@DRW50 Thanks for sharing!
The NY Times Review of the show wasn’t kind lol:
PROBABLY the last thing prime-time television needs right now is another hospital-doctors show. Just about every emergency and heartwarming angle to be found on that particular scene is being exploited each week in NBC's ''St. Elsewhere,'' the kind of middlebrow soap opera that wins Emmy Awards (while virtually acing out ABC's ''Moonlighting,'' a far more original and offbeat romp). Nevertheless, CBS is bringing on, tonight at 10, ''Kay O'Brien,'' a series set in a New York hospital where everybody seems to speak in exclamations: ''We need more blood!'' ''C'mon, let's go!'' ''Do it!'' It is the practice of medicine seen as a football game.
But while the surgeon, Dr. Kay O'Brien, called Kayo and played by Patricia Kalember, labors over a hot operating table (''All right, that takes care of the small intestine, but I still don't know what to do about this colon''), she is intended to embody some of the more pressing feminist issues of the day. The key points are constantly being spelled out. Perhaps Dr. Moffitt (Lane Smith), one of the good guys, puts it best: ''There are 75 surgeons here. You gotta be better than any of them. It ain't right. It ain't fair. But that's the way it is.''
And, by golly, she is better than anybody else, even when sabotaged by the nasty Dr. Doyle (Brian Benben), who is determined to ruin Kayo's professional reputation and to keep all women out of surgery's top ranks. Fortunately, Dr. Doyle is so despicable that the rest of the hospital keeps rooting for Kayo. Meanwhile, however, after returning home from one of her 36-hour shifts, Dr. O'Brien discovers that her live-in boyfriend, Sam (Franc Luz), has taken the Mister Coffee and left her a note complaining that she simply didn't have any time for ''a relationship.''
Dr. O'Brien is upset. As she confides to her friend Rosa Villanueva (Priscilla Lopez), the head nurse in surgery, Kayo is 28 years old and not beyond feeling lonely. But, she adds, in another one of those getting-the-point lines: ''A man can have a career and a relationship - is it too much to ask for a woman?'' Back at the hospital, before the end of this first hour - directed by Richard Michaels, written by Bryce Zable and Brad Markowitz - Kayo turns the tables on Dr. Doyle, charms a young boy patient with magic tricks and gets a visit from her boyfriend, who has now decided that he would like to move back in.
But by this point, our hero - quoting her father to the effect that the only thing worse than fighting is being afraid to fight - is ready to walk off into the future proud and independent. The only thing that can stop her now are the ratings and scripts that aren't considerably more inspired than this one.
Ouch.
Obviously the initial lineup was an exercise in counter programming and it backfiring/tank jobs. The December 86 correction was even stranger but at least Knots was back in its usual timeslot.
I wonder where else on the schedule this show could have aired on the schedule. It feels much more fitting like it could have been paired with something like Cagney & Lacey but that would’ve messed up the Monday night schedule.
Perhaps just aired on Saturday nights? Couldn’t have hurt CBS already tumultuous Sat night lineup during the mid-late 80’s.
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soapfan770 ·
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