St. Elsewhere

[Khan]

Was Peter White, played by Terence Knox, really the serial rapist that terrorized St. Eligius? That's a question I've always asked myself in regards to "St. Elsewhere." I know he raped Cathy the first time, because she managed to take off his ski-mask. However, I always had the impression that there was another rapist, that Peter exploited that by raping Cathy using the rapist's m.o, and that Cathy would end up being raped by him and the real serial rapist.

But you know what I loved most about "St. Elsewhere"? It was a show that was never, ever afraid to juggle almost screwball humor with dark melodrama -- and often within the same scene. I miss it.

[DRW50]

I think Craig might have been bigoted. I can't totally remember, as this was never a major story on the show. Craig was hostile to everyone in many forms - there were two people who worked for him that he had closer relationships with; Jackie Wade (as he saw her as utterly professional) and Ed Begley Jr's character, Victor Ehrlich (who was a brown-nosing, fickle screw-up but had great raw skill and who very slowly became an expert surgeon and an honorary son to Craig, who always saw his own son as a failure, which helped lead said son to get hooked on drugs, finally dying in a car accident with a wife and child on the way).

Ehrlich was the other "comic" character on the show - he had more serious stories than Fiscus, but not many. We saw Ehrlich have endless money, woman, roommate, and car squabbles with Fiscus, get involved in a disastrous marriage to a neurotic heiress (the wonderful Jean Bruce Scott), grow as a surgeon, debate on whether to choose helping people or getting big money, and my favorite story, finding true love from a drunken one-night stand with the hospital's harshest nurse, Lucy Papandrao. St. Elsewhere was all over the place but the character arcs for Ehrlich and Fiscus were first-rate.

The third "happy" character was Luther, played by the very talented Eric Laneouville, who moved mostly to directing in the 90s. He started out as an orderly, and while he had his share of losses, we saw him learn to become a paramedic, become very close to Mark and Ellen Craig, and settle down with a nursing student played by Stacey Dash (who looks about the same now as she did then). Luther also had a very interesting, rarely touched on (for primetime TV) story where he and Phil (Denzel Washington) clashed over a woman and Phil essentially said he was the superior type of black person, educated, etc. This was something they touched on more than once with Phil - in another episode he was angry because when he tried to help a black woman who ran an apartment building, she dismissed him as being bourgeois, and uncaring.

Wendy Armstrong was mostly a plot point, unfortunately. Early on the show was very committed to diversity, casting Asian, Indian, black actors, and trying to write a full slate of stories. After the first season this was phased out, and Wendy was a casualty. As much as I love St. Elsewhere, the show was for the bulk of its life written and produced by Tom Fontana and John Masius, who struggled heavily to write for female characters. The show had an interesting slate of female doctors and nurses in the first season. By the start of the fourth season, through death, rape, and madness, they were all gone, aside from Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles), Jackie Wade, and Craig's wife, Ellen, who had gone from being a brittle, funny woman who called her husband out on his crap to being an endlessly neurotic, weeping, shrieking irritant. The show had to very quickly beef up Lucy Papandrao's role (which was great, as I loved her, but it really shouldn't have been necessary), and bring in Alfre Woodard and Cindy Pickett to varying degrees of success.

Anyway, Wendy did have one really good story which did not lead up to her death, an episode in the first season. She was convinced that a highly respected surgeon was putting pacemakers in people who did not need them, to get kickbacks. Craig shut her down for questioning someone who was so superior, but she refused to give up. Finally he was busted, and Craig admitted to her that she had done a good job. I'll never forget the last scene - she was so happy, she jumped up in the air, and they did a freeze frame.

Is the show better than ER or Chicago Hope? I never watched Chicago Hope, aside from one or two near the end. I would say yes, better than ER, because ER began taking itself far too seriously and became too addicted to misery. St. Elsewhere was like life - there were laughs in the darkness. St. Elsewhere also had a weird energy I can't quite explain. You have to sit and watch episodes to feel the flow and the off-center pacing that draws you in. This energy is best showcased through the Peter White arc of the first three seasons, a flawed man who becomes a monster and veers back and forth and back and forth and you never know how to react and you feel like you've been punched in the stomach.

Jack suffered a hell of a lot, yes. He became a widower a few months after welcoming a baby boy. He had constant guilt and torment at the hospital, as he always cared way too much about his patients and all but followed them home. He learned his medical degree was invalid. His very best friend was Peter White, who depended on him heavily for emotional and at times financial support. He was devastated to learn Peter had raped multiple women at the hospital. By the time Peter began to turn his life around, he was gunned down, and haunted Jack in his dreams. I think he was hooked on pills at one time (I might be making that up). He was hit over the head. He was raped. He married a woman (Patricia Wettig) he had no real connection to, because he thought this would "heal" him - after a while she realized this was a mistake and went back to her former husband. His rapist was obsessed with him, finally being gunned down by Jack's son, who fired a "toy" gun at him, not realizing the gun was real, one Jack had brought for protection. The last season was relatively drama-free, by his standards, so there's that.

