Jim Dratfield | 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, Westphall finds something else to feel depressed about.

Episode 4.9 “Sanctuary”

(Dir by Eric Laneuville, originally aired on December 4th, 1985)

Dr. Ehrlich has been demoted to gynecology, the department he most fears. He even begs Dr. Caldwell to allow him to return to plastic surgery, but Caldwell has no sympathy for him. Caldwell tells Ehrlich that he’s a loser and that he’ll always be a loser.

Well, Ehrlich may be a loser, but he also helps deliver a baby in this episode and learns that he can actually get through the day without offending someone. Bobby Caldwell, on the other hand, makes a joke about Lucy’s breasts in front of a patient and ends up getting reported for sexual harassment. When Lucy points out to Auschlander that Caldwell’s statement was both demeaning and uttered in front of a patient, Caldwell argues that Lucy is taking things too personally and that he was just joking. (Ugh. Every woman has had a Bobby Caldwell in her life.) Auschlander asks Lucy to leave the room and then tells Bobby that if he ever makes another joke like that, he’ll be fired. While it’s good that Auschlander makes it clear that Bobby’s conduct was unprofessional, sending Lucy out of the room beforehand only leaves her feeling more isolated. Auschlander is willing to reprimand Caldwell, but only in private, a consideration that Bobby wasn’t willing to show Lucy.

Lucy is angry, and it doesn’t help that Nurse Rosenthal essentially says that Lucy only has herself to blame for being too flirtatious with the doctors in the past. Oh God, this episode was not easy for me to watch. I used to work as an administrative assistant. My boss was a good guy who always treated me with respect. (It undoubtedly helped that he was a good friend of my mom’s and we had more of a father/daughter relationship than a standard boss/employee relationship.) However, I lost track of the number of other men who would tell me that they appreciated it whenever I wore a skirt or who would hang out at my desk and watch whenever I had to lean forward for any particular reason. I would smile and say something silly in response because that just seemed like the easiest way to deal with things. The other women who worked in the building always told me that I should “dress down,” but I didn’t want to do that. I just wanted to be myself.

Meanwhile, Dr. Fiscus loses a patient, a homeless man (Mark Casella) who once helped Fiscus move. Before the man dies, he sees an Egyptian sarcophagus being X-rayed and comments on how people still remember the rulers of ancient Egypt but no one is going to remember him. After he dies, Fiscus and his girlfriend, X-ray technician Mona Polita (Leah Ayres), wrap the man’s body and put him in an empty sarcophagus.

Finally, Westphall’s new housekeeper, Morena (Edith Diaz), is rushed to the ER with back pain. With the help of Dr. Morrison (who speaks fluent Spanish as a result of attending a South American medical school), Westphall learns that Morena was tortured in her native El Salvador. As usual, Dr. Westphall makes Morena’s tragedy all about himself by using her as an example of why the hospital needs to adopt Westphall’s plans to reach out to the community.

The next day, Westphall snaps at the residents about their lack of community spirit. Fiscus finally snaps that he’s sick of being lectured by Westphall and leaves the room. Good for Fiscus! Seriously, Westphall’s self-righteousness has been unbearable this season. Just because Westphall can’t figure out how to communicate with his autistic son, he’s been making everyone else’s life miserable.

This was another rather sad episode of St. Elsewhere. There’s not much happiness to be found in St. Eligius. That said, Lucy’s storyline was touching and also a reminder that, in some ways, 2026 is not that different from 1985. And I was glad that the poor homeless man was given a burial fit for a king. If nothing else, Fiscus will never forget him.

I apologize for the delay in posting this review. I was feeling under the weather last week. This week, I feel well enough to share this review of one of the most emotional hours of television that I’ve ever watched.

Episode 4.3 “Haunted”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on October 23rd, 1985)

This episode begins where the previous one ended. After crashing his car, Stephen Craig and his wife, Yvonne, are rushed to the Emergency Room. Despite the best efforts of Drs. Chandler and Axelrod, Stephen dies in the ER. Yvonne goes into labor, eventually giving birth to Dr. Craig’s granddaughter. Dr. Mark Craig and Ellen show up shortly after Stephen has been pronounced dead. While Ellen immediately slips into denial (“That’s not Stephen!”), Dr. Craig calmly tells Chandler that he knows Chandler did everything that he could.

Throughout the episode, Ellen struggles with her grief while Mark holds back his emotions. He suspects that Stephen was once again using drugs and he even goes to the autopsy to see for himself. While Stephen’s organs are being weighed, Dr. Craig starts to talk about how he was never close to his son but how, when Stephen was young, they used to read Dr. Seuss together. “Thank you Sam I Am,” Dr. Craig recites under his breath, right before hearing that Stephen had used cocaine shortly before dying.

For Dr. Craig, Stephen’s renewed drug use is an excuse to refuse to mourn for him. For Ellen, Stephen’s drug use is proof that his father was too critical and pushed him too hard. Ellen tells Mark that he never cared about Stephen except for when Stephen said he wanted to be a doctor. As the episode ends, Dr. Craig sits in his office and thinks about the words of Dr. Seuss and finally, he starts to cry.

I cried too. I cried a lot while watching this episode. This was the most emotional episode of St. Elsewhere that I’ve watched so far. Both William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett were heartbreaking as a couple who each dealt with their grief in their own way. It was hard to watch Ellen fall apart in the Emergency Room but it was even harder to watch Dr. Craig fall apart as he realized that his wife was right. When Stephen was young, the only time they were close was when they read that Dr. Seuss book. And now, that memory is all Dr. Craig has left.

There were other things that happened in this episode, of course. One thing about St. Elsewhere is that there are always several stories going on at once. Elliot worried about his weight, even after discovering that his girlfriend liked the fact that he wasn’t thin. Dr. Caldwell spent the weekend at a recently purchased house in Cape Cod and Fiscus showed up unannounced. Dr. Morrison encouraged the other male residents to donate sperm. Dr. Westphall continued to try to push through his efforts to make St. Eligius a community-centered hospital. But none of the other stories could match the power of Mark and Ellen Craig losing their son. In fact, I found myself resenting being taken away from the Craigs. “Who cares about Cape Cod!?” I said, “The Craigs have lost their son!”

This was not an easy episode to watch but, in the end, it was powerful, it was touching, and it made me cry.