Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.14 “Whistle, Wyler Works”

Posted on April 3, 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, we learn why almost all of Morrison’s patients seem to die.

Episode 3.14 “Whistle, Wyler Works”

(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on January 2nd, 1985)

It’s another busy day at St. Eligius.

Having finally found a kidney donor, Dr. Westphall performs the transplant. Tshalla (Larry B. Scott) gets a new kidney but Dr. Wyler is shaken to discover that, while he’s been working in Africa, surgical techniques in America have progressed to the point that Wyler now feels undertrained.
Having managed to alienate even the super patient Dr. Morrison, Mrs. Hufnagle is now working her “charm” on Bobby Caldwell. Caldwell tells Hufnagle that she doesn’t really need plastic surgery but Hufnagle seems to really want it.
Victor freaks out when he’s not included to assist in Dr. Craig’s latest big surgery. A chance meeting with Ellen Craig leads to Victor confessing that his father died when he was young and that he’s always been looking for a new father figure.
Ellen snaps at Mark for not understand how much Victor looks up at him. Yay! I always like it when Ellen stands up to Mark. That Bonnie Bartlett and William Daniels were (and are) married in real life always adds an extra snap to these scenes.
Elliott appears to have a crush on one of Nurse Rosenthal’s daughters. There’s no way that’s going to end well.
Dr. Chandler returns from vacation (in reality, Denzel Washington was probably busy filming a movie) and deals with a patient (Jay Tarses) who is also a bigamist.
When the representative of a fly-by night medical school approaches Luther and tries to get him to enroll, Auschlander kicks the smarmy representative out of the hospital. Before the rep leaves, he mentions that St. Eligius already has at least one of his school’s graduates on staff.
Yep, it’s Jack Morrison.

It’s already been established that Jack got his medical degree from a Mexican medical school. In this episode, it’s further established that, whereas most doctors spends years in medical school, Jack graduated after six months. Jack explains that he still passed all of the tests that he was required to take but that he was also given credit for his life experience of working as a pharmaceutical rep.

Dr. Westphall is not amused. If someone could learn how to be a doctor that quickly, Westphall says, wouldn’t we all being doing it? Westphall points out that he put his reputation on the line to keep Jack around as a second-year resident. Westphall also says that this explains why Jack always seems to be misdiagnosing his patients and …. well, I think Westphall has a point!

This was not a bad episode, though I’m a bit weary of this Dr. Wyler storyline. Wyler doesn’t do much other than feel sorry for himself. I’m far more interested to see where things will be going with both Victor and Jack.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 3.13 “Dr. Wyler, I Presume”

Posted on March 27, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

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.

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.6 “The Bulls Change Hands”

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Wednesdays, I will be reviewing 1st and Ten, which aired in syndication from 1984 to 1991. The entire series is streaming on Tubi.

This episode was confusing. Is syndication to blame?

Episode 3.6 “The Bulls Change Hands”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on September 9th, 1987)

Diana no longer owns the Bulls!

That was the main plot development to be found in this cluttered episode of 1st & Ten. As I’ve mentioned before, the episodes of 1st & Ten that are available on Tubi are the heavily edited versions that were sold into syndication as opposed to the original, R-rated versions that appeared on HBO. With quite a few of these episodes, it’s obvious that entire plotlines have been pretty much chopped out. That certainly feels like the case here because, despite having watched the episode, I’m still not totally sure how Diane lost the Bulls in the first place.

What I do know is that she threatened to expose Teddy’s insider trading. Teddy responded by leaving the country but, before he left, he gave his ownership shares to his daughter, Jill (Leah Ayres). Teddy explains that this makes Jill the owner of the Bulls. But my understanding was that Teddy only owned half the team so it seems like that would mean Jill and Diane would now be co-owners. Perhaps I missed something in an earlier episode or maybe some line of dialogue was cut out for syndication, I’m not sure. What I do know is that Jill now owns the Bulls. The first thing she does is break up with Yinessa because she can’t be both his boss and his girlfriend.

In her final locker room speech, Diane orders the Bulls to win because Diane is taking Jill to court and she wants the team to be in the playoffs once she returns as the owner. It’s not a bad speech but again, I thought Diane still owned at least half of the team.

