams actually calms down and provides some hint that there’s actually something going on underneath Meade’s manic exterior. Acting opposite Duvall brings out the best in him.

The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper had a notoriously troubled production and apparently, there was never a completed script during shooting. Reportedly, bits of the film were directed by Robert Mulligan, John Frankenheimer, and Buzz Kulik before Roger Spottiswoode took over. It’s a film that was obviously inspired by 70s chase films like Smokey and the Bandit but it also somehow managed to attract actors like Robert Duvall, who does his best to class up the joint. The action quickly gets repetitive and the movie never seems to know if it wants to be a comedy or a drama. On the plus side, Treat Williams and Kathryn Harrold make for a cute couple.

When this picture first came out, Universal Pictures offered a million dollar reward for any information that would lead to the capture and arrest of the real D.B. Cooper. No one collected.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Peter White continues to disappoint everyone.

Episode 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on December 7th, 1982)

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) is perhaps the most incompetent doctor at St. Eligius. Over the course of the first few episodes, we have watched as he’s taken advantage of his fellow residents, been rude to patients, misdiagnosed obvious medical conditions, and complained nonstop about how difficult his life is. Dr. White is struggling to balance the punishing schedule of being a resident with also being a husband and the father to a young girl and a newborn. He’s in over his head.

What’s interesting is that, despite all of his problems, he’s not a particularly sympathetic character and I don’t think he’s meant to be. He’s never going to be a good doctor and he doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Instead of finding a career for which he’s suited, he insists on being a doctor and risking the life of anyone unlucky enough to be his patient. What makes Dr. White an especially disturbing character is that there are probably a lot of doctors in the real world who are just like him. They’re overwhelmed and they make stupid mistakes. I get overwhelmed sometimes too, as does everyone. And, like everyone, I occasionally make mistakes. However, my mistakes usually amount to something like missing a cringey typo that causes me to feel embarrassment until I get a chance to fix it. A doctor’s mistake can lead to people dying.

This week, Dr. White attempts to give penicillin to a patient who is allergic. Fortunately, Dr. Westphall is able to stop White from putting his patient into a coma. Dr. White also manages to lose his hospital-issued pager and, when he’s told that it will cost him $300 to get a new one, he freaks out. A chance meeting with a lawyer in the hospital cafeteria leads White to offer to sell out the hospital by recommending the lawyer to anyone willing to sue because they ended up with a doctor like Peter White. White finally raises the money by donating his sperm. The nurse at the sperm bank says that it’s really generous for a doctor to donate. Not this doctor!

While Peter is screwing up his life, Dr. Westphall is dealing with what appears to be an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in one of the wards. Westphall wants to immediately shut down the ward. Dr. Auschlander and board member H.J. Cummings (Christopher Guest — yes, that Christopher Guest) disagree. However, after another young woman dies of what appears to be Legionnaire’s, Westphall orders the ward to be closed and the patients to be relocated.

Meanwhile, Kathy Martin broke up with Fiscus because she felt their fling was turning into a relationship and Dr. Cavanero dealt with a nurse who disliked her. Neither one of those subplots did much for me, though Kathy is emerging as one of my favorite characters on this show. Before breaking up with Fiscus, she goes to a funeral of a stranger just so he won’t be buried without someone there to mourn him. She wears white to the funeral. One doctor comments that she’s never seen Kathy wear white before. Kathy’s a great character and deserves better than just being Fiscus’s girlfriend.

This episode was an improvement over the last episode I watched. According to the title, it’s also only “Part One” so I imagine there will be some fallout over closing that ward next week. We’ll see what happens.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.5 “Samuels and the Kid”

Posted on December 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode of St. Elsewhere featured Dr. Craig winning an award. Good for him!

Episode 1.5 “Samuels and the Kid”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on November 30th, 1982)

This week’s episode of St. Elsewhere was kind of boring, It wasn’t a bad episode because the show was well-acted and even the boring subplots felt as is they were part of a bigger whole but, especially when compared to last week’s episode, Samuels and the Kid just wasn’t as compelling.

The Kid of the title is Robbie Durant (Jeremy Licht), a young patient who needs to have some minor surgery done on his ankle. Dr. Samuels take a really intense interest in the kid, bonding with him and even offering him tickets to a Patriots football game. At first, it seems like Samuels is just trying to be nice to a kid who is in a scary situation. (When I was growing up, I spent a few nights in the hospital because of my asthma and it always scared me to death.) But, at the end of the episode, it is revealed that Samuels had a son who was Robbie’s age who died in a freak accident. As for Robbie, the operation is a success but he still dies as the result of an embolism. It was sad but, at the same time, I knew Robbie was going to die as soon as he showed up in the hospital. I’ve seen enough medical shows to know.

