The Ski Mask Rapist, Parts 1 & 2

St. Elsewhere got nice and dark with this season two storyline--a serial rapist stalks St. Eligius.

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) lends an unwanted hand to
Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry).

In my previous video post, Peter White's Downfall, the disgraced doctor (Terence Knox) had been censured--stripped of his license to prescribe drugs after being bamboozled by an undercover police officer in the E.R. His testimony protected Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry) from punishment, but the price he paid was stiff: he's been transferred to pathology, his career prospects have been curtailed, and his permanent record is forever marred.

The season two episode "Drama Center" (aired February 15, 1984) opens in the St. Eligius parking lot. A woman is having trouble starting her car in the cold weather when a man in a ski mask appears at her window, offering to help. She declines, but he reappears at the other window and smashes it.

The woman, Roxanne Reid (Allyn Ann McLerie), enters the E.R. reporting a broken wrist. When Dr. Wayne Fiscus (Howie Mandel) tries to take her for x-rays, she confides that she was raped as well, and Dr. Annie Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes) examines her. As she recovers and is visited by a social worker (Jenny O'Hara), she seems to be handling the ordeal remarkably well, despite her husband's discomfort. But at night, she is plagued by nightmares of the assault. Ms. Reid benefits from a therapy session where she works through her trauma.

Elsewhere, Dr. Peter White visits the emergency room and snaps into action when an unconscious man is carried in. While Dr. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) and Nurse Daniels treat the patient, Peter, the former E.R. physician, pitches in to help, even though he's not allowed to. When they remind him of his restricted status, he grabs Shirley's arm, angry over being stuck in the morgue, and reminds her of the favor he did for her. Later, Peter's friend, Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse), visits him in his new digs. Peter is bitter, and not appreciative of the support. And he has resumed his addiction to painkillers.

• This episode was included in the VHS collection The Very Best of St. Elsewhere.
• For me, I will always identify Allyn Ann McLerie with her role as Carmen Carlson, wife of General Manager Arthur Carlson on WKRP in Cincinnati. I've been a fan of Jenny O'Hara since her role on Beverly Hills 90210 as the grieving mother of accidental suicide victim Scott Scanlan.
• Jack asks Peter for the Spelling autopsy.

In the next episode, "Attack" (aired February 22, 1984), Peter is performing an autopsy in the morgue with his more experienced colleague in pathology, the flaky vixen Dr. Cathy Martin (Barbara Whinnery), ignoring her spiel about the benefits of Tibetan ginseng. Peter's skills are in need of work, and when his drug-fuelled clumsiness results in the destruction of her IPG stains, Cathy gets upset with him for ruining six weeks of work. But the compassionate Dr. Martin can't help but notice that something is off with Dr. White, who fidgets nervously and says he's fine.

Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) returns from his honeymoon and is shocked to learn from Nurse Lucy Papandrao (Jennifer Savidge) that a woman was raped in the parking lot and another was grabbed on the way to the elevated train, but got away. Later, a young candy-striper (Amy Resnick) nervously approaches Nurse Helen Rosenthal (Christina Pickles) and breaks into tears as she describes how a man lured her into a supply closet--the ski-mask rapist has struck again.

The ski mask rapist picks his moment.

Director of Medicine Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders) orders the hospital locked down and hires extra security to interrogate visitors like City official Joan Halloran (Nancy Stafford), who wants to hire undercover cops to pose as orderlies. In the cafeteria, Rosenthal, Dr. Jackie Wade (Sagan Lewis), and Dr. Wendy Armstrong (Kim Miyori) debate whether they should fight back if attacked. Wade has seen too many women beaten up for resisting, while Armstrong wants to fight back, as she has read that women who fight back are less likely to be depressed afterwards. Rosenthal doesn't want to rearrange her life and give away her power.

The female staff are treated to a rape prevention meeting from the security consultant, who advises the women not to "get hysterical". They are not assured by his statistics about the unlikeliness of being murdered or the airhorns he hands out to them for protection. Cathy Martin, on the other hand, feels that her aura will protect her--rapists seek out victims, and she doesn't project a "victim aura".

