MacGYVER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

By: Anthony Miller
March 11, 2025

One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating favorite TV shows from the Eighties (1984–1993). Series edited by Josh Glenn.

ST. ELSEWHERE | 1982–88

St. Elsewhere was the medical drama of the ’80s, praised for its fantastic writing, remarkable ensemble, and groundbreaking storylines. Over the course of six seasons on NBC, the series also embarked on some odd explorations beyond healing the sick and saving lives.

Named for the patron saint of artists and craftsmen, St. Eligius Hospital in Boston’s South End also answers to the name St. Elsewhere, the place one goes when no other hospital will take you in. St. Eligius’s imperfect patriarchs were Norman Lloyd’s venerable and imperishable Chief of Services Dr. Auschlander, Ed Flanders’s empathetic and idealistic Director of Medicine Dr. Westphall, and William Daniels’s imperious and hard-hearted cardiac surgeon Dr. Craig. Other St. Elsewhere-ans included Ed Begley Jr,, David Morse, Howie Mandel, Mark Harmon, Christina Pickles, Bonnie Bartlett, Alfre Woodard, Bruce Greenwood, Helen Hunt, and Denzel Washington.

There were indelible scenes and episodes. Harmon’s promiscuous plastic surgeon Bobby Caldwell got his face slashed by a woman he picks up. (Particularly haunting when first aired with The Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye In The Sky,” substituted in syndication.) Not long after, Caldwell was the first major character to be diagnosed with and later die of AIDS on network TV. A two-parter took us through St. Eligius’ first 50 years with stops to check in on the doctors, nurses, and patients in ten-year intervals. Morse’s kindly resident Jack (“Boomer”) Morrison was raped in a prison riot. (Writer and producer Tom Fontana went on to create Oz.) After being shot, Mandel’s wisecracking ER doc Wayne Fiscus traveled to Purgatory, Hell, and Heaven, reuniting with some who perished at St. Eligius. A New Hampshire-based episode riffed on Our Town with a little of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”

St. Elsewhere trafficked in all manner of allusions and in-jokes. Unusual names came across the hospital’s P.A. Characters referred to other roles the actors portrayed. Doctors spoke in song lyrics. These moments could get quite meta. In one episode an amnesiac who believes he is Mary Richards from The Mary Tyler Moore Show spots a NASA doctor played by Betty White and greets her by the name of her Mary Tyler Moore character: “Sue Ann? Sue Ann Nivens?” (David Foster Wallace drew attention to this bit in his “E Unibus Pluram” essay.)

It is impossible to contemplate St. Elsewhere without addressing ourselves to its finale and the most mind-boggling final scene in television history. Westphall, now a construction worker, comes home to his “Pop” who is Auschlander (although he died in the episode) and his autistic son Tommy, who is shaking a snow globe. “He sits there all day long in his own world, staring at that toy,“ says Westphall. “What’s he thinking about?” Zoom in on the globe atop the TV. Inside, there’s St. Eligius! Has Tommy dreamed up everything we have been watching? Given St. Elsewhere’s referential pageant, moments like John Doe #6’s Mary Tyler Moore misnomer and the time when Auschlander, Westphall, and Craig wet their whistle at Cheers, there has been great speculation about how much of television might exist in Tommy’s mind. The Tommy Westphall Universe is a vast pop-cultural concatenation, like a TV version of Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton Universe. Numbers vary as to how many shows are enmeshed in this realm. Maps have been drawn up. It’s all in a world elsewhere.

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MacGYVER YOUR ENTHUSIASM (21)

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