Tag Archives: Terrence Knox

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

Posted on 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 1.2 “Bypass”

Posted on 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!

This week, William Daniels claims the show as his own.

Episode 1.2 “Bypass”

(Dir by Thomas Carter, originally aired on November 9th, 1982)

“Hey, it’s Tim Robbins!”

Yes, the future Oscar winner shows up in the second episode of St. Elsewhere, playing a rich kid-turned-terrorist named Andrew Reinhardt.  Reinhardt, who no doubt learned all about Marxism during his first semester away at college, set off a bomb in a bank, killing two people and putting a woman named Kathleen McCallister into a coma.  Both Reihnhardt and McCallister have been brought to St. Eligius.  While Kathleen’s husband, Stephen (Jack Bannon), sobs in the hallway, Reinhardt acts like a petulant brat in his hospital room.

With the nurses refusing to change his sheets or even give him his morphine shots, it falls to Dr. Morrison to take care of him.  Reinhardt is not at all appreciative and Morrison finds himself conflicted.  How is he supposed to give proper medical treatment to someone who he despises?  Morrison is so conflicted that he even goes to Dr. Westphall.  Westphall responds by telling a long story about a time that he fell in love with a patient.  I’m getting the feeling that Morrison feeling conflicted and Westphall telling long stories are both going to be regular features on this show.

(The correct answer to Morrison’s question about how he can take care of a bad person is as follows: It’s your job and you’re getting paid to do it.)

This episode also gave the viewer a chance to get to know Dr. Craig, the very talented but very egotistical head of surgery who is played by the great William Daniels.  Dr. Craig holds a press conference to inform reporters about the conditions of both Reinhardt and Kathleen McCallister and declares that, despite its bad reputation, “St. Eligius is the place to be!”  He then proceeds to get angry when the press is more interested in talking to the surgeon who actually saved Kathleen’s life than to him.

Dr. Craig browbeats a Mr. Broadwater (Robert Costanzo) into getting bypass surgery done.  The surgery appears to have been a success but it’s hard to ignore that Craig essentially bullied the guy into getting a major operation, one that could have killed him if the least little thing had gone wrong.  Resident Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) assists in the operation and, at one point, Dr. Craig intentionally head butts him when Ehrlich cannot name all of the arteries leading into the heart.  It’s a bit aggressive but, on the plus side, Ehrlich does learn all of the names.  Afterwards, Dr. Craig brags about how his own son is following in his footsteps and tells Mr. Broadwater’s son that some day, a new Dr. Craig will operate on him.  In other words, Dr. Craig is kind of a jerk but he’s good at what he does and he’s played by William Daniels so it’s hard to hold anything against him.

There were other subplots playing out in the background, the majority of which just seemed to be there to remind us that St. Elsewhere is an ensemble show and that, just because someone isn’t a major character in this episode, that doesn’t mean they won’t be important later on.  Psychiatrist Hugh Beale (G.W. Bailey) attempted to learn how to swim and ended up taking a class with a bunch of children.  Dr. Fiscus (Howie Mandel, the least convincing doctor ever) held court in the cafeteria and claimed that the hormones used in processing food were causing children to develop earlier than ever before.  Dr. Peter White (Terrence Knox) wandered around with a bunch of X-rays and begged everyone he met to help him understand what he was (or wasn’t) seeing.  If nothing else, this episode did a good job of capturing the idea of the hospital as being a place that’s always busy.

For the most part, though, it was Dr. Craig who carried this episode.  While Morrison and Westphall ponderously considered the implications of doing their jobs, Craig was an arrogant, angry, and brilliant dynamo and William Daniels’s high-energy performance was a pleasure to watch.  Whenever the episode started to slow down, Dr. Craig would liven things up by yelling at someone.  The hospital was lucky to have Dr. Craig and St. Elsewhere was lucky to have William Daniels.

Retro Television Review: City Killer (dir by Robert Michael Lewis)

Posted on 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 Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay.  Today’s film is 1984’s City Killer.  It  can be viewed on YouTube!

Leo Kalb (Terrence Knox) has come to Chicago.  In many ways, Leo would appear to have a lot going for him.  He’s intelligent.  He’s reasonably good looking.  He served honorably in the military.  Despite his intelligence, he comes across as being a bit of an innocent in the big city.  He’s got a good job, working as an electrician.  It might not be glamorous work but there’s always something appealing about a man who knows how to work with his hands.

Unfortunately, all of those appealing qualities are negated by the fact that Leo’s a loon.  The main reason he’s come to Chicago is to stalk Andrea McKnight (Heather Locklear).  The main reason that Andrea moved to Chicago was to get away from Leo.  Like Leo, Andrea has found some success in Chicago but that’s all turned upside down when Leo calls her and says that he wants to get back together.  Andrea doesn’t want anything to do with Leo so Leo starts blowing up buildings.

That’s right, he starts blowing up buildings.  He also announces that he wants the city of Chicago to pay him an exorbitant amount of money.  He wants a helicopter to fly him to the airport.  He wants to take an airplane to South America, where his bomb-building skills will presumably be put to good use by the The Shining Path.  And he wants Andrea to come with him.  As become clear, the money and the plane are really just red herrings.  Mostly, he just wants Andrea.  The press calls him the Love Bomber.

Lt. Eckford (Gerald McRaney) is assigned to try to negotiate with Leo and also to keep an eye on Andrea.  Needless to say, Andrea takes one look at Lt. Eckford’s powerful mustache and she starts to fall in love with him.  Eckford, meanwhile, starts to fall Andrea, even though he’s a bit older than her and there’s a paternal element to the way that he talks to her that just makes the whole thing feel kind of icky.  (That said, if a mad bomber is blowing up the city just because you won’t date him, it’s perhaps understandable that you would fall for the first person who could not only provide protection but who also didn’t try to make you feel guilty about what was going on.)  Leo senses that Andrea and Eckford are falling in love and he becomes determined to blow up even more stuff.

City Killer is a bit of ridiculous film.  The main problem is that the viewer is asked to believe that, even though Leo is the most wanted man in Chicago and is dominating all the headlines, he could still safely wander around the city and wire building to explode without anyone noticing.  The film presents itself as being a police procedural but one gets the feeling that police must be incredibly incompetent for Leo to successfully blow up so many buildings.  That said, Gerald McRaney is a properly sturdy hero and Terrence Knox is convincingly unhinged as Leo, begging Andrea to love him even while threatening to blow up the very building on which she’s standing.  Heather Locklear doesn’t got to do much, other than answer the phone and look upset whenever a building explodes, but she does it well.  As a veteran TV actress, she knew how to embrace the melodrama and, when you’re appearing in a film like City Killer, that’s the best thing you can do.