Adding Photos to Old Posts

It looks like I'm going to be adding images to old posts.

Judging by hair, I'd say this one's from
the first half of season four.

I didn't have screen-capture capabilities when I started this blog, so most of my early posts are just plain text. Since then, I've enjoyed the challenge of finding a good freeze frame to capture. It's also an editorial question to decide which images to represent the post and what to write about them, and I enjoy making those judgments, odd as they can turn out sometimes.

I have recently added images to "Daniel Auschlander's Season-Long Slide" and "'Good Vibrations' -- The Dramatic Clip Show Episode". Adding images is a good fit for me right now. I'm going to be too busy to write a full post for a while. Though I do have some in mind.

Update, August 29, 2012: Images added to "New York Times Article on the VHS Boxed Set", "New York Times Article About the First Ones", and "The St. Elsewhere Time Frame". And this one.

Some Blogger Praise for St. Elsewhere

Haven't done a "link" entry in a while, so here's one from a blogger rating it as their favorite TV drama.

Came across this post on a blog called Pseudo-Intellectualism. Titled "The Best TV Drama: St. Elsewhere", it consists almost entirely of a review from popmatters.com by a Mark Labowskie. It's from 2007, and I've noticed that there's a lot of content about St. Elsewhere from back then that spawned from the release of the first season on DVD, the only official release of the show other than the VHS Very Best of St. Elsewhere collection.

The review credits St. Elsewhere for "inventing the modern medical drama." There's a good explanation of what was innovative about the show, much of which we take for granted now.

Dr. Ben Samuels (David Birney) in on-call with Dr. Vijay
Kochar (Kavi Raz). At least Vijay keeps his job.

Nitpick... Kavi Raz lasts more than one season. He still gets screen time in season two. It's starting with season three where he only appears on a recurring basis. He even pops up in season six.

Re: the bit about David Birney: "Birney was a popular TV star in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, and may have thought that his lothario character was going to be the de facto leading man; as it turned out, he was outshined by nearly all of the supporting cast and was gradually phased out, to the extent that he barely appears in the last few episodes of the season." According to the biography of David Birney on Yahoo! Movies, he left the show due to "[c]onflicts with the producers [about] the direction and status of his role."

Re: the bit in the comments about David Duchovny as the patient in women's underwear in the E.R. on the first season episode, "Samuels and the Kid": it's not David Duchovny. It's Paul Lieber playing the jail-bound patient. How many of you know someone who always misidentifies actors in TV shows and movies? I'm thinking of the one I know right now. I'm not immune to it myself, I must admit.

Paul Lieber as the guy who made an unfortunate choice in
undergarments.

And just for the heck of it, here are some more links to stuff people out there have written about the show:

• A description of the series on www.skooldays.com, a collection of nostalgic memories.
• A snarky review of the series from ifrymineinbutter.com.
• A synopsis on British television site www.televisionheaven.co.uk.

Network TV's First Full Moon

St. Elsewhere pushed the limits of nudity on TV with the first shot of bare buttocks on prime time network television.

Episode three of season six, "A Moon for the Misbegotten", which aired September 30, 1987, marks the final appearance of Dr. Donald Westphall as a regular character on St. Elsewhere. (He makes two more appearances during season six; in episode 17, "Their Town", and in the finale, "The Last One".) When season six begins, we learn that after the wrecker's ball struck the front of the hospital, the demolition was stopped due to a last-second offer to purchase St. Eligius from a corporation called Ecumena, and after a month off for renovations, the staff is asked to return to their old jobs. Ecumena puts their own man in charge, Dr. John Gideon (Ronny Cox), and Donald and Daniel (75 and suffering from cancer) are only allowed to continue working in figurehead positions with no real authority.

Mr. Collins from Ecumena (Dennis Patrick) has had enough
of Donald Westphall (and people like him).

Donald's personality and approach to running the hospital are completely out of step with the corporate types and their bottom-line approach to providing health care, and by episode three, after lobbying for an AIDS clinic and pissing off Gideon's boss from head office, Donald is fired. At the end of the day (around 8 PM, according to the screen clocks), Donald meets Gideon in his office, and Gideon offers him one more chance. They can run the hospital together, Gideon says, if Donald would only compromise and "adapt [his] point of view."

Donald tells Gideon that it's an interesting offer. He turns around, we see his back, he appears to be fiddling with something, and he says, "Let me try and tell you in terms I think you can understand." We see Gideon's reaction and hear the sound of pants dropping. The next shot shows Donald standing up, bare from the waist down at a 45-degree angle to the camera, full moon on display for Gideon, but upper body turned so Donald can address him--"you can kiss my ass, pal." Click here for the uncensored shots.