Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.7 “Legionnaires: Part Two”

Posted on January 10, 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!

This week, the hospital’s in chaos!

Episode 1.7 “Legionnaires: Part Two”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on December 14th, 1982)

With one of the wards shut down due to a Legionnaires outbreak, the hospital is in crisis. All of the patients from the infected ward and their doctors have been moved to a new floor and now, everyone is stressed and overworked. Dr. Westphall insists to the Hospital Board that he has no regrets about shutting down the ward and that he did what he had to do. Westphall is vindicated when it turns out that he was correct about the Legionnaires outbreak but he still has to admit that administrator H.J. Cummings (Christopher Guest) has a point about Westphall’s actions causing a panic. Cummings argues that Westphall could have quietly closed the ward without alerting the media. In the end, it doesn’t matter as Cummings explains that he’ll be the one who gets fired over the bad publicity, not Westphall. The episode ends with Westphall returning to his small home, carrying the birthday present that he was supposed to give his son that day. Westphall has dedicated his life to the hospital and it’s obvious that his family has often had to wait until he has time for them.

(I’m starting to understand why Westphall always seems so damn depressed.)

Some people take advantage of the chaos. Two gang members (one of whom is played by a very young Robert Davi) hit Fiscus over the head and steal his wallet after Fiscus stitches up one of their hands. Peter White, eager to get away from his troubled marriage, shows up to work Morrison’s shift for him. Dr. Chandler glares at a nurse that he previously accused of unprofessional behavior. Dr. Craig tries to find someone foolish enough to buy his old convertible from him. And head nurse Helen Rosenthal finds herself being called over and over again to the room of patient Martha Mulvahey (Ann Bronston).

Poor Martha! She has a reputation for being a problem patient, because she’s always calling for the nurses and asking them to do things for her, like wash her hair or raise her bed. Only Helen is willing to put up with Martha but even Helen loses her temper when Martha asks for help putting on her makeup. Finally, Martha breaks down and explains that her arthritis is so severe that she can barely move her hands. She’s a librarian and she can’t even turn the pages of a book anymore. (Excuse me, I think I have something in my eye….) A friend is coming to visit her at the hospital and she just wants to look good for him because she doesn’t want him to remember her as someone who can’t even get out of a hospital bed. Helen helps Martha put on her makeup. At the end of the episode, the hospital may be in chaos but Martha gets to see her friend and that made me happy and brought even more tears to my eyes.

Meanwhile, psychiatric patient Jane Zontell (Laraine Newman) returns to the hospital and checks herself back in for treatment. Dr. Beale (G.W. Bailey) is shocked to learn that Jane is three months pregnant. But it’s only been two months since Jane was last a patient at St. Eligius so that father must be someone at the hospital. Uh-oh.

(Personally, I suspect Fiscus.)

This was a good episode. I cried for Martha. I felt bad for Westphall. I hope someone buys Dr. Craig’s car so he’ll stop bothering everyone else about it. This episode was about how bad things can get at a hospital but, with Martha and Rosenthal, it offered up some hope as well. All in all, it worked.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

Posted on January 3, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

This week, Peter White continues to disappoint everyone.

Episode 1.6 “Legionnaires: Part One”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on December 7th, 1982)

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) is perhaps the most incompetent doctor at St. Eligius. Over the course of the first few episodes, we have watched as he’s taken advantage of his fellow residents, been rude to patients, misdiagnosed obvious medical conditions, and complained nonstop about how difficult his life is. Dr. White is struggling to balance the punishing schedule of being a resident with also being a husband and the father to a young girl and a newborn. He’s in over his head.

What’s interesting is that, despite all of his problems, he’s not a particularly sympathetic character and I don’t think he’s meant to be. He’s never going to be a good doctor and he doesn’t have the courage to admit it. Instead of finding a career for which he’s suited, he insists on being a doctor and risking the life of anyone unlucky enough to be his patient. What makes Dr. White an especially disturbing character is that there are probably a lot of doctors in the real world who are just like him. They’re overwhelmed and they make stupid mistakes. I get overwhelmed sometimes too, as does everyone. And, like everyone, I occasionally make mistakes. However, my mistakes usually amount to something like missing a cringey typo that causes me to feel embarrassment until I get a chance to fix it. A doctor’s mistake can lead to people dying.

