Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 2.17 “Vanity”

Posted on September 26, 2025 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 Hulu and, for purchase, on Prime!

This week’s episode was available on neither Hulu nor Prime. I had to watch a really terrible upload that I found on Daily Motion. Bleh.

Episode 2.17 “Vanity”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on March 7th, 1984)

I was relieved to see that this episode featured Kathy Martin returning to the hospital. I was seriously worried that Peter White had killed her. With Peter in jail for attacking Wendy Armstrong, Kathy doesn’t tell anyone that Peter raped her. From the minute we first see her, it’s clear that Kathy is suffering from severe PTSD. As a character, Kathy Martin was not always treated well by this show. During the first season, she was often portrayed as being a caricature, the quirky pathologist who liked to have sex in strange places. This episode finally allowed Kathy to emerge as a fully-developed character and Barbara Whinnery gave a strong performance in the role.

Peter is in jail. Despite Wendy’s anger, Dr. Morrison regularly visits him. Morrison says that Peter is obviously sick and needs help but, at the same time, he hasn’t accepted that Peter is also the Ski Mask Rapist. (Peter wasn’t wearing his mask when he attacked Wendy.) As for Peter, he continues to feel sorry for himself.

Dr. Craig is upset when he receives a cop of the documentary about him and he discovers that he comes across like an arrogant martinet. Dr. Craig threatens to sue the director (played, again, by Michael Richards) though one gets the feeling that Craig is mainly angry because he knows the documentary is true.

Nurse Rosenthal gets reconstructive breast surgery. Joseph, the construction worker who has been having attacks of blindness, is successfully operated on. Sometimes, things work out well at the hospital. Not often, but sometimes.

Finally. Mr. Entertainment (Austin Pendleton) returns, singing to patients and upsetting his supervisor. (Mr. Entertainment now works as a janitor at the hospital.) To be honest, the majority of this episode was devoted to Mr. Entertainment and it was a bit too much. Austin Pendleton is a good actor but Mr. Entertainment is such a cartoonish character that I mentally checked out of his story.

This was an odd episode. There was a lot to work but it was almost all overshadowed by Mr. Entertainment. Sometimes, you can tell a writer has fallen so in love with a minor character that they’ve forgotten about what the audience is actually interested in. The episode felt like an example of that.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 2.14 “Drama Center”

Posted on September 5, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, things get depressing.

Episode 2.14 “Drama Center”

(Dir by David Anspaugh, originally aired on February 15th, 1984)

This week’s episode opens with a disturbing scene in which a woman, trying to get her car to start on a snowy night, is attacked and raped in the parking lot of St. Eligius. The rapist is wearing a green jacket and a ski mask.

At first, I assumed that the rapist was a random lowlife, someone who would likely never be seen again. But then Dr. Cavanero’s wealthy boyfriend tried to force himself on her and I was left wondering if maybe he would be revealed as the man in the ski mask. However, towards the end of the episode, there was scene featuring Dr. Peter White. Having been banned from working in the ER and from prescribing medicine, White is now working in the morgue and, needless to say, he spends this entire episode bitching about it. As the episode ends, we see that Peter is holding a capsule in his hand, suggesting that he is once again abusing drugs. However, I also noticed that Peter was wearing the same green jacket as the man in the ski mask!

This was a good episode, well-written and well-acted. It was also pretty depressing. Dr. Westphall brings his severely autistic, noncommunicative son Tommy (Chad Allen) to St. Eligius so that Dr. Ridley can examine him. Dr. Ridley warns Westphall that Tommy is aggressive and that Westphall might not be able to continue to care for him at home, despite the fact that Westphall’s daughter (Dana Short) is planning on forgoing her dream college to stick around and help. Westphall ends his day reading Tommy a book (“Your mom bought you this book.”) and breaking down into tears and it made me cry a little too.

Meanwhile, a TV crew followed around Dr. Craig for a documentary. Needless to say, they got in the way and they got on Craig’s nerves. The director was played by Michael Richards, who, of course, is best-known for playing Kramer on Seinfeld and then having a racist meltdown when he got heckled at a comedy club. In an episode that was, emotionally, pretty dark, it was almost a relief to get some scenes of Dr. Craig losing his temper with the documentary crew. As someone who knows William Daniels best as the kindly Mr. Feeney from countless Boy Meets World reruns, it’s been a real pleasure to Daniels as the prickly and arrogant Dr. Craig. Dr. Craig wouldn’t have had much use for the Matthews clan and all of their drama.

This was an intense and sad episode. It was St. Elsewhere at its most emotional.

Retro Television Review: Miami Vice 2.19 “The Fix”

Posted on July 8, 2024 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 Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!

This week, Crockett and Tubbs discover a judge may be taking bribes.

Episode 2.19 “The Fix”

(Dir by Dick Miller, originally aired on March 7th, 1986)

Roger Ferguson (Bill Russell) is a powerful man in Miami. A former basketball player turned lawyer, Ferguson could have been elected mayor but instead, he chose to take an appointment to the bench. In his art deco courtroom, Judge Ferguson hands down sentences and sets bail. In fact, sometimes, he sets bail at a surprisingly low amount. After a drug lord is released on a $5,000 bond and immediately catches a plane for Colombia, Crockett and Tubbs come to suspect that the Judge might be taking bribes.

And he is! Judge Ferguson has a gambling problem and a corrupt lawyer named Benedict (Harvey Fierstein, clean-shaved but recognizable from the minute he starts to speak) is taking advantage of that fact. In fact, Ferguson is so in debt that he’s had to borrow from a notorious loan shark named Pagone (Michael Richards — yes, the future Kramer from Seinfeld). Pagone is now demanding that the judge convince his son, a basketball player named Matt (Bernard King), to throw his next game.

There were some good things about this episode. It was directed by Dick Miller and yes, that is the same Dick Miller who, as a character actor, appeared in countless Roger Corman films. As a director, Miller had a good sense of style. The opening sequence, where the Vice Squad arrests a drug lord at an aviary, is genuinely exciting and well-done. There was also some moments of genuine humor, largely supplied by the contrast between Crockett’s intensity and Tubbs’s laid-back cool.

The problem is with the casting, some of which is not entirely the show’s fault. In 1986, no one knew that casting Harvey Fierstein and Michael Richards as ruthless villains would come across as being unintentionally humorous in 2024. Richards does not give a bad performance as Pagone but, whenever he threatens the judge, he sounds just like Kramer demanding the day off for Festivus. As for Bill Russell and Bernard King, I looked them up on Wikipedia after watching the show and I was not surprised to discover that they were both actual basketball players. Both of them gave earnest performances but it was easy to see that neither one of them was a natural or a trained actor. It wasn’t quite as bad as when actual basketball players used to show up on Hang Time but still, they definitely seemed to be struggling to keep up with the veteran actors in the cast.

This is yet another episode that ends with Crockett staring in horror as someone is shot on a yacht. (In this case, it’s Judge Ferguson committing suicide after killing Pagone.) Seriously, what was the yacht budget for this show?