Dr. Cavanero was at a bed-and-breakfast when she learned that one of her patients had gone into labor and was at her apartment alone. Cavenro had to beg people for change so that she could use a pay phone to call the patient’s neighbors so that she could talk them through delivering the baby. Seen today, the most interesting thing about this storyline is that it takes place at a time when people had to carry around quarters so that they could call each other in case of an emergency. (There is a very dusty old payphone a few blocks away from my house. I assume it doesn’t work and I don’t think it’s been touched by human hands since the 90s — and I’m certainly not going to touch it! — but it’s always interesting to see it sitting there like some haunted beacon of the past.)

Dr. Fiscus continued to have sex with Kathy Martin. Good for them but I really don’t know that I need to spend a good deal of time listening to Howie Mandel talk about his sex life.

Dr. Chandler (Denzel Washington) accused a nurse of being incompetent. Nurse Rosenthal (Christina Pickles) got mad at him for yelling at the nurse in the hospital hallway. Dr. Westphall mediated and agreed to move the nurse to another floor. Denzel Washington is always fun when he’s yelling at people.

There was one very funny scene. Dr. Craig won an award for surgeon of the year and gave an extremely long, pompous, and rather bitter acceptance speech. (The award was a plaster cast of his own hands.) William Daniels played the scene perfectly and I have a feeling that Dr. Craig is going to end up becoming my favorite character. As a bonus, Daniels’s wife, Bonnie Bartlett, appeared as Craig’s wife. By the middle of Craig’s speech, even she had stoppled listening and lit a cigarette.

As I said, this was a little bit of a boring episode. Still, I look forward to the future of the show!

Speaking of the future, this is my last St. Elsewhere review of 2024. My next review of this show will post on January 3rd!

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.4 “Cora and Arnie”

Posted on December 6, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week’s episode made me cry.

Episode 1.4 “Cora and Arnie”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on November 23rd, 1982)

While orderly Luther (Eric Laneuville) practices his karate moves in the hallway and anesthesiologist Vijay (Kavi Raz) composes a letter to his family in India and Dr. Fiscus continues his sex-only relationship with Kathy Martin, four patients learn about life and death at St. Eligius.

One of them is an unnamed man (Lionel Mark Smith) who comes in with a complaint of backpain. Fiscus examines him and discovers that the man has been shot in the back. The man announces that he’s on parole and he doesn’t feel like going back to prison. Fiscus offers to admit him under an assumed name but the man says he already gave his real name to the front desk. The man tries to leave the hospital but collapses from pain and blood loss. Later, when the man wakes up, Fiscus tells him that the bullet has been removed and he’ll be fine. The man says he won’t be fine because he’s going to go back to prison as soon as he leaves the hospital.

Meanwhile, Kathleen McAllister, who has been in a coma ever since Andrew Reinhardt set off a bomb at a bank, finally dies. Reinhardt, when he’s informed of the news, sneers. He doesn’t care that she died. He’s all about the class struggle. (If this show was made today, he’d have thousands of followers on Bluesky.) When Dr. Beale tries to examine him to determine if he’s mentally ill, Reinhardt spits in his face. Reinhardt is convinced that nothing will ever happen to him but, after Kathleen dies, he’s informed that he’s being taken to prison. As Reinhardt is rolled out of his hospital room, Kathleen’s husband (Jack Bannon) appears in the hallway and shoots him dead.

George (Bernard Behrens) and Lillian Rogers (Anne Gerety) are tourists who are visiting Boston. When Lillian faints in her hotel room, George rushes her to the hospital. Lillian says she’s feeling fine but she still goes through a series of tests to determine why she fainted. In the end, the tests are inconclusive. No one can figure out why she fainted so she’s told to just see her family doctor when she returns home. When George and Lillian check out of the hospital, they are presented with the bill for all the tests. George freaks out when he sees that he’s being charged …. $1,380.90!

Now, admittedly, that is $1,380.90 in 1982 money. If George received the same bill today, it would be for $4,517.10. Still, considering all the tests that Lillian had done, that seems remarkable cheap, even by today’s standards. My father died in August and the majority of his medical costs were covered by insurance but his estate is still receiving bills from various hospitals, specialists, and ambulance services. I’ve been told that the same thing happened when my mom passed away in 2008. (Personally, I think if someone dies while in your care, you’ve forfeited your right to be paid.) By today’s standards, having to pay less that $5,000 feels like a bargain!

