Karen Pestrasek | 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.

St. Elsewhere gets political!

Episode 3.19 “Red White Black and Blue”

(Dir by Eric Laneuville, originally aired on February 13th, 1985)

This week, on St. Elsewhere!

The First Lady is coming to Boston! Though she’s going to be visiting Boston General, St. Eligius has been designated as a backup hospital. While she’s in the area, the Emergency Room will be closed to everyone but her. As well, some members of the hospital staff have been flagged as security risks — including Dr. Craig!
Dr. Craig is not happy about that but eventually, he’s cleared. It turns out that his wife was the security risk because she once defended the Black Panther Party.
Betty White plays Captain Gloria Neal, a doctor who is on the First Lady’s security team. She is an old friend of Dr. Westphall’s. At first, it seems like she and Westphall might pursue a romance but it doesn’t happen. I’m going to guess this is because Gloria realized that Dr. Westphall is the most depressing man on the planet.
When a severely injured man is rushed to St. Eligius, Neal refuses to open the Emergency Room. So, Dr. Craig takes it upon himself to overrule her. The man dies on the table.
Dr. Jacqueline Wade (Sagan Lewis) follows Captain Neal around, complaining about the president’s policies. In fact, the entire hospital seems to be full of Democrats! Wow, this President sure must have been unpopular. Let’s see who it is …. hey, Ronald Reagan! Three months before this episode aired, Reagan was reelected with 58% of the vote. He carried 49 states, including Massachusetts. Apparently, everyone who voted for Walter Mondale worked at the same hospital.
Mrs. Hufnagle is back at the hospital. She is having heart problems. Dr. Westphall glumly tells the doctors that they have been neglecting her because of her terrible personality. However, not even Westphall can handle talking to her. He passes the case over to Dr. Craig.
Fiscus has dinner with Shirley Daniels, who says that she hopes she goes to prison for shooting Dr. White. The next day, Shirley is admitted to the hospital with appendicitis.
Victor Ehrlich wrong believes that a child has been abused by his mother. He gets social services involved. Later, Westphall sighs with regret and tells Victor that he did the wrong thing. Westphall is being kind of a prick here. Legally, if Ehrlich thinks that there’s been abuse, he’s required to report it. Westphall seems to be upset that Ehrlich can’t read minds.
Finally, chronic homewrecker Nurse Rosenthal has to spend the day at the hospital so her lover, Richard, spends the day with her annoying children. Well, I guess he certainly wasn’t going to spend it with his wife. I will never understand why this show felt it was necessary to spend so much time with this particular family. They were all annoying, every single one of them.

This episode opened with a homeless man using an American flag as a blanket and then went on to feature a man selling American flags getting attacked. That’s about as subtle as things got. It’s interesting that the show previously established Dr. Craig as being a Republican but apparently, with this episode, viewers were expected to believe that he was not a fan of Ronald Reagan’s.

In other words, this was not a great episode. This felt like the medical equivalent of one of those Law & Order episodes where all of the salt of the Earth cops start talking about how they never miss Morning Joe.

Finally, I feel bad for Mrs. Hufnagle, Even annoying people deserve good medical treatment!

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.