This week, Dr. White attempts to give penicillin to a patient who is allergic. Fortunately, Dr. Westphall is able to stop White from putting his patient into a coma. Dr. White also manages to lose his hospital-issued pager and, when he’s told that it will cost him $300 to get a new one, he freaks out. A chance meeting with a lawyer in the hospital cafeteria leads White to offer to sell out the hospital by recommending the lawyer to anyone willing to sue because they ended up with a doctor like Peter White. White finally raises the money by donating his sperm. The nurse at the sperm bank says that it’s really generous for a doctor to donate. Not this doctor!

While Peter is screwing up his life, Dr. Westphall is dealing with what appears to be an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in one of the wards. Westphall wants to immediately shut down the ward. Dr. Auschlander and board member H.J. Cummings (Christopher Guest — yes, that Christopher Guest) disagree. However, after another young woman dies of what appears to be Legionnaire’s, Westphall orders the ward to be closed and the patients to be relocated.

Meanwhile, Kathy Martin broke up with Fiscus because she felt their fling was turning into a relationship and Dr. Cavanero dealt with a nurse who disliked her. Neither one of those subplots did much for me, though Kathy is emerging as one of my favorite characters on this show. Before breaking up with Fiscus, she goes to a funeral of a stranger just so he won’t be buried without someone there to mourn him. She wears white to the funeral. One doctor comments that she’s never seen Kathy wear white before. Kathy’s a great character and deserves better than just being Fiscus’s girlfriend.

This episode was an improvement over the last episode I watched. According to the title, it’s also only “Part One” so I imagine there will be some fallout over closing that ward next week. We’ll see what happens.

Retro Television Review: St. Elsewhere 1.1 “Pilot”

Posted on November 8, 2024 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 St. Elsewhere, a medical show which ran on NBC from 1982 to 1988. The show can be found on Hulu!

When I started reviewing Homicide, Jeff suggested that I should also review St. Elsewhere because the two shows shared a similar sensibility and a lot of behind-the-scenes personnel. (Homicide showrunner Tom Fontana started out as a writer on St. Elsewhere.) Apparently. a few characters from St. Elsewhere would eventually cross-over to Homicide. Since I’m planning on soon reviewing two shows that were descended from Homicide — Oz and The Wire — it only seemed right to also review a show that was Homicide’s ancestor.

Though the show aired largely before my time, St. Elsewhere is definitely a show that I have heard about. Everyone who follows American pop culture has either read about or seen the show’s infamous final episode and knows about the Tommy Westphall Universe Hypothesis. Obviously, I can’t get into it now because that would be a spoiler but we’ll discuss it when the time comes!

For now, let’s start at the beginning, with the pilot!

Episode 1.1 “Pilot”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on October 26th, 1982)

St. Eligius is a hospital in Boston that has obviously seen better days. From the outside, it looks old. On the inside, the hallways have the dim and dull look of a building that hasn’t been renovated in over ten years. As Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels, long before he played Mr. Feeney on Boy Meets World) angrily puts it, the hospital gets no respect in Boston. It’s seen as being a “dumping ground” for patients who can’t afford anything better. Dr. Craig is world-renowned heart surgeon whose wealthy patients have donated what few improvements the hospital has seen over the past few years. (“All of our clocks now read the same time!” Dr. Craig brags at one point.) But not even Dr. Craig can change the hospital’s reputation as being secondary to Boston General.

There are actually a few good things about St. Eligius. For one thing, a young Denzel Washington is on staff, playing resident Phillip Chandler. Denzel doesn’t get to do much in the pilot but still, his presence fills the viewer with confidence. St. Eligius is also home to a world-renowned liver specialist, Dr. Daniel Auschlander (played by Norman Lloyd, who also worked with Hitchcock and Orson Welles). Auschlander has liver cancer but the hospital chief-of-staff, Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders), assures everyone that Auschlander will probably “out live us all.” (And he was right, to an extent. Norman Lloyd lived to be 106 years old before passing away in 2021. Ed Flanders died, tragically by suicide, in 1995.) St. Eligius is a teaching hospital and the residents want to make a good impression by keeping their patients alive. That’s always a good thing.

At the same time, how secure can you feel when Howie Mandel is one of the residents? Mandel plays Dr. Wayne Fiscus, who wears a baseball cap and acts …. well, he acts a lot like Howie Mandel. Like Washington, Mandel doesn’t do a lot in the pilot. He does get a subplot where he apparently has sex in the morgue with goth pathologist Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery) but otherwise, we don’t see him treating a patient or anything like that. Still, it’s a bit jarring to see Howie Mandel as a doctor. I would not necessarily want him for my doctor because he’s to be easily distracted. Maybe he’ll change my mind as the series progresses.