Finally, and most heart-breakingly, Dr. Morrison takes care of a homeless woman named Cora (Doris Roberts), who comes into the hospital with her companion, Arnie (James Coco). Due to a head injury, Arnie is almost childlike. While Cora learns that a case of gangrene is going to kill her unless she gets her foot amputated, Arnie repeatedly asks, “Can we go now?” In the end, Cora chooses not to have the surgery, leaving the hospital with Arnie. As she explains to Dr. Morrison, someone has to take care of Arnie and she can’t do that with just one foot. When Morrison tells Cora that she’s probably going to die in a year, Cora shrugs and says it won’t be any great loss.

OH MY GOD! Seriously, I was in tears at the end of this episode. The Cora and Arnie story had the potential to be a bit too schmaltzy for its own but Doris Roberts and James Coco both gave such incredibly moving performances that I couldn’t help but get emotionally involved in their plight. And I understood why Cora made the decision that she did. Having been rejected by both her family and society, Cora knew that there wouldn’t be anyone around to take care of her after the operation. So, she decided to accept things the way that they were and spend her last year with the one person who didn’t judge her, Arnie. (I’m getting teary-eyed just writing about it.) Playing out against all the other petty dramas going on at the hospital, this storyline was emotionally devastating.

This was a powerful episode. Watching it, I understood why St. Elsewhere is so often described as being one of the best medical shows of all time.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.3 “Down’s Syndrome”

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, we get to know a very bad doctor.

Episode 1.3 “Down’s Syndrome”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on November 16th, 1982)

St. Eligius is home to several doctors, some of whom are good at their job and some of whom are really, really bad.

One of the bad ones appears to be Dr. Peter White (Terrence Knox), a resident who was in the background during the previous two episodes but who was at the center for a good deal of this episode. Peter has a terrible bedside manner, absolutely no social skills, and his knowledge of medicine appears to be subpar at best. When a homeless man comes in and complains of pain, Peter gives him a dose of potassium that nearly kills him. (Only the quick thinking of Dr. Ehrlich — who himself hardly appears to be the perfect doctor — keeps the patient alive.) Dr. White seems to be overwhelmed and it certainly doesn’t help that his wife is constantly calling the hospital and demanding to speak to him about every little thing. That said, it’s hard to have much sympathy for Dr. White. Yes, he’s overwhelmed but his mistakes nearly kill a man.

I have to admit that, as I watched Dr. Peter White on this week’s episode, I kept thinking about some of the doctors who treated my father after he had his car accident in May. Whenever I spoke to them, they would brusquely answer my questions, usually in technical language that reflected that it had been a long time since they talked anyone who hadn’t gone to medical school. At the time, I made the same excuses for them that I just made for Dr. White. They were young, they were busy, and they were overwhelmed. After my father died, though, I stopped making excuses for them and I instead just accepted that they weren’t very good at their job. And perhaps Dr. White should admit the same.

It doesn’t help that Dr. White is contrasted with Dr. Auschlander, a kind and elderly liver specialist who is battling cancer but who still manages to treat all of his patients with kindness and respect. The episode made it clear that all of the residents should hope to become a doctor like Dr. Auschlander. While Peter snaps at his patients and nearly kills a man, Auschlander takes the time to play cards with a woman who is dying. We should all be so lucky as to have an Auschlander in our life.

Finally, Brian Whitehill (Tony Bill) and his pregnant wife, Denise (Maureen Whitehill) are informed that their baby will be born with Down’s Syndrome. In a scene that brings to mind Icelandic eugenics, Brian suggests that Denise get an abortion but Denise refuses, especially when she learns that she’s going to have a son. (She already has two daughters.) A day later, Brian comes home from work and tells Denise that he’s realized that she’s right and he’s prepared to be the father of a special needs child. Denise replies that she had the abortion earlier in the day. Seriously, what a depressing story! That said, I respected what the show was doing here. The patients are just as important as the doctors.

(And while Denise is getting an abortion, Dr. Morrison is learning that he’s going to be a father and, in contrast to Brian Whitehill, joyfully cheering in the hospital stairwell.)

As with the previous episode, there was a lot going on in the background. Dr. Beale attempted to analyze terrorist Andrew Reinhardt (Tim Robbins), who is still basically acting like an arrogant prick. Kathleen McAllister, the victim of Reinhardt’s attack, is still in a coma. Dr. Westphall gave a tour of the hospital to two community leaders who both suggested that St. Eligius should shut down and move its operations to a wealthier neighborhood. Dr. Fiscus got a blow job in an elevator from Kathy Martin. (“Going down?” Fiscus asked the next guy who got on the elevator.) It was a busy day at the hospital! It was a good episode, even if it didn’t really have any of the big wow moments that the previous two episodes featured. This episode was more about following a few days in the life of a hospital and the emphasis was on the nonstop flow of patients and doctors, some of whom were doing their best and some of whom were on the verge of giving up. In the end, the main thing I took away from this episode was that there may not be enough Aucschlanders to make up for all the Peter Whites.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.2 “Bypass”

Posted on November 15, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new 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!

