Thomas Hill | 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 Hulu!

This week, we get to know a very bad doctor.

Episode 1.3 “Down’s Syndrome”

(Dir by Mark Tinker, originally aired on November 16th, 1982)

St. Eligius is home to several doctors, some of whom are good at their job and some of whom are really, really bad.

One of the bad ones appears to be Dr. Peter White (Terrence Knox), a resident who was in the background during the previous two episodes but who was at the center for a good deal of this episode. Peter has a terrible bedside manner, absolutely no social skills, and his knowledge of medicine appears to be subpar at best. When a homeless man comes in and complains of pain, Peter gives him a dose of potassium that nearly kills him. (Only the quick thinking of Dr. Ehrlich — who himself hardly appears to be the perfect doctor — keeps the patient alive.) Dr. White seems to be overwhelmed and it certainly doesn’t help that his wife is constantly calling the hospital and demanding to speak to him about every little thing. That said, it’s hard to have much sympathy for Dr. White. Yes, he’s overwhelmed but his mistakes nearly kill a man.

I have to admit that, as I watched Dr. Peter White on this week’s episode, I kept thinking about some of the doctors who treated my father after he had his car accident in May. Whenever I spoke to them, they would brusquely answer my questions, usually in technical language that reflected that it had been a long time since they talked anyone who hadn’t gone to medical school. At the time, I made the same excuses for them that I just made for Dr. White. They were young, they were busy, and they were overwhelmed. After my father died, though, I stopped making excuses for them and I instead just accepted that they weren’t very good at their job. And perhaps Dr. White should admit the same.

It doesn’t help that Dr. White is contrasted with Dr. Auschlander, a kind and elderly liver specialist who is battling cancer but who still manages to treat all of his patients with kindness and respect. The episode made it clear that all of the residents should hope to become a doctor like Dr. Auschlander. While Peter snaps at his patients and nearly kills a man, Auschlander takes the time to play cards with a woman who is dying. We should all be so lucky as to have an Auschlander in our life.

Finally, Brian Whitehill (Tony Bill) and his pregnant wife, Denise (Maureen Whitehill) are informed that their baby will be born with Down’s Syndrome. In a scene that brings to mind Icelandic eugenics, Brian suggests that Denise get an abortion but Denise refuses, especially when she learns that she’s going to have a son. (She already has two daughters.) A day later, Brian comes home from work and tells Denise that he’s realized that she’s right and he’s prepared to be the father of a special needs child. Denise replies that she had the abortion earlier in the day. Seriously, what a depressing story! That said, I respected what the show was doing here. The patients are just as important as the doctors.

(And while Denise is getting an abortion, Dr. Morrison is learning that he’s going to be a father and, in contrast to Brian Whitehill, joyfully cheering in the hospital stairwell.)

As with the previous episode, there was a lot going on in the background. Dr. Beale attempted to analyze terrorist Andrew Reinhardt (Tim Robbins), who is still basically acting like an arrogant prick. Kathleen McAllister, the victim of Reinhardt’s attack, is still in a coma. Dr. Westphall gave a tour of the hospital to two community leaders who both suggested that St. Eligius should shut down and move its operations to a wealthier neighborhood. Dr. Fiscus got a blow job in an elevator from Kathy Martin. (“Going down?” Fiscus asked the next guy who got on the elevator.) It was a busy day at the hospital! It was a good episode, even if it didn’t really have any of the big wow moments that the previous two episodes featured. This episode was more about following a few days in the life of a hospital and the emphasis was on the nonstop flow of patients and doctors, some of whom were doing their best and some of whom were on the verge of giving up. In the end, the main thing I took away from this episode was that there may not be enough Aucschlanders to make up for all the Peter Whites.

(Lisa recently discovered that she only has about 8 hours of space left on her DVR! It turns out that she’s been recording movies from July and she just hasn’t gotten around to watching and reviewing them yet. So, once again, Lisa is cleaning out her DVR! She is going to try to watch and review 52 movies by Wednesday, November 30th! Will she make it? Keep checking the site to find out!)

The 1979 post-apocalyptic film Quintet aired on FXM on November 15th. I recorded it because this film is often cited as being one of director Robert Altman’s worst but I’ve also read some very passionate defenses of Quintet. Since I’ve enjoyed several of Altman’s films (Nashville, Gosford Park, Short Cuts, The Company, The Player, The Long Goodbye, and many more), I wanted to experience Quintet for myself.

I mean, seriously — a postapocalyptic sci-fi film from Robert Altman!? That would have to be at least interesting, right?

Anyway, I watched Quintet and to be honest, I wasn’t really sure what the Hell was going on for most of the film. Things made a bit more sense after I did a little bit of research and I discovered that Quintet was 1) inspired by a fragment of a dream that Altman had and 2) went into production despite not having a completed script.

Quintet opens with a breath-taking shot of a frozen landscape. There’s been a new ice age. The entire Earth is frozen. There’s only a few hundred humans left and their number is rapidly dwindling. Some, like Essex (Paul Newman) and Vivia (Brigitte Fossey) spend their days hiking across the tundra and hunting seals. Others — like practically everyone else in the entire freaking film — spend their times in ramshackle villages, pursuing what little pleasure they can find while waiting to die.

In this new frozen world, the most popular activity — outside of getting drunk — is playing a board game called Quintet. I have no idea how Quintet is played, though the film is full of scenes of people playing it. From what we do see, it really doesn’t look like that fun of a game but I guess you can’t be picky when you’re waiting to freeze to death. I mean, honestly, if the world’s ending, I’d rather play a board game than charades.

Anyway, in one of the frozen towns, a group of people are having a Quintet tournament, with the rule being that, once you’re eliminated in the board game, you are also killed in real life. (And again, this is where it would have been helpful for the film to take just a few minutes to clarify just how exactly Quintet is played.) One of the Quintet players is killed by a bomb, which unfortunately blows up Viva as well. Seeking revenge (or, at least, I’m guessing that was his motivation because Paul Newman didn’t exactly give the most communicative performance of his career in Quintet), Essex assumes a fake identity and enters the tournament.

Soon, he’s running around the frozen landscape, killing people. He knows that the final player standing will receive a prize of some sort but he doesn’t know what the prize is. How deep! Or something.

Dammit, I really wanted to defend Quintet. I really did. Whenever I see a movie that has gotten almost universally negative reviews, my natural instinct is to try to find something good about it. And I will say this: visually, Quintet is fascinating. A lot of care was put into creating this frozen world and it’s interesting to note how every location is decorated by elaborate ice sculptors. The ice may be destroying civilization but it can’t squelch humanity’s natural creativity.

Unfortunately, Quintet may be well-designed but it’s also a painfully slow film. Just because the film takes place on a glacier, that doesn’t mean that it needs to move like one. The slow pace is not helped by the fact that many of the characters have a tendency to suddenly start delivering these faux profound philosophical monologues, the majority of which are about as deep as the typical Tumblr post.

Quintet stars Paul Newman, who was both an iconic movie star and a legitimately great actor. He spends most of Quintet alternating between looking confused and looking stoic. That said, it’s always interesting to watch an actor like Paul Newman slog his way through an artistic misfire like WUSA or Quintet. Let’s give Paul Newman some credit: he delivered his lines with a straight face. Just as Essex knew he was trapped on a glacier, Paul Newman understood that was trapped in Quintet. Both did what they had to do to survive.

Robert Altman was a great director but Quintet is not a great film.

It happens.