Dr. Wayne Fiscus tries to help out by organizing an escort service for the women at the hospital, but Dr. Annie Cavanero points out the flaw in the plan--"how do you know you haven't signed up the rapist?"

Nurse Shirley Daniels has obtained a license to carry a can of mace for self-protection. When she enters a secure prescription drug storage room, she hears noises and springs into action when a man rushes at her from the shadows. The attacker, however, turns out to be merely a thief who picked the wrong drug closet on the wrong day, and he is charged only with criminal trespassing, to Shirley's dismay.

Meanwhile, Dr. Peter White  is not having a good night. We join him as he fails to perform with a prostitute at a seedy motel, and he explains that it was the night of his wedding anniversary, and he and Myra were all set to go out and have a good time when their kids started acting up, triggering the same fight they always have--Myra feels Peter is too lenient on the children and he feels she's too hard on them. He expresses his frustration with family life and leaves.

Back at St. Eligius, Dr. Cathy Martin is at work in the morgue when a ski-masked face appears at the window. The assailant enters, and despite Cathy's aura, he advances on her. In the struggle, she pulls off the ski mask and reveals the identity of the rapist--Dr. Peter White. The clip cuts off the ending, but after she pulls off the mask, he threatens, "If you tell anyone, I'll kill you." Roll credits.

• To keep the clips shorter, I decided not to include the "red herring" storyline. In "Drama Center", Dr. Annie Cavanero is dating Dr. Christopher Rant (Michael Goodwin), the moonlighting physician who dumped an indigent patient on St. Eligius in "A Pig Too Far". At Annie's place, Chris won't take no for an answer, and Annie has to fight him off with a face slap. In "Attack", we see Annie enter the rape prevention seminar--she has just had one last fight with Chris, who was getting grabby again, and left with a "to hell with you." Goodwin has a similar build and height to Terence Knox, and both characters kept grabbing women forcefully, so the guy in the ski mask looked like it could have been either of them.
• "That's why lions sleep in trees." I always enjoyed the show's dark humor. I hope rape prevention lectures are delivered with a bit more sensitivity nowadays.
• Wendy intends to fight back because she's heard that victims are less depressed afterwards if they resist. This is some pretty brutal foreshadowing, as we shall see.
• Some even more brutal and amazing foreshadowing--Wayne says to Jack about the panic that has gripped the women at St. Eligius, "I guess we'll never know what the women are going through." In season four, Jack gets raped while doing community outreach work at a prison, and is then stalked by the assailant after he is released in season five.

New Videos - Peter White's Downfall

The St. Elsewhere Experience presents a series of videos chronicling the show's most controversial storyline.

Dr. Peter White (Terence Knox) breaks down after learning
he has lost his drug-prescription privileges.

If the Emmy Awards were ever to hand out a Special Jury Prize for audacity like they did at Cannes in 1996 for David Cronenberg's Crash, they would be hard-pressed to top the 1983-84 season of St. Elsewhere.

Terence Knox's Dr. Peter White was originally supposed to get killed off early in the first season since he was such a screw-up, but Knox proved compelling enough to earn quite a bit of screen time as he cheated on his wife with multiple partners, separated from her, and got himself hooked on painkillers.

At the end of season one, he had hit rock bottom, but when season two (miraculously) rolled around, it looked like Peter was getting his groove back. He reunited with his wife, kicked his drug habit, and began developing a talent for diagnosis. But nothing stays good for too long at St. Eligius. Especially when the writers decide to push the envelope...

Yes--for the first and possibly only time in network television history, St. Elsewhere made a regular character a serial rapist. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

I am posting these videos for a few reasons. For one, I want people to be able to comment on this one. A popular sentiment I've heard is that the writers went too far on this one, and it's just not believable that a character would do something like this. I would imagine that nowadays, a story like this would be grounded in a deeper understanding of the psychology behind sexual assault. So feel free to tear this one apart!

Another reason--I found Peter White utterly fascinating. Like a train wreck. One that takes out three main characters. I wouldn't be surprised if NBC execs felt the opening credits were too long and they wanted the producers to thin the herd. Or if they wanted to themselves. (Sounds like the Sword of Damocles hung over every actor's head, unless the producers liked them... you can tell which ones, because they stuck around, got screen time, and didn't get raped in prison.)

