![]() ![]() Mandel, Morse, and Washington are among the core cast of younger doctors that stuck around for the entire show, wringing their hands over their critical patients, racing to respond to someone randomly coding in the hallway, or occasionally banging in the morgue. Mark Craig (Daniels) rounding out the experienced older set of doctors helping the residents learn the ropes. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) and Dr. Elsewhere” by the residents and the surrounding community, the place has a reputation as a rathole. Eligius is a teaching hospital in Boston’s South End (the building that appears in the title sequence is actually an apartment building there). Elsewhere, and I venture to say stuff like House or Scrubs, or even Grey’s Anatomy would not look or feel the same without its influence and success. ![]() ER and Chicago Hope wouldn’t exist in the form they did without St. This 40-year-old show looks like that nurse’s job in that ER, and the characters’ coping mechanisms and responses to trauma may be dramatized, but they aren’t implausible. I spent a shift sitting bedside with my daughter in the emergency room during a three-day-long stay once, watching the same sainted nurse come and go as an endless tide of needy patients washed in. Much of the humor between characters is gallows humor. It is underfunded, understaffed, crowded, and running on fumes. ![]() Elsewhere is not a great place to work or convalesce. Elsewhere, the magic was in the tone, as it was with another show by the same production company, Hill Street Blues.īoth shows took a grittier and more realistic approach to their drama. It’s been observed that much of American primetime TV has been about cops and the sex lives of doctors. Helen Hunt even appeared in a few episodes. Feeny himself (William Daniels), but his wife (real and fictional) Bonnie Bartlett. The show was a proving ground for actors you have seen in a million things before or since: Denzel Washington and Howie Mandel were easily the most recognizable, but there were also ringers like Mark Harmon, David Morse, Ed Begley Jr., Bruce Greenwood, Ronny Cox, and not only Mr. Elsewhere was a show that got by largely on the strength of its ensemble, running for six seasons from 1982-88. So what happens when an ending goes completely off the rails? In a way that actually sucks most of contemporary-set American scripted TV into the inside of a snow globe? But now, viewers are picking shows out to binge watch, and they want to know that their time investment is going to have some payoff. Syndication used to be the method by which we would see old scripted shows, and a show’s rep needed to be good enough for you to stop flipping channels if you happened to land on an episode ( ooh! Quantum Leap is on! ). Television these days-or rather, television that jerks like me actually bother to write about-basically falls into two categories now: Heavily scripted and serialized “prestige TV” or reality show stuff that sounds like a made up show on 30 Rock. In the age of streaming in particular, I feel as if this is even more true than it’s been in the past. The finale (if you’re lucky enough to ever have a planned one air) might be one of the most watched episodes in the whole run of the show and the impression that lingers in the minds of most viewers long after the show ends. The first episode of a show has to hook viewers in for the long haul in a way totally unlike, say, the first pages of a novel. ![]() That’s All, Folks is a look back at television’s most unforgettable series finales.īeginnings and endings are important in all forms of fiction, but I’d argue especially so in scripted television. This year, Ken Lowe is revisiting some of the most influential TV shows that made it to an officially planned final episode. Most scripted television shows end in cancellation, so there’s something special about the ones that get the chance to go out on their own terms. ![]()
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