Herbert Edelman | 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 Daily Motion.

This week, a famous doctor comes to St. Eligius.

Episode 3.13 “Dr. Wyler, I Presume”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on December 19th, 1984)

This week’s episode opens in the hospital gift shop. Dr. Craig is excited because a Nobel Prize-winning surgeon, Dr. George Wyler (David Wayne), is traveling from Africa to St. Eligius. Wyler is bring along a man who needs a kidney transplant. They are hoping to find a donor in Boston.

Dr. Auschlander, who is an old friend of Wyler’s, is a bit more nervous. Craig tells him not to worry so much and then grabs a carnation that he puts on Auschlander’s lapel.
As Auschlander starts to leave the gift shop, Craig says, “Don’t forget to pay for that.”

It’s a brilliant opening for a pretty good episode of St. Elsewhere. It’s always interesting to see the usually arrogant Dr. Craig in fanboy mode and one gets the feeling that, if he’s impressed by Dr. Wyler, than Wyler really must be as brilliant as everyone says.
And maybe he is! It’s hard to say for sure. When Wyler arrives at the hospital, he’s avuncular and obviously intelligent but we really don’t learn much about him, beyond the fact that he’s an old friend of Auschlander’s. The rest of Wyler’s scenes feature him and Auschlander sitting around and talking about how they’re both getting older. It’s not boring, largely due to the performances of Norman Lloyd and David Wayne. But, after all of the build-up, it’s a bit anti-climatic. That said, according to the imdb, Dr. Wyler appeared in a total of three episodes so I imagine things will develop.

While this is going on, Nurse Rosenthal is having a mid-life crisis. Her 45th birthday is coming up and she doesn’t want to celebrate it. She’s not amused when the nurses get her a stripper. Usually, I would have sympathy for a character who hates the idea of getting older but I’m a little bit tired of Nurse Rosenthal and her poor-me attitude. I get that she’s upset that her adulterous affair hasn’t been going well but maybe she should take that as a sign to stop sleeping with married men.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Hufnagle, the patient that no one likes, continues to get on everyone’s nerves. She’s even managed to alienate Elliott! I actually feel bad for Mrs. Hufnagle. Yes, she complains a lot but being in a hospital is a scary thing. I get the feeling that the doctors and nurses getting annoyed with her is probably the most realistic part of the series. Dr. Morrison is now Hufnagle’s doctor and that worries me. Morrison’s stories always end in the most depressing way possible.

At the tv station, Victor is told that his medical segments are not popular with viewers and that he needs to make being sick sound more pleasant than it is. Victor records an upbeat segment about how wonderful it is to go the hospital.

At the hospital, Victor assists Dr. Craig in removing an live exploding bullet from a woman who was shot in a robbery. Victor worries that the bullet could explode as he removes it and end his medical career. Fortunately, the operation is successful but Craig still tells Ehrlich that he’s a disgrace.

Ouch!

Hey, this was a really good episode. It was well-acted. It wasn’t too depressing. Dr. Craig got to snap at a lot of people. The best episodes always feature Dr. Craig going off on someone. St. Eligius may not be the best hospital but, this week, it was the most entertaining.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 begins with ominous shots of a crowded California interstate. It’s the 4th of July weekend and old people are returning home, young people are looking for a party, and Sergeant Sam Marcum (Robert Conrad) of the California Highway Patrol is looking for a killer. When one car swerves into the next lane and hits another, it leads to a chain reaction as hundreds of cars, trucks, and one motorcycle crash into each other. While the vehicles crash, we see the people inside of them. There’s Buddy Ebsen! There’s Vera Miles! There’s Sue Lyon (of Lolita fame) on the back of a motorcycle! In a voice-over, Sam tells us that the accident will be classified as being due to “mechanical failure” and that 14 people are going to die as a result. He might be one of them.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is a 70s disaster film so, after the pile-up, the movie flashed back 48 hours and we get to know everyone whose lives are going to eventually collide on Interstate 5. Erica (Vera Miles) is recently divorced and trying to get back into the dating scene. Albert (Buddy Ebsen) is trying to bring some joy to his terminally ill wife’s final days. Lee (Scott Jacoby) and Penny (Bonnie Ebsen) are the hippies who are trying to get to Big Sur without getting arrested. Burnsey (Sue Lyon) loves her biker boyfriend. Some of them will survive the pile-up. Some of them will not.

Smash-Up On Interstate 5 is an above average made-for-TV movie. It’s got a notable cast and the movie does a good job of mixing together’s everyone’s subplots. For instance, Burnsey and a group of bikers show up in the background of several scenes and harass Erica at one point long before the crash on the interstate. It’s only a 100-minute film so the film doesn’t go into too much detail about everyone’s past but we learn just enough to make everyone stand out. The crash itself is intense, even when seen today. Made before the days of CGI, this is a film where the stunt crew definitely earned their paycheck.

Tommy Lee Jones plays a patrolman who is also Sam’s brother-in-law. I was surprised when I first saw him but as soon as I saw the strained smile and heard the accent, I knew it was him. Jones’s role is small and probably could have been played by anyone but the mere presence of Tommy Lee Jones definitely makes this film cooler than it would have been otherwise.

One final note: This film was directed by the made-for-TV horror specialist, John Llewellyn Moxey. Be sure to read Gary Loggins’s tribute to this often underrated director.