So I'm starting the series with a pair of videos that set the scene for Peter's dark descent.

Peter's good fortune comes to an end in the seventh episode of season two, "Entrapment":

His poor judgment lands he and Nurse Shirley Daniels (Ellen Bry), his unwitting accomplice, before the Medical Review Board for dispensing prescription drugs without a license in the season's twelfth episode, "Hearing":

For me, Dr. Peter White is one of the worst bad guys ever to appear in the opening credits of a network television series; probably the nastiest villain of the decade. Knox is very effective at making Peter downright awful, yet strangely watchable.

I also enjoy Conrad Janis as Ralph Tanney, who, judging from his courtroom skills here and in upcoming episodes, is possibly the single greatest lawyer in the history of the world.

By the way, there are a few more articles left from On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club. Those are coming (they're long!). I also plan on resuming episode recaps after the newsletter is fully preserved online.

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 11

Mrs. Hufnagel interrupts Jack's sleep, invades his privacy, and meets a doctor she actually likes.

Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) sheds some
crocodile tears.

The scenes in "Whistle, Wyler Works" featuring St. Eligius's most difficult patient, Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop), are two of my favorites (her encounter with Westphall is probably #1). In the first scene, it's because of her reaction to having someone call her out on her behavior; in the second, I love that we see what happens when she meets someone about whom she has observed no personal weaknesses to exploit.

Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse) is asleep in the on-call room when Mrs. Hufnagel wheels in to remind him that she wanted a consult with a plastic surgeon and to return his red knapsack, which he left in her room the day before. When she reveals that she read the letter his sister (probably; Jack doesn't confirm it), wrote him, Jack gets angry at her for violating his privacy. He berates her for only caring about herself, and her attempt to elicit his sympathy by "crying" proves ineffective.

Later, plastic surgeon Dr. Bobby Caldwell (Mark Harmon) arrives to provide a consult. The only flaw she can seem to find is that he looks young. She wants the Phyllis Diller treatment, as her new boyfriend Murray is in show business, and she needs to compete with the babes for his attention. Caldwell tells her that if he were to take away her lines, she would lose the beauty that comes with wisdom and experience. He says she doesn't need to change a thing, and that Murray probably agrees with him. She's thoroughly charmed.

Caldwell then runs into Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) and Fiscus (Howie Mandel) in the hallway and asks why everyone is so upset with Florence, who he found pleasant. They incorrectly presume she must be feeling better.

Other observations:

• Little did Mrs. Hufnagel know that Jack had plenty of practice dealing with awful patients. In "Bypass", the second episode of the series, he made a big speech to Westphall about how he didn't like having to treat awful patients like murderous terrorist bomber Andrew Rhinehardt (Tim Robbins). Seems like Jack has become more cynical since his first year of residency.
• "No wonder your girlfriend moved out. You look terrible when get up." Mrs. Hufnagel is apparently the hospital's busybody--Jack had recently attempted co-habitation with his girlfriend, Clancy (Helen Hunt). One of my favorite Hufnagel character traits is that she manages to discover all the major, defining events in other people's lives. How? We don't know. But she seems to know the hospital as well as anyone, except probably Luther.
• I think this is my favorite Bobby Caldwell scene, even more so than the dark stuff that comes the next season. I love that Mark Harmon's most charming moment is with Florence Halop. And because Mrs. Hufnagel is so vile to everyone else, it's hilarious.
• Mrs. Hufnagel is bored in the first scene because she can't watch Wink Martindale on her TV. At the time, he was the host of the game show Tic Tac Dough, which was one of my childhood favorites.

The Mrs. Hufnagel Chronicles, Part 10

St. Eligius just can't get rid of Mrs. Hufnagel, who demands a new doctor upon readmission.

Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) lays down the law.