I think the show is a little too serial-oriented to be a big DVD seller, unfortunately.

From what I remember, Peter was the serial rapist the first time around. When another man began raping women a year later, Peter was assumed to be the rapist, but actually wasn't.

You're right about the light and the dark. That's what made the show seem so true to life and so addictive. You CARED. You never felt like you were watching cutouts stabbed with scissors. Sometimes this didn't work (remember Helen's annoying daughter coming back in a fat suit), but when it did, it was brilliant (my favorite was the corpse-stealing plot in season 5).

[Khan]

Nowadays, if this were a daytime show, Jack and his rapist would be a HUGE supercouple.

Remember when Helen turned out to be harboring a drug addiction that was causing her to kill patients accidentally? For me, that was a semi-low point in the series' history.

Favorite moment: when Shirley Daniels shot Peter White dead (with two bullets -- one in the heart, the other in the...well...you know). "Code blue in the morgue": to this day, those words haunt me.

[DRW50]

You know how pathetic I am? Every time I hear "Up on the Roof", I think of Shirley on the rooftop after she was revealed as Peter's shooter (that was the name of her last episode).

Honestly as wonderful as Christina Pickles was, Helen had some bad stories, from her first season marriage woes (which for some reason angered me), to the brats, to the semi-campy drug addiction where she freaked out over surveillance cameras. I did like the rehab episode, with Penny Fuller (who must have impressed someone in daytime as she was hired for the exact same role on AMC during Erica's Betty Ford arc). I think her best story was her relationship with the Herb Edelman character. And I liked the story where she wanted to work in the ER, only to eventually realize she just couldn't deal with it.

[DRW50]

If anyone ever gets a chance to watch individual episodes, if they're on sale at Amazon or whatever, these are the individual episodes I'd recommend:

"The Women" (I think this was the title) - this focused on three patients, Eva la Galienne, Blythe Danner, and someone else. la Galienne was playing a tough but loveable old woman. Danner was a flighty Southern actress getting plastic surgery, who was unpeeled psychologically layer by layer as the episode continued.

The season 3 episode about dream therapy. This episode is everything about the 80s, especially the mid-80s. No TV show gives that vibe stronger, aside from some Hitchhiker episodes. Luther had a crazy dream where ZZ Top run around the hospital. Jack has a terrifying bright white light schizo dream, where he wanders around the empty ER barefoot, until he finally "reunites" with recently murdered friend Peter White. They talk, and Peter tries to make amends to Jack for his mistakes. Then, at the very end of the dream, a flash, just a flash in the corner of the eye - Peter in his ski mask, laughing, taunting. Jack wakes up, jolted and scared. I've never seen any show "get" nightmares the way this sequence did.

The season 6 "Our Town" episode where Ellen returns to her hometown, thinking about an old love, only to realize how derided and disappointed many in her old town were in her.

[DRW50]

TV Land ran it for 3-4 years, with Hill Street Blues. That's where I got "hooked" - they ran it in a graveyard slot and I watched the episodes, some of them two or three times during the run.

I know the last season is seen as a bit weak but I preferred it to the fifth season, which was too OTT slapstick and very harsh, and had an IMO completely unacceptable ending which was done solely as an FU to NBC. The last season, while uneven, was also back to basics.

VirginiaHamilton, I forgot to add that Helen Hunt played a college student Jack dated off and on for a few years. He did love her, but he had a truckload of issues, and she also sort of realized she was going to spend much of her time being mommy to his son, and sometimes to him as well.

[DRW50]

This is the face-slashing scene with Bobby. Much more is implied than shown but I'm still shocked that most of this made network TV. 80s TV was gutsy as hell.

Sorry, I guess I shouldn't post it, as there's a song, I don't know if it would get removed from Youtube, or whatever, if it's posted elsewhere. If you want to see it PM me.

[reallyhateskateonlost]

St. Elsewhere cast on GMA this morning. Mark Harmon was there.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=qsgPy-9pSQQ

[VirginiaHamilton]

So, I just watched the scene where Mark Harmon's character got slashed in the face by some woman that he picked up at the hardware store. For those who saw this when it originally aired:

1. Was that the season finale of Season 4, a midseason cliffhanger, or just another episode?

2. How did the network promote that episode, it at all?

[DRW50]

That was within the first month or two months of season 4. He left around midseason.