Speaking of sex, Dr. Ben Samuels (David Birney) has gonorrhea and spends most of the pilot approaching doctors and nurses and informing them of his conditions and suggesting that they might want to get tested themselves. That’s not exactly the best way to be introduced to a character but it also lets us know that this show is not just going to be about dedicated doctors who spend all of their time worrying about their patients and making amazing medical discoveries. Instead, this show is also about doctors who get venereal diseases. Has anyone checked on Fiscus in the morgue?

(That said, Dr. Samuels does get a scene where he saves the life of a woman who was injured in a terrorist bombing, as if the show does want to make sure that we know that he can do his job, even if he is spreading VD through the hospital.)

The majority of the episode follows Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse), a first-year resident who has been working several 24-hour shifts and who complains, at one point, that he hasn’t seen his wife for days. Dr. Morrison gets upset when a surgeon wants to operate on one of his patients, a 15 year-old girl named Sandy (Heather McAdams). Morrison believes that surgeons always want to cut into somebody. Morrison gets even more upset when Sandy’s mother requests that Sandy be transferred to Boston General, which has a reputation for being a better, more modern hospital. In fact, Morrison is so upset and exhausted that he forgets to file a death certificate for a patient who dies during the night. As a result, it’s believed that the patient, who has a reputation for being violent, has gone missing and is stalking the hospital. Dr. Annie Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes) spends the entire episode looking for a dead man, which at least gives her an excuse to visit every ward and introduce the viewers to the members of the show’s ensemble cast.

Having lost my mom to cancer and now my Dad to Parkinson’s, I was hesitant about reviewing St. Elsewhere. (Actually, I was hesitant about reviewing any medical show.) When my Dad was in the hospital, I felt like I couldn’t get anyone to give me a straight answer about his condition and I often felt the doctors were talking down to me. To be honest, my worst conflicts were with the nurses, one of whom told me that I would have to “lose the attitude” before she would explain why my father had been moved to the Delirium Ward. (It didn’t help that, at the same time my Dad was in the hospital, there was a huge storm that left us without power for a week.) At the same time, there were other doctors who were helpful. The staff at the rehab center that my dad was sent to were also wonderful. I have my regrets about agreeing to hospice care but the nurse who was assigned to my Dad was very empathetic and totally understanding whenever I asked her for a cigarette. (Under normal circumstances, I don’t smoke because I have asthma but seriously, the stress was killing me.) I’m bitter and angry about a lot of what happened but I’m also thankful for the small moments of kindness.

Watching a show set in a hospital was not easy for me but the pilot of St. Elsewhere appealed to me with its mix of melodrama and humor. There was a quirkiness to it that I appreciated. William Daniels made me laugh with his annoyed rant about how little respect the hospital received. Most of all, I cared about whether or not Dr. Morrison would still be alive at the end of his shift. David Morse’s performance won me over. He’s the type of doctor that I would want to have. Well, actually, I’d probably want Denzel to my doctor but Dr, Morrison could assist. Just keep Dr. Howie Mandel away from me. Nothing against him but he seemed to be having way too much fun at the hospital….

Most importantly, the show ended with a cat.

Next week, the drama continues at St. Elsewhere!

A Movie A Day #95: The Return of Josey Wales (1986, directed by Michael Parks)

Posted on April 12, 2017 by Jedadiah Leland

Four years before he played Jean Reanult on Twin Peaks, actor Michael Parks starred in and made his directorial debut with the obscure western, The Return of Josey Wales.

As is obvious from the title, The Return of Josey Wales is a sequel to the iconic Clint Eastwood western, The Outlaw Josey Wales. In fact, The Return of Josey Wales was based on a novel that author Forrest Carter wrote after the initial success of Eastwood’s film. Originally, Clint himself was going to direct and star in the sequel. However, Eastwood withdrew from the project and it would be years before The Return of Josey Wales would eventually be made with a miniscule budget and given a very limited theatrical release. By the time the film was released, it had long since been discovered that Forrest Carter, who had always portrayed himself as being a Cherokee shaman-turned-writer, was actually Asa Earl Carter, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan who had previously worked as a speech writer for arch segregationist, George Wallace.

