Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 4.2 “Fathers and Sons”

Posted on July 10, 2026 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 Daily Motion.

This week, Dr. Craig’s son returns home.

Episode 4.2 “Fathers and Sons”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on September 25th, 1985)

In this episode, we discover what Dr. Westphall did after he left St. Eligius. After checking Tommy into a special school for autistic children, Westphall went to Africa and volunteered his time at a clinic. Now that he’s returned to Boston, he wants St. Eligius and its residents to follow his example. In fact, he’s requiring it. He wants to set up a free clinic. He wants to set up a charity. He tells the residents that they will now be required to volunteer in the community. He’s planning on shaking things up. Auschlander tells Westphall that not all of his plans are practical. Westphall says that he doesn’t care.

Westphall also proceeds to move back into his old house and he retrieves Tommy from the school. (Tommy responds by hitting Westphall.) It’s actually pretty easy to see what’s happening here. At the end of the previous season, Westphall was determined to move on with his life. He was going to leave his depressing house. He was going to admit that he couldn’t raise Tommy by himself. However, now that he’s returned to Boston, Westphall is returning to his old life while expecting St. Eligius to change. Westphall is channeling his personal frustrations into the hospital. I don’t think this is going to go well.

Speaking of change, Luther is training to become a paramedic. In this episode, he rides around in an ambulance with two bickering paramedics who are also a couple (played by Adam Arkin and Melanie Chartoff). This storyline allowed the action to move beyond the confines at the hospital and, at times, it almost played like a parody of a more traditional medical show. Luther becomes a stand-in for the viewer, watching as the domestic drama unfolds in between medical emergencies.

The majority of the episode revolves around Dr. Craig, who is not happy that his son, Stephen (Scott Paulin), is visiting with his very pregnant wife, Yvonne (Suzanne Lederer). When we last saw Stephen, he was a hotshot Ivy League medical student with a bright future ahead of him. Then he got busted for drug possession and Dr. Craig stopped speaking about him. In this episode, we learn that Stephen is now a student at Ohio State. Stephen claims that he’s no longer on drugs but it’s obvious that Dr. Craig is never going to be able to forgive Stephen for letting him down. That said, Dr. Craig does soften a bit when he talks to Yvonne and she lets him feel the baby kicking.

At the end of the episode, Stephen is driving down a street in Boston. He’s just had dinner with his parents. Yvonne is in the passenger’s seat. A quick shot of Stephen’s eyes reveal that he’s high on something. Yvonne screams as Stephen crashes the car. Yikes! That’s a frightening way to end things!

This was a good episode. It appears that, with the start of season four, the showrunners finally figured out that Dr. Craig was the most interesting character on the show. William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett are both excellent in this episode.

I just hope the baby will be okay.

I Watched Perry Mason: The Case of the Avenging Ace (1988, Dir. by Christian I. Nyby II)

Posted on January 8, 2026 by Dazzling Erin

Back when Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) was a judge, he rejected the appeal of Kevin Parks (Larry Wilcox), an Air Force colonel who was accused of stalking and killing Amy Beth Sawyer (Dotty Coloroso). Even though Perry had his doubts, he did not find any legal grounds for an appeal. In the present day, when Parks is accused of killing a new witness who could have provided him with an alibi, Perry agrees to represent Parks in court and tries to prove that Parks was not guilty of either murder.

This movie was much more complicated than the typical Perry Mason movie but it was a good change of pace and the mystery itself kept me guessing. I was sure I knew who the murderer was and I turned out I was wrong. Perry’s guilt about turning down Kevin Parks’s original appeal added a new dimension to the movie and it was interesting to see Perry doubting himself, even if it was just for a few minutes.

Again, Raymond Burr spent most of this movie either sitting or leaning against something. Even unwell, he still gave a good performance and his chemistry with Barbara Hale was as charming as ever. Paul Drake, Jr. (William Katt) did the leg work and got involved in a few good chases. The only thing more interesting than the mystery was Paul’s hair, which gets bigger and bigger each movie.

Back to School Part II #18: Not My Kid (dir by Michael Tuchner)

Posted on September 3, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Not My Kid, a made-for-television from 1985, opens with 15 year-old Susan Bower (Viveka Davis) in a car with her friends. They’re drunk. They’re stoned. They’re laughing. And soon, they’re screaming as the driver loses control and the car ends up getting overturned! (I’ve had that happen before. It wasn’t fun but I survived with only a few cuts and bruises.) Susan isn’t seriously hurt but, at the hospital, it’s discovered that she has alcohol and drugs in her bloodstream.

“NOT MY KID!” her father, surgeon Frank Bower (George Segal), declares.

“NOT MY KID!” her mother, Helen Bower (Stockard Channing, totally wasted in a thinly written role), agrees.

“Totally your kid!” her younger sister, Kelly (Christa Denton), says before then revealing where Susan hides her drugs. This leads to Kelly getting beaten up by Susan and her drug addict boyfriend, Ricky (Tate Fuckin’ Donavon, decades before playing a hostage in Argo.).

Anyway, neither Frank nor Helen want to admit that Susan has a drug problem so instead, they go to see a smug family counselor who tells them that they are both being too hard on their daughter and that they need to just let Susan be Susan. That sounds like a good (and easy) plan but then Susan runs away and disappears for two days. After she’s finally found, stoned and hiding out in the family’s boat, her parents finally decide to send her to rehab.

The rehab is run by Dr. Royce. Dr. Royce is played by Andrew Robinson and it took me a while to recognize him as being the same actor who played the Scorpio Killer in Dirty Harry. Perhaps that explains why Dr. Royce came across as being such a creepy character. As I watched this movie, I kept waiting for the big reveal where Dr. Royce would turn out to be a murderer or something. That never happened, of course. In the world of Not My Kid, the harsh and confrontational Dr. Royce is the only thing keeping the entire teenage population for shooting up heroin.

The majority of the film takes place at the rehab and it gets annoying pretty quickly. This is one of those places where everything is done as a group activity. Whenever someone says something, everyone in the group replies with, “We love you, so-and-so.” When Susan doesn’t act properly ashamed of herself, the group gangs up on her. “You’re a phony!” someone says. “You’re full of crap!” another person adds. “We love you, Susan,” the group chants.

AGCK! Seriously, the rehab scenes totally freaked me out because it came across less like therapy and more like brainwashing. I spent the entire movie waiting for Susan to escape and when she did, I was happy for her. She may have been a self-destructive drug addict but at least wasn’t a mindless zombie like everyone else in the movie! But then she ended up getting caught by her father and taken back to the rehab.

Meanwhile, her parents are going through therapy as well. Again, it’s all group therapy. When Frank tries to talk about how Susan’s behavior makes him feel, someone says, “You’re a phony!’ Another person adds, “You’re full of crap!” And the group chants, “We love you, Frank.” Okay, to be honest, I’m taking some dramatic license with the dialogue here but hopefully, you get the general idea.

I mean, seriously — I understand that I was supposed to be like, “Yay rehab!” while watching the movie but the rehab came across more like some sort of creepy cult. It reminded me of both a Canadian film called, Ticket To Heaven and a Texas film called Split Image. As I watched Not My Kid, I kept waiting for James Woods to show up as a cult deprogrammer.

Anyway, don’t worry. Everything turns out well in the end. This was a made-for-TV movie, after all. Not My Kid is way too heavy-handed for its own good and it lacks a certain self-awareness. On a more positive note, George Segal does a good job in the role of Frank.

You can watch Not My Kid below!