As Dr. Elliott Axelrod (Stephen Furst) discharges Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) at the end of "The Children's Hour", he prescribes phenylbutazone to help with her phlebitis and her aches and pains. In the next episode, "Dr. Wyler, I Presume", Axelrod, a first-year resident, is excited to be paged by name to the E.R. until he learns that the patient demanding to see him is none other than Mrs. Hufnagel, who is now unconscious and has a nearly-empty bottle of phenylbutazone on her. Dr. Philip Chandler (Denzel Washington) rejects Elliott's plea to take the patient off his hands, and orderly Warren Coolidge (Byron Stewart) refuses Elliott's order to relay instructions for the nurse before

She had been taking four times the prescribed dose, but nonetheless demands a new physician who isn't trying to kill her. The duty falls on Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse), whom Hufnagel recognizes as the one with the red knapsack and the kid who never says much on rounds. She questions Morrison about his medical education (which he obtained in Mexico), and then is horrified to learn that the doctor has ordered a barium enema for her: "N-O. Nobody touches the booty."

According to Wikipedia, phenylbutazone is no longer approved for human use in the United States, but is commonly prescribed to horses. Hufnagel was admitted with gastrointestinal bleeding, which can be a side effect...in horses.

It will turn out that Hufnagel is right to question Morrison's medical education; in the next episode ("Whistle, Wyler Works"), it will be revealed that Jack fast-tracked his medical degree, and is not actually qualified to practice medicine. He will have to redo medical school while doing his residency and raising his infant son by himself; this lasts into season four. Fortunately, his diagnostic skills improve considerably once he actually learns some medical knowledge.

Here's Boomer!

The story behind Jack "Boomer" Morrison's nickname, which was inspired by NBC network executives.

Clancy (Helen Hunt) meets Boomer (David Morse).

In "Hello, Goodbye", the finale of season two, recently-widowed Dr. Jack Morrison (David Morse), having just barely managed to qualify for the second year of the residency program at St. Eligius, spends a day on the town with his son, Pete. While out and about, he meets a pretty and charming college student named Clancy Williams (Helen Hunt), who is gathering signatures on a petition for nuclear disarmament. Jack asks, "What is this?", and Clancy replies, "What does it look like, Boomer? It's a petition." They begin a relationship that carries into season three, with a brief re-connection in season four. When Clancy meets the other doctors, she refers to Jack by her pet name for him, "Boomer". The staff picks up on it, and Jack gets referred to as Boomer on and off throughout the rest of the series.

In season three's "My Aim is True", repeat patient Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop) introduces herself to a candidate for the position of Dr. Auschlander's assistant, and gives her the lowdown on what really goes on at St. Eligius. "Sodom and Gomorrah. You name it, the doctors at St. Eligius do it. That bleach-blond, Ehrlich, he used to get his jollies by tying up his ex-wife. There's no shame around here. They've even got a doctor here named 'Boomer'." The implication is that Clancy gave him the nickname because of his prowess in the sack. However, we've seen that she started calling him that before they knew each other in the biblical sense.

There's a behind-the-scenes explanation though, and it turns out "Boomer" is an inside joke. From the DVD commentary for "Cora and Arnie", with producer Mark Tinker and Emmy-winning guest star Doris Roberts:

Setting the Record Straight About a Few Things

Comment on a recent article about the show at A.V. Club, which will likely stay in Google's top ten results for "St. Elsewhere" for a while.

In preparing this blog, I came across a recent article about St. Elsewhere, part of a series of articles on A.V. Club where they profile shows that reached the 100-episode mark, which used to be the number after which episodes of a currently-airing show could be sold into syndication. St. Elsewhere celebrated its 100th episode by including a line about a patient named Cindy Kayshun who was still going strong after a hundred episodes of angina.

I take issue with a few things in this article. First of all, the author goes on about how St. Elsewhere stayed on the air because of an innovative strategy of citing demographics to sell the show to advertisers, and it was kept around because of its appeal to the 18-to-49 demographic. Robert Thompson's book, Television's Second Golden Age, tells the story a bit differently. Sure, its audience was skewed towards the 18-to-49's, but what kept it on the air, far from being simply a "vanity" project that "made the network look good", was that the show was actually NBC's fourth-most profitable series by the end of its run. By season six, it had started to win its time slot, climbing to a personal-best #49 in the annual Nielsen rankings. NBC was ready to green-light it for the 1988-89 season, but MTM Productions decided to call it day, as rising production costs and poor syndication sales meant that it would cost them too much to continue making it. Ironic given that they had wrap up most preceding seasons with episodes that could have doubled as series finales because they were perennially on the network's chopping block.