Meanwhile, Yinessa is back as quarterback. And he leads the Bulls to their first victory of the season. His new wide receiver, Billy Cooper (Michael Toland) catches the game-winning pass. At the same time that Billy is scoring, some guy who we’ve never seen before is shooting at him from the roof of the stadium. The police arrest the guy and Billy later discovers a bullet lodged in his helmet.

Bubba’s sex therapist (Penny Johnson) is now obsessed with him, despite Bubba’s attempts to set her up with with Jethro. I have a feeling that the Jethro/Bubba storylines were the ones that really got left on the cutting room floor when it came to editing these episodes for syndication. Jethro and Bubba have been with the show since the beginning and they’ve got prominent billing in the opening credits but, when it comes to their roles in the episodes themselves, it seems like the only thing that happens is Bubba says that he needs to get laid and then the two of them disappear for several weeks. When they do finally reappear, Bubba is always in some sort of new trouble with his wife.

Speaking of marriage, in this episode, TD Parker finally confesses to his wife that he’s been having an affair.

TD apologizes. His wife tells him to get out. Agck! I can see where this storyline is heading but OJ Simpson fighting with his wife still lands differently in 2026 than it probably did in 1987.

This episode was a mess but I guess Jill is the owner of the Bulls now and Teddy’s fled to South America. Can’t the Bull just concentrate on playing football and earning their paycheck?

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.4 “The Comeback Trail”

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Some will never play the game….

Episode 3.4 “The Comeback Trail”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on August 26th, 1987)

The Bulls are in disarray! Yinessa is in the hospital and might never play again. Diane wants to trade John Manzak for a new quarterback but TD Parker explains that Manzak is actually one of the best players that they have.

Then, OJ — I mean TD — heads to the locker room and catches Manzak shooting up steroids in the bathroom. TD tries to take the steroids away from him and Manzak …. well, Manzak doesn’t appreciate that.

Manzak apologizes and explains that, after ten years of injuries, he needs the steroids to play. TD orders him to stop using them. Manzak doesn’t listen and during the next practice, he collapses on the field. TD runs out to him and checks his pulse.

OJ would know!

So ends the saga of John Manzak. He just wanted to play football but he took too many steroids and collapsed dead on the practice field.

How will the Bulls survive without him? We’ll find out next week!

Late Night Retro Television Review: 1st & Ten 3.3 “A Loaded Gun”

Posted on February 11, 2026 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, OJ Simpson argues with his wife.

Episode 3.3 “A Loaded Gun”

(Dir by Stan Lathan, originally aired on August 19th, 1987)

With Yinessa continuing to hold out for more money, Teddy thinks that he’s come up with a solution. He tells Yinessa that he will personally take out an insurance policy on him so that Yinessa can work out with the team, despite not having a contract. Yinessa agrees. TD Parker tells all of the defenders not to touch Yinessa because they cannot risk him getting hurt.

“Anyone who touches Yinessa is going to wind up in Buffalo!” Parker tells them.

Unfortunately, John Manzak has been taken too many steroids. As a result, the first thing he does is sack Yinessa. Yinessa is injured. As he’s rushed to the hospital, Diane tells Teddy, “Thank God you got that insurance policy.” Teddy looks worried — uh oh, it looks like someone didn’t get that insurance policy!

At the hospital, a doctor tells Diane that Yinessa has a detached retina and he’ll probably never play football again.

Meanwhile, TD is having trouble in his marriage. He forgets his wife’s birthday but TD’s secretary (Leah Ayres) sends flowers and buys a gift. Unfortunately, TD’s wife sees through the entire ruse. She and TD argue. And because TD Parker is played by OJ Simpson, it’s hard not to worry whenever anyone argues with him.

Hey, that’s a good point, OJ! Let’s move on!

Also, in this episode, Bubba goes to therapy because he hasn’t been able to make love to his wife since she gave birth. Jethro goes with him and pretends to have a shoe fetish. This led to another patient hiding his shoes. 1st and Ten is a comedy that rarely makes me laugh but I have to admit that I did chuckle when Jethro started talking about how much he loved shoes.

Other than the therapy scene, this was a pretty serious episode. Yinessa might never play again. John Manzak is going crazy due to the steroid abuse. (Is he going to be sent to Buffalo? I don’t know how he’s going to handle that!) The kicker is still looking for a wife so he won’t get deported. And Diane has no idea what’s going on with her team.

How will the Bulls ever make it to the championship game!?

I guess I’ll have to keep watching to find out.