Along with taking over from Eastwood as the film’s director, Michael Parks also took over the role of Josey Wales. Having faked his death, Josey is now living on a small farm in Texas and going out of his way not to draw attention to himself. One day, a man named Paco (Paco Vela) shows up and tells Josey that a corrupt Mexican policeman has killed one of Josey’s friends and locked another one up in prison. It’s time for Josey to say goodbye to his new wife, jump on a horse, and head down to Mexico.

The Return of Josey Wales never escapes the shadow of The Outlaw Josey Wales, even though the two films have little in common. As a director, Michael Parks is no Clint Eastwood and his reliance on stock footage reveals how little of a budget he had to work with. As an actor, Parks gives a totally different performance from Clint Eastwood’s. Clint’s Josey Wales was hardened and embittered by his experiences. Michael Parks plays Josey more as an underestimated hick who is not afraid to use a gun if he has to. There is a lot of Earl McGraw in this version of Josey Wales. That does not mean that Michael Parks gives a bad performance. In fact, his performance is the best thing in the film.

The Return of Josey Wales is for Western completists only.

(This review originally stated that Eastwood left the project after it was revealed that Forrest Carter was Asa Carter. According to Dan T. Carter’s comment below, Eastwood actually left the sequel long before Forrest Carter’s actual identity was revealed.)

Back to School #3: Blackboard Jungle (dir by Richard Brooks)

Posted on August 23, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA0_NRjx9KQ

You really can’t write about high school films without writing about 1955’s Blackboard Jungle. While the film is often cited as being the first movie to feature a rock song on its soundtrack (Bill Haley’s Rock Around The Clock is played at the opening and the end of the film), Blackboard Jungle should also be remembered for being one of the first and most influential examples of the dedicated-teacher-in-the-inner-city film genre.

Blackboard Jungle tells the story of Richard Dadier (Glenn Ford), a newly hired teacher at an inner city high school. As soon as he arrives for his first day at work, he meets his co-workers. Josh Edwards (Richard Kiley) is another new teacher and is convinced that he can reach the students by talking to them about his valuable collection of jazz records. Mr. Murdock (Louis Calhern) is a burned out old cynic who believes that none of the students at the school have a future. As Dadier quickly discovers, most of his fellow teachers have more in common with Murdock than with either him or Josh.

At first, Dadier struggles to reach his students, the majority of whom don’t see why they should waste their time in English class. The head troublemaker, psychotic Artie West (Vic Morrow) sees the new teacher as being a rival and Dadier’s attempts to reach another student, Gregory Miller (Sidney Poitier), are made difficult by the racial animosity that dominates the entire high school. Soon, Dadier is being targeted by his students and his pregnant wife (Anne Francis) starts to receive anonymous letters that imply that Dadier is having an affair. It all leads to a violent classroom confrontation in which Dadier’s students are finally forced to pick a side in the battle between the forces of education and the forces of chaos. (If that sounds melodramatic — well, it is kinda.)

It’s a little bit difficult to judge a film like Blackboard Jungle today. We have seen so many movies about idealistic young teachers trying to make a difference in the inner city that it’s pretty easy to guess most of what is going to happen here. In order to appreciate Blackboard Jungle, it’s necessary to understand that the only reason why it occasionally seems predictable is because it’s such an incredibly influential film. And there are still moments in Blackboard Jungle that can take the viewer by surprise. The scene in which Ford lists off all of the racial slurs that he doesn’t want to hear is just one example. It’s hard to imagine that scene appearing in a movie made today. (If it did, it would probably be played for laughs.)

That said, the performances in the film hold up surprisingly well. Glenn Ford is a compelling hero and he and Anne Francis make for a likable couple. Despite being 28 years old and having already played several adult roles, Sidney Poitier is a convincing high school student and, not surprisingly, he makes for a convincing leader. However, for me, the film was dominated by Vic Morrow.

As played by Morrow, Artie Turner is a truly frightening villain. In previous films about juvenile delinquency, the emphasis was always put on why the delinquent went bad and usually, the blame was put not on the teenager but instead on the environment around him. He had bad parents or maybe he listened to too much jazz but, ultimately, he was not lost. He was merely damaged. However, Artie Turner has no convenient excuses for his behavior. His parents go unmentioned. When he’s exposed to jazz, he responds by breaking all of Mr. Edwards’ records. Among all of Dadier’s students, Artie is unique in that he cannot be reached. He’s a force of pure destruction and ultimately, Dadier’s success as a teacher depends less on reaching Artie and more on convincing his other students to reject Artie as a role model.

Blackboard Jungle may be a film that feels very familiar but it’s still one worth watching.