This week, William Daniels claims the show as his own.

Episode 1.2 “Bypass”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on November 9th, 1982)

“Hey, it’s Tim Robbins!”

Yes, the future Oscar winner shows up in the second episode of St. Elsewhere, playing a rich kid-turned-terrorist named Andrew Reinhardt. Reinhardt, who no doubt learned all about Marxism during his first semester away at college, set off a bomb in a bank, killing two people and putting a woman named Kathleen McCallister into a coma. Both Reihnhardt and McCallister have been brought to St. Eligius. While Kathleen’s husband, Stephen (Jack Bannon), sobs in the hallway, Reinhardt acts like a petulant brat in his hospital room.

With the nurses refusing to change his sheets or even give him his morphine shots, it falls to Dr. Morrison to take care of him. Reinhardt is not at all appreciative and Morrison finds himself conflicted. How is he supposed to give proper medical treatment to someone who he despises? Morrison is so conflicted that he even goes to Dr. Westphall. Westphall responds by telling a long story about a time that he fell in love with a patient. I’m getting the feeling that Morrison feeling conflicted and Westphall telling long stories are both going to be regular features on this show.

(The correct answer to Morrison’s question about how he can take care of a bad person is as follows: It’s your job and you’re getting paid to do it.)

This episode also gave the viewer a chance to get to know Dr. Craig, the very talented but very egotistical head of surgery who is played by the great William Daniels. Dr. Craig holds a press conference to inform reporters about the conditions of both Reinhardt and Kathleen McCallister and declares that, despite its bad reputation, “St. Eligius is the place to be!” He then proceeds to get angry when the press is more interested in talking to the surgeon who actually saved Kathleen’s life than to him.

Dr. Craig browbeats a Mr. Broadwater (Robert Costanzo) into getting bypass surgery done. The surgery appears to have been a success but it’s hard to ignore that Craig essentially bullied the guy into getting a major operation, one that could have killed him if the least little thing had gone wrong. Resident Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) assists in the operation and, at one point, Dr. Craig intentionally head butts him when Ehrlich cannot name all of the arteries leading into the heart. It’s a bit aggressive but, on the plus side, Ehrlich does learn all of the names. Afterwards, Dr. Craig brags about how his own son is following in his footsteps and tells Mr. Broadwater’s son that some day, a new Dr. Craig will operate on him. In other words, Dr. Craig is kind of a jerk but he’s good at what he does and he’s played by William Daniels so it’s hard to hold anything against him.

There were other subplots playing out in the background, the majority of which just seemed to be there to remind us that St. Elsewhere is an ensemble show and that, just because someone isn’t a major character in this episode, that doesn’t mean they won’t be important later on. Psychiatrist Hugh Beale (G.W. Bailey) attempted to learn how to swim and ended up taking a class with a bunch of children. Dr. Fiscus (Howie Mandel, the least convincing doctor ever) held court in the cafeteria and claimed that the hormones used in processing food were causing children to develop earlier than ever before. Dr. Peter White (Terrence Knox) wandered around with a bunch of X-rays and begged everyone he met to help him understand what he was (or wasn’t) seeing. If nothing else, this episode did a good job of capturing the idea of the hospital as being a place that’s always busy.

For the most part, though, it was Dr. Craig who carried this episode. While Morrison and Westphall ponderously considered the implications of doing their jobs, Craig was an arrogant, angry, and brilliant dynamo and William Daniels’s high-energy performance was a pleasure to watch. Whenever the episode started to slow down, Dr. Craig would liven things up by yelling at someone. The hospital was lucky to have Dr. Craig and St. Elsewhere was lucky to have William Daniels.

Retro Television Review: Indict & Convict (dir by Boris Sagal)

Posted on May 26, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1974’s Indict & Convict! It can be viewed on YouTube.

There’s been a murder!

The wife of Assistant District Attorney Sam Belden (William Shatner) has been found, shot to death. Making things especially awkward is that the body of her lover is found next to her. Though Belden is the obvious suspect, he has an alibi for the time of the murders. He claims that he was in Las Vegas, attending a convention. Two gas station attendants remember seeing him filling up his car with gas at around the same time that his wife and her lover was being shot.

Attorney General Timothy Fitzgerald (Ed Flanders) is not so sure that Belden is innocent. He instructs two of his top prosecutors to check out Belden’s story and to see if there’s enough evidence to not only indict but also to convict. Bob Matthews (George Grizzard) is a veteran prosecutor and he’s the one who narrates the story for us. Assisting him is Mike Belano, who is played by the always likable Reni Santoni. Just three years before this movie aired, Santoni played Harry Callahan’s partner in Dirty Harry. There was just something about Santoni’s friendly but determined demeanor that made him perfect the role of the supportive partner or assistant.

The film is very much a legal procedural, with the emphasis on not only the investigation but also on the strategies and the techniques that are used in the courtroom by Matthews and defense attorney DeWitt Foster (Eli Wallach). In many ways, it feels like a forerunner to Law & Order. Usually, I love court procedurals but Indict & Convict was a bit too slow and high-minded for its own good. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spoiled by all of the legal shows that I’ve seen but I have to admit that I spent a good deal of Indict & Convict wanting the prosecutors to get on with it. Flanders, Grizzard, Santoni, and Wallach were all ideally cast but the film itself sometimes got bogged down with all the debate about the best way to win a conviction. It’s a shame because the story itself is an intriguing one and I actually enjoyed the movie’s use of spinning newspaper headlines to let us know what had happened in between scenes. Also, as a classic film fan, I enjoyed seeing Myrna Loy as the judge. She didn’t get to do much other than say, “Sustained” and “Overruled,” but still …. Myrna Loy!

Most people who watch this film will probably do so out of the hope of seeing some trademark Shatner overacting. William Shatner doesn’t actually get to say much in this film. He spends most of the running time sitting silently at the defense table. Towards the end, he does finally get a chance to deliver a brief speech and it’s everything you could hope for. Shatner takes dramatic pauses. Shatner emphasizes random words. Every line is delivered with the subtext of, “Pay attention, Emmy voters!” Eventually, Shatner would learn the value of laughing at oneself but apparently, that lesson had not yet been learned when he did Indict & Convict.

Citizen Cohn (1992, directed by Frank Pierson)

Posted on March 19, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

The year is 1986 and the powerful attorney Roy Cohn (James Woods) is dying. The official story is that Cohn has liver cancer but the truth is that he’s dying of AIDS. As he lies in his hospital bed, he thinks about his past and the events the led to him becoming one of the most feared and powerful men in America. He is haunted by the ghosts of his many enemies, people like communist spy Ethel Rosenberg (Karen Ludwig) and his former colleague, Bobby Kennedy (David Marshall Grant).

Not surprisingly, a good deal of Cohn’s memories center around his association with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (Joe Don Baker), a charismatic alcoholic who, in the 50s, charged that he had a list with the names of communist spies deep within the government. Cohn and Kennedy served as the counsels on McCarthy’s committees. Cohn is with McCarthy from the beginning and he’s with him until the end of the senator’s career. In fact, it’s Cohn’s own shadowy relationship with an army private that ultimately leads to McCarthy’s downfall.

Except for one aspect of the film, Citizen Cohn is one of the best films to ever be produced by HBO. The film covers a lot of history in a little less than 2 hours and it does so in a way that is always interesting and easy to follow. By including incidents from every phase of Cohn’s life, as opposed to just focusing on his time as McCarthy’, the film also shows how someone like Roy Cohn can become a behind-the-scenes power player despite the majority of the country having no idea who he is. James Woods gives one of his best performances as the hyperactive and unapologetically corrupt Cohn while Joe Don Baker is perfect as the self-pitying Joseph McCarthy.

The problem with the film, and your mileage may vary on how big an issue this is, is that it almost presents Cohn’s final days — dying of AIDS in a lonely New York hospital room — as being some sort of deserved fate for everything that he did wrong in life. For me, even in the case of someone like Roy Cohn, that’s a step too far and it comes very close to presenting AIDS as some sort of divine punishment (which, itself, comes dangerously close to mirroring the homophobic statements that were made — and still are being made — by anti-gay activists). That may not have been the film’s intention but, with the flashback structure and all of his dead enemies materializing to taunt Cohn as he lies dying, it’s still a very valid interpretation.

Some of that is perhaps unavoidable. Cohn, in both real life and the film, died largely unrepentant for anything he did during his life. As the central character of a biopic, Cohn never has the type of big moment that you would hope for, where he would realize that it was wrong for him to destroy so many lives and show at least a hint of contrition for his past behaviors. That Roy Cohn is even a compelling character is a testament to the talent of James Woods because it’s certainly not due to any sort of hidden goodness lurking underneath the surface of Cohn’s snarling personality. The lack of apologies and regrets that made Cohn a powerhouse in real life also makes him an ultimately unsatisfying subject for a movie.