Jury Duty (1990, directed by Michael Schultz)

Posted on January 6, 2026 by Jedadiah Leland

Meek-looking accountant Sanford Lagelfost (Bronson Pinchot) is on trial for embezzlement. It’s supposed to be a simple, up-and-shut case but when the beautiful star witness (Tracy Scoggins) testifies that Sanford is an amazing lover, it becomes a tabloid sensation and the jurors are sequestered in a hotel, where they have to deal with their own restlessness and several distractions, the majority of whom are also played by Bronson Pinchot. Pinchot plays a total of four characters but it’s not like he’s Peter Sellers or even Eddie Murphy. He looks and sounds like Bronson Pinchot in every role.

The jurors are played by a bunch of a familiar television actors. Alan Thicke plays a yuppie named Phil and Lynn Redgrave plays a hippie named Abby and they end up getting married. Stephen Baldwin is the waiter who falls for Heather Locklear, an actress who is a former call girl who is being threatened by her pimp. Madchen Amick is the spoiled rich girl. Television mainstays Mark Blankfield, Ilene Graf, William G. Schilling, Danny Pintauro, and Bill Kirchenbauer are all present and accounted for. Adding to the overall sitcom feel of the movie is the presence of Reginald VelJohnson as the judge. No one in the cast tries very hard, though I do think a case can be made that Madchen Amick was the most beautiful woman on television in 1990.

With the film failing to achieve either a consistent tone or a single laugh, the best thing that I can say about Jury Duty is that it didn’t feature Pauly Shore. Instead it featured Alan Thicke driving a BMW with a license plate that read, “BMW4Phil.” It’s hard to believe that this film was directed by Michael Schultz, who was responsible for movies like Car Wash, Cooley High, and Greased Lightning in the 70s and Berry Gordy’s The Last Dragon in the 80s.

I wish I had watched The Last Dragon instead.

Late Night Retro Television Review: Highway to Heaven 2.20 “Summit”

Posted on October 10, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Late Night Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Thursdays, I will be reviewing Highway to Heaven, which aired on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show is currently streaming on Freevee and several other services!

This week, Jonathan and Mark do their bet to save the world from nuclear annihilation. Good for them!

Episode 2.20 “Summit”

(Dir by Dan Gordon, originally aired on March 5th, 1986)

Maria Malinoff (Eda Reiss Merlin), a Russian immigrant, is dying. Before she dies, she wants to see her son one last time.

The good news is that her son, Andrey Malinoff (Nehemiah Persoff), is currently in the United States. Even better, Mark and Jonathan have been assigned to let Andrey know that his mother wants to see him and to convince him to set aside his bitterness and see her.

The bad news is that Andrey is now the deputy premier of Russia and the reason why he’s in the United States is to attend a summit with the President (voiced by Frank Welker). Andrey is a communist who doesn’t believe in angels or American exceptionalism!

Mark and Jonathan are able to get jobs as waiters for the summit. (It helps that there is another angel working at Camp David.) They are even able to get Andrey away from his handlers long enough to take him to see his mother. Andrey is convinced that Jonathan and Mark are with the CIA and their whole “mission” is a trick to keep him from attending the summit. Mark dislikes Andrey because he’s a Russian and he think his country is superior to America. Jonathan dislikes Andrey because he’s abrasive and refuses, at first, to accept that Maria is his mother.

Eventually, though, Maria starts to talk about what Andrey was like as a child. Realizing that she is who she says she is, Andrey sits with his mother and talks to her until she passes away. Then, he returns to the summit a (slightly) changed man. He may still be a communist but at least now he knows the meaning of the word compassion. Mark takes a few minutes to ask Andrey and the President to work out their differences, explaining that everyone in the world is scared of nuclear war. The President, who is heard but not seen, is touched by Mark’s plea and agrees to have a long conversation about peace with Andrey.

Having apparently brought about world peace, Mark and Jonathan head off to their next assignment.

This episode — which was one of the few to be directed by neither Michael Landon nor Victor French — just felt silly, especially when compared to the strong episodes that came before it. Nehemiah Persoff does a lot of blustering in the role of Andrey but he never convinces us of the character’s emotions or his transformation. As an anti-communist, I enjoyed listening to Mark insult the Russians but otherwise, this well-meaning episode was a definite misfire.

