We don’t need to be told why the buppie Dr. And, notwithstanding some dips into corny melodrama, the show accepts characters and situations as complex and multi-sided. The characters themselves are not wholly articulate. There is, thank God, no voice over extracting pithy morals from every situation. Elsewhere, in contrast to most network shows today, is how much of the drama is understated and implicit. Future semi-famous actors who turn up as guest stars include Ally Sheedy, Michael Madsen, Ray Liotta, Jane Kaczmarek, Judith Light, Laraine Newman, Christopher Guest, Tom Hulce and David Duchovny-who has a brief but memorable bit role in the fifth episode. Morrison uses every case as a springboard for ruminations on the morality and ethics of medicine. Ben Samuels (David Birney), a star surgeon at the hospital, saves lives and ravishes ladies. Fiscus, an emergency room doctor, is mugged by a patient and starts carrying a gun to work. Craig berates and traumatizes the residents, especially the promising Ehrlich, who makes a continual embarrassment of himself. The doctors struggle with cases, careers, family and romance. In the bluntly titled “Down’s Syndrome”, a couple struggles with whether or not to abort their possibly handicapped child with a minimum of hysteria, the show smartly limns both sides of the argument before building to a toughly unsentimental conclusion. Bullfinch”, visiting patients and attending in surgeries. Eligius’ seemingly open-door psych ward) posing as “Dr. A mental patient who thinks he’s a bird roams the hospital (the first of many to escape from St.
St elsewhere imdb cast mambers professional#
A baby-faced Tim Robbins, in his first professional role, shows up for a few episodes as an entitled anarchist whom the hospital is forced to treat. The show alternates seamlessly between medical cases and personal lives, between wrenchingly tragic storylines and bizarrely humorous ones.
St elsewhere imdb cast mambers tv#
Although primitive compared to the swirling cinematography of ER, the long takes are still impressively choreographed and acted, and helped give TV a visual life it had never had before. Frequently, the camera will track from one group of actors to another in a single shot, binding several disparate storylines into a larger context. Elsewhere also shook up the visual language of the TV drama, using long tracking shots and jittery hand-held camera work (now a TV cliché) to lend a sense of immediacy and continuity to the action.
In addition to modernizing narrative structure, St. Eligius itself, a rundown, under-funded teaching hospital in South Boston. Cast members came and went over the course of its run, but the focus was always on St. Elsewhere helped popularize the TV trend of making a community- frequently a workplace-the main character. It featured an expansive, ensemble cast (12 actors are billed in the opening credits of the first season, along with many recurring guest stars), multiple plotlines in each episode, and ongoing story arcs that frequently involved cliffhangers and the phrase “Previously on…” Rather than focusing on a central character, St. Elsewhere was the second show (after Hill Street Blues, which NBC debuted the prior year) to bring soap opera techniques to bear on “serious” drama. Breaking with the monochromatic, one-protagonist / one-story formula of Ben Casey and Marcus Welby, M.D., St. Elsewhere, which invented the modern TV medical drama. I forgot how good Howie Mandel is compared to his current version.Įxcerpts from a very insightful review from by Mark Labowskie at :īefore the indie rock-drenched epiphanies of Grey’s Anatomy, before the adrenalized, crisis-a-minute pace of ER, there was St. I made a "then and now" dedication slide show for the stars of the first season. I've been watching the recently re-issued first season DVD.
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