This is the seventh post of a series. The previous posts are:

#1: The Howdy Doody Show
#2: 77 Sunset Strip
#3: The Edge of Night
#4: The Defenders
#5: 
#6: The Dick Van Dyke Show
#7: The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
#8: 
#9: St. Elsewhere
#10: 

What can I say about St. Elsewhere?

It was not one of your standard hospital shows. 

It was the first show to feature stories built around the AIDS pandemic. Not just one story but several over the course of multiple seasons. And it was the first to feature its most heterosexual straight regular character coming down with the disease. 

Had anyone ever heard of Tourette’s Syndrome before Kathy Bates was featured in a story where she couldn’t control the, often offensive, words that flew out of her mouth? Had anyone ever heard of Kathy Bates before she appeared on the show?

And there was the recurring character of Tommy, Dr. Westphall’s autistic son.

There was the story arc of the heart transplant which had a shocking surprise, a tender, bittersweet ending, and then an anticlimactic real ending.

The writers were never satisfied with single endings to story arcs. There was the serial rapist story, which had not one, not two, but three endings, two of them real shockers.

It was the show that brought us Ed Begley Jr. (“Ehrlich, you’re a pig!”) , and (sadly) Howie Mandel. It gave Denzel Washington his first big break. And David Morse as well. Then there was Bonnie Bartlett, William Daniels’s wife in real life, who played his fictional wife on the show. And Eric Laneuville, before he began his successful directing career.

And veterans like Ed Flanders and Norman Lloyd (remember his famous scene in Hitchcock’s Saboteur?).

St. Elsewhere, or St. Elegius to give it its proper name, was a teaching hospital that was affiliated with the Catholic Church. Knowing me, as I presume that you do, you might wonder why I, a staunch enemy of all religions but especially the Catholic religion and its ilk, would be so wild about a show about a Catholic hospital. Number one, it was never (well, hardly ever) preachy, and number two it actually had characters who had left the church, possibly another first for that show.

St. Elsewhere could pull at your heartstrings while it was simultaneously making you laugh. The writers never missed an opportunity to add a little humor here and there, or make a sly reference to another show or movie, such as when the Craigs paid a visit to Philadelphia.

I could go on and on because I absolutely loved this show. I’ve been disappointed that, like The Defenders, another of my top ten, only the first season ever made its way to an official DVD release, and the first season is the least interesting, as the series hadn’t really found its footing yet. Plus, one of the story arcs in the first season is the silliest they ever did. 

The whole series is apparently available for streaming on Hulu, but I don’t like Hulu, so I’ve never joined. If you don’t have my objections to Hulu, I suggest you start watching with the second season, and after completing it, only then coming back and viewing the first season if you wish.

I’ve been able to find two different bootleg sets, neither of them of especially good quality, so I’ve been waiting, probably in vain, for either DVDs or a streaming service that I like.

The series finale was particularly controversial, it’s still being argued over by aficionados of the show. As I’ve mentioned, Dr. Westphall had an autistic son named Tommy. During the final episode there was snow falling when there shouldn’t have been snow, and then finally, after the doctors managed to get the fat opera lady to sing, they cut to this curious scene.