Retro Television Reviews: Half Nelson Episode 1.4 “Uppers and Downers”

Posted on April 7, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a new feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Fridays, I will be reviewing Half Nelson, which ran on NBC from March to May of 1985. Almost all nine of the show’s episodes can be found on YouTube!

The adventures of Rocky Nelson continue!

Episode 1.4 “Uppers and Downers”

(Dir by James Sheldon, originally aired on April 5th, 1985)

When a burglar alarm goes off in Beverly Hills, it’s Rocky Nelson (Joe Pesci) of Beverly Hills Patrol to the rescue! Reaching the mansion of a local businessman (played by Cliff Gorman), Rocky discovers that the alarm was set off by a racoon.

(“A racoon is Beverly Hills!?” Gorman’s wife says, in a tone that suggests that racoons are unknown creatures in California.)

Rocky also happens to spot the next door neighbor (Nancy Stafford) leading her personal trainer into her house, whispering that she’s going to show him her bedroom. At first, Rocky is amused but, later that day, Rocky hears that the personal trainer has been found, floating in Stafford’s swimming pool. Stafford claims that the trainer had a heart attack while swimming but, upon arriving at the scene, Rocky immediately figures out that the trainer died in the house and was then dragged out to the pool. Stafford swears that she didn’t kill him and Rocky believes her. However, when the autopsy report reveals that the trainer was dead before he was put in the pool, Stafford is arrested and charged with murdering him by hitting him over the head.

Despite being told by his boss (Fred Williamson) to stay away from the case, Rocky feels that he has to prove Stafford’s innocence. Rocky’s first plan is to have his associates, Kurt (Bubba Smith) and Beau (Dick Butkus), disguise themselves as mortuary attendants and steal the trainer’s body from the crematorium. Rocky then takes the body to a coroner who does a second autopsy and discovers that not only did the trainer have a heart attack but that he was also poisoned! Someone slipped the trainer a pill that was specifically designed to cause a heart attack. Now, it’s up to Rocky to discover who that person was and clear Stafford’s name before Stafford’s husband (Brett Halsey, a veteran of Italian horror and spaghetti westerns) files for divorce.

Rocky deduces that the trainer was probably targeted by a jealous husband. Rocky decides to disguise himself as a physical trainer so that he can get close to all of the dead man’s former clients. How does Rocky prepare for this role? He does calisthenics with his landlord, Dean Martin. When Rocky mentions that he needs someone to determine whether or not his clients are lying to him, Dean Martin suggests that he steal a lie detector from the set of “Burt’s new film.” (I’m guessing that Burt was a reference to Burt Reynolds, Dean’s co-star in two Cannonball Run films.) Rocky promptly goes down to the studio backlot and steals a bunch of Burt Reynolds’s property.

(The backlot was a prominent and amusing part of the show’s pilot but it was ignored during last week’s episode. I was glad to see it back for this episode because Dean Martin instructing Joe Pesci to steal Burt Reynolds’s lie detector will never not be amusing.)

Rocky meets with all of the dead trainer’s clients and tricks them into hooking themselves up to the lie detector by telling them that it’s a instrument that will check their heart rate. Rocky discovers that any number of people could have wanted the trainer dead. However, those of us in the audience already knows that Cliff Gorman is the murderer because we witnessed Gorman gloating about it earlier in the episode. Rocky eventually figures it out as well and tricks Gorman into confessing by pretending to take one of the heart attack pills while driving Gorman around Beverly Hills.

Thanks to the visit to the studio lot and Dean Martin’s eccentric performance, this episode was an improvement on last week’s. That said, it still suffered from the fact that the murder itself wasn’t that interesting (with Gorman’s ruthless businessman not getting much characterization beyond being evil). Despite being second and third-billed in the opening credits, neither Victoria Jackson nor Fred Williamson got to do much in this episode and considering that both of those performers had their own unique and eccentric style, it feels like a bit of waste to just have them sitting in the office and uttering just a handful of lines per episode. The main appeal of the show continues to be Joe Pesci, who brings a lot of streetwise charm to Rocky. In the episodes that I’ve watched so far, Pesci is likable and engaging as Rocky and I think his performance would surprise a lot of people who are used to Pesci playing killers with hair-trigger tempers. Rocky is smart and tough but ultimately rather friendly. In his performance in Half Nelson, one can see hints of his later performance in The Irishman, I just wish the rest of this show was as consistently good.

Next week: Joe Pesci faces off against John Saxon! That sounds promising! We’ll see how it goes.