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 Daily Motion.
The drama continues in Boston.
Episode 3.20 “Amazing Face”
(Dir by Janet Greek, originally aired on February 20th, 1985)
This week, at St. Eligius:
- Nurse Rosenthal thinks that she’s pregnant. That sound you hear is me sighing. Seriously, I liked Nurse Rosenthal during the first season but now I’m kind of sick of her and her sanctimonious attitude, her homewrecking affair with Richard, and her annoying children. Obviously, the show’s writers really liked Nurse Rosenthal but I’m tired of her. A pregnant Nurse Rosenthal? I don’t think I could handle that. Fortunately, it turns out that Nurse Rosenthal is actually starting menopause.
- When is Rosenthal going to dump Richard? We all know it’s going to happen.
- Dr. Westphall has put his house on the market and boy, is he glum about it. Westphall continues to be the most depressing human being on the planet.
- Mrs. Hufnagle has heart surgery. Before that, however, she steals some scrubs and wanders in on an operation.
- Fiscus wants to hook back up with Cathy Martin. When a macho patient makes a misogynistic comment about Cathy, Fiscus throws a punch and gets his ass kicked. Luckily, Cathy has learned kung fu.
- The bandages are removed and Andrea Fordham (Ann Hearn) sees her new face. She now looks like an average teenager. She tells Dr. Caldwell that she’s still not ready to face the world.
- Shirley Daniels is a patient at St. Eligius. She tells everyone who she meets that she killed Peter White and that she can’t wait to go to jail for it. She promises Doctors Wade and Morrison that she’ll never shoot anyone else. She also reveals that she’s the one who sent the baby ski mask to Peter’s widow. She’s knitting a new ski mask for Morrison’s son. Oh, Shirley!
- The episode ends with Shirley going to the morgue and flashing back to the time she shot Peter in the testicles.
- Considering all the hospitals in Boston, was it really a good idea for her to stay at the same one where she happened to kill a doctor, albeit one who deserved exactly what he got?
This episode felt like filler. Ehrlich acted like a jackass. Morrison acted like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Dr. Craig was arrogant. Dr. Westphall was depressed. It wasn’t a bad episode but there wasn’t anything terribly memorable about it either.
It was just another